Jan-Piet Mens

I admire people who can assemble a working device from a pile of electronic
components, something like what colleagues did for Nagios
blinkenlights. I have
next to zero knowledge of electronics, and have unfortunately never found the
time to learn.

Ever since our little blinkenlights tour, I've wanted to have something a
little more high-tech, and I recently stumbled over a project called
Arduino. So, off I went and bought and read Getting Started with
Arduino and Making Things
Talk, which where good fun, but
what really got me going where the excellent "lessons" in Introduction to
Microcontrollers with Arduino by Tod E.
Kurt; clear, concise, fun, and practical.

I didn't have to learn a new language (thank goodness), as the
Arduino microcontrollers are programmed in a C-derived language, which is easy enough
to learn if you don't know C. (There is a sexy little booklet which describes
the language and its functions, called
Arduino Programming Notebook.)

I then ordered an Arduino Duemillanove (2009) together with a workshop
kit containing all sorts
of goodies. (Do I really need a tilt sensor and a 1n4007 as well as a MOS and
ULN2803? Of course I do!) As my primary interest in playing with Arduino is to
get it to talk to the outside world via TCP/IP, I splurged and bought a
so-called Ethernet shield (an addon)
that can do that.

After downloading and installing the software (the IDE), I was ready to
rumble, and the first LED started
blinking very soon.

As soon as I can make some time, I'll have a go at something a bit more real.