Exploring Arduino

I’m coming to review this book rather late. It was published in late 2013, I believe, but I’ve only recently purchased it and wanted to pipe up with my two cents’ worth. As many people would probably say, I originally encountered the works of Jeremy Blum on YouTube. I bought my first Arduino board in late 2013. Being a busy professional and father, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to play around with it.. But I can’t really learn new things in a vacuum, so I quickly developed a project to use my first board on: a timing track for my son’s Boxwood Derby car. (He had a brief interest in the Cub Scouts, which has long since waned.) So searching the Intertubes for training materials on the Arduino was natural. I looked at many of them, but by far the best, at least in my opinion, were the short videos produced on the topic by Jeremy Blum with the support of the electronics supply company Element 14. Jeremy Blum is the host of a series of 15 tutorials for working with Arduinos, sponsored by Element 14. I used those Arduino Tutorial videos to bring myself up to speed quickly.I actually managed to get a timing circuit built in time for my son to enter his car in an elementary school science fair. True, we only re-proved what Galileo figured out in 1638, but still, it’s always nice to see that the laws of physics haven’t changed. I was very grateful to Mr. Blum for his guidance. At the time, I remember being astonished that such clear, cleanly explained training films existed for the Arduino and that they had been created by an undergraduate student! When he announced that he was writing a book, I sort of felt like I owed it to him to buy and read it. (Plus, he had helped to get me hooked on this whole open-source hardware maker movement, so I was naturally curious to learn more.) To summarize my perspective on the book, I’m a working IT professional who had introductory practical electronics courses as a physics student nearly 30 years ago, so many of the concepts here aren’t new to me. I’ve played around with small circuits on my own for many years, but I was never really a hobbyist, more of a dabbler. But with the arrival of the Arduino and the Raspbery Pi, I finally had the opportunity to try out working with microcontrollers. I had always been a bit too busy and perhaps slightly intimidated to take that particular plunge. I think maybe that’s Jeremy’s best trait, he makes you unafraid to try out new things. The other thing I should mention here is that I've worked as a technical writer for many years, so I'm aware of the technical aspects of putting together this kind of hardware/software instructional book. It's a unique kind of challenge to write about both technical hardware and software in a combined work. So, the book . . . I bought the paperback on Amazon during a month in which Mr. Blum turned out to be donating his profits to young fremale engineers. I can certainly get behind that cause and I’m glad it worked out that way. The book, printed by Wiley is nicely printed. I like the texture and design of the cover. The pages are fairly standard for technology/programming books, black and white on a medium-light weight, matte stock. The layout of chapters are clean and crisp; the typography clear and legible and the illustrations printed well in grayscale. The illustrations are basically an even mixture of screen grabs of the Arduino IDE interface, what looks to be Mac OS X operating system windows and elements, circuit diagrams done in Fritzing, a few photos likely taken by the author, and a few black and white line drawings of key concepts. The structure follows the YouTube tutorial videos pretty closely, introducing elementary engineering principles first and then moving on to the basics of how a microcontroller works, the practical capabilities of an Arduino, and then simple and more complex projects created using one. Usually, the author sticks with the Arduino Uno, but he does acknowledge and occasionally even suggest projects for the other models. He starts each chapter calling out the digital resources available related to the material in the chapter, which is nice. He naturally links back to his tutorial videos, but he isn’t shy pointing to other valuable online resources. All of the sketches, diagrams and schematic files he uses are available on a custom website supporting the book. (www.exploringarduino.com) Each chapter goes farther, obviously, than he could in an 8 to 15 minutes web video. I found the extra content illuminating if not terribly exciting. Many of the suggested projects are pretty elementary, but then the goal is to slowly guide a student new to electronics into the topics without scaring them. That, I have to say, is the true gift of this book and of Jeremy Blum’s technique in general. He seems truly skilled at introducing concepts that could be very daunting and making them seem clear and even friendly, in a way. Actually, I want to avoid giving faint praise to this book. I found it quite wonderful. It really is only a book about the Arduino in the same way that ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ is about motorcycle maintenance. The subject is a means to an end. The end, I would venture to say, is to train young, eager people to become engineers in both mind and spirit; maybe not even to become professionals, but to become imbued with that sense of curiosity and intellectual audacity that generates the most astonishing innovations in human culture. It doesn’t just walk you through, step-by-step, on how to interface your Arduino with a motor, for example. It uses this as an opportunity to provide an astonishingly clear explanation of what transistors do and how to avoid being intimidated by them. The number of topics he just gradually sidles up to and introduces to the reader is quite charming and amazing at the same time. This is a book on how to think like a maker. Not a “Maker” but rather simply a maker-of-things . . it describes how to be a true engineer, like the Wright Brothers or Archimedes; someone who takes what’s in the world and uses it in interesting and novel ways. The electronics of sound, coding, serial and parallel communications, wireless communications, the key details of devices connected on the Internet, data logging, hardware and software interrupts, dealing with high and low power environments, dealing with servos and pulse-width-modulation, it’s all described in the authors consistently concise, clear, and complete prose. That completeness is quite nice, especially for someone learning the techniques. He doesn’t really assume anything about what the reader knows. He goes out of his way to make sure that every loose end of a project is described in plain ways. What is the difference between a pull-up and pull-down resistor? Why would one want to use polling when interrupts are available? What are the limits of the power supplies you will encounter? This is all useful, practical stuff that many books for beginners either ignore or bury in lots of scary detail. I suspect that Mr. Blum is going to spend many years updating this book. It’s perfect for teaching young engineers or scientists the basics of practical electronics. When studying as an undergrad physics student, you are required to take a course in basic electronics, because most of your experimental work means that you need to design circuits, from simple to robust and complex measurement circuits. This book is a perfect way to introduce these concepts. But being based on the Arduino, a very young technology, means that he’s going to need to update this book every few years to avoid it from going out of date. But it’s so well organized that I suspect updates will be straightforward. And it cries out for the creation of an interactive e-book version, if one isn’t already in the works. I tend to keep an eye on what the author is doing with this and other projects on his personal website, first because I often refer back to his materials and blog posts, but also because I find his ethical take on sharing with younger engineers (and other topics) to be heartening. The only criticisms I have of the book are related to the illustrations. There are several places where elements of illustrations, particularly Fritzing circuit diagrams, are called out by color. I understand that the ebook version includes the diagrams in color, but the printed book emphatically does not. It only happens a few times, but when it does, it can cause some consternation. The other problem I only occasionally had with the illustrations was the size of the text in some screen captures. Getting that consistently correct across a full book can be quite challenging as you pull images from multiple sources. Still, most of the pictures are clean and clear, and the color illustrations could be redesigned slightly in gray scale with callouts emphasizing items from the text. Overall, if you can't guess, I really liked this book. When my sons get a bit older, I will encourage them to read it if they show even the slightest interest in the arcane ways of engineers. This is the kind of book that will teach a young mind not to fear the engineering wizards, but to emulate them. And the world needs all of the engineering wizards it can find these days.

NOTE: For the publisher: At this book's price point, the publisher (no fault of the author) should have done a better job at Fritzing imagery reproduction. That said, this review is about the author and not so much about the publisher's reproduction of Fritzing graphics. I do wish that the author had provided more "electronic" schematics for the projects vs. Fritzing. In my lifetime of experience, unless our goal is build lawn furniture, using a photo-type-graphic as a construction reference is poor practice. Nothing is being learned that can be translated to subsequent projects. Unlike Fritzing imagery, electrical schematics show component symbology, component electronic ratings (voltage, current, ohms, etc) as well as the circuit's current flow. Fritzing teaches nothing. Electronic schematics further one's expertise toward becoming one's own designer. Moving on now to the book's content review (exclusive of Fritzing) without the benefit of a more useful electronic component diagrams. This book by Mr. Blum is superb. I purchased three books in quick succession: This one and two by another author. What makes this book such a great resource is PRECISION. The author ensures that facts are accurate and that the sketch text is error free. As a result, NO FRUSTRATION that is so common in this subject area. How often do you find yourself getting compiler errors, upload errors, and failures that require your valuable time perusing forums and blogs trying to find solutions to these issues. In this book, Exploring Arduino by Jeremy Blum, I read and used his projects from cover to cover and not once did I have a "failure to compile" error. That's outstanding! Then, what I find extremely useful is Mr. Blum's choice of topics. There is a world of subjects that he could have singled out but the ones he packaged in this book are mainstream. To top it off, he finished up with Ethernet Shield including the server code and HTML. And, he explains the topic in a way that I could learn the mechanics of the network makeup and HTTProtocol detail. As a result, I was able to design two subsequent projects to remotely control completely different modules by applying what the author had taught. To me, that's the quintessential definition of a text book. I must mention that the author provides links to his book's content so that you can use your IPad or other mobile device to refer to content or to copy/paste if needed. I am so happy with this book's value and content that I'd give it 10 stars if I could. By contrast, I purchase two other books for around $10 each and together, the cost was more than Mr. Blum's title. Save your money and learn far more from Mr. Blum. If for any reason you don't find this book a real jewel on the topic at hand, I am sure someone will gladly take it off your hands. Good luck. I think you'll be as pleased as I am. Cheers. 5-STARS: The author is a superb technical writer, engineer, and educator. Thank you. READER'S RECOMMENDATION: FRITZING diagrams are bulky, waste page space, and impart little (if any) usable knowledge. More compact, electrical diagrams that contain useful electronics industry standardized symbology are omitted. This is a huge mistake in favor of "assembly" vs teaching. In a book of this high caliber, this is surprising. This reader suggests taking the time to draw out your own electronic schematic for the components pictured on the breadboard. If the reader cannot accomplish this, it is because of over-dependence on Fritzing diagrams prior to this book. Be aware that to become a talented electrical/software engineer, you will need to master the skill of reading and interpreting electronic schematics. So, don't let photographs and graphics displace any opportunity to learn professional material. If you are high school level, you should be able to draw these diagrams blind folded. If you can't, you need to be asking why and my advice contains your answer. Best of luck and success !! Don't let haste of commercialization rob you of a bright future. Be a real designer of your own projects -- not just an assembler of someone else's !!

Current technology, clearly written. Relies a little too much on purchased components, but plenty of examples and tests.

Oltre che essere didatticamente molto valido dá molti spunti per approfondimenti e sviluppo di progetti in propria autonomia. Come primo approccio è molto valido. Grazie

Muy bien explicado, los programas mostrados se pueden descargar de la pagina web del autor, y cuenta con diagramas son a color (los del libro son en b/n). Hice un termómetro digital en tan solo una noche. Muy bueno.

Look, I'm a physicist - not an electrical engineer - who dabbles in electronics. It's fun! And what better platform to use for programmable electronics than the Arduino (yes, the Raspberry Pi could also be used, but the learning curve there is certainly steeper as the Pi cannot control hardware as easily as the Arduino can). There are many good websites that describe projects for the Arduino: adafruit.com, instructables.com to name a couple. But if you want to go beyond those examples and really understand what's going on so you can design your own non-trivial projects...well, this is where this book comes in! Blum has done a superb job presenting aspects of the Arduino in a comprehensive, fairly complete and accessible manner. Lots of bits and bobs of the material covered in this book is available online, but nowhere will you find this level of detail and coherence. The descriptions are very very clear and the projects are cool, entertaining and teach you a heck of a lot! I have used other books on the Arduino before and always found them lacking. Yes, they had a number of projects described, but if you wanted to know why something was the way it was, well, you were out of luck. Blum's book has no such issues. He covers both basic and advanced topics clearly, always explaining how things work. Blum covers advanced topics like serial communication, interrupts, data logging, wireless communication, communication via the ethernet, plotting data in real-time on websites and others clearly. I have already used this book to set up a number of projects involving these topics and I now feel like I actually *understand* what's going on! You can get information on many of these topics from the web, but I doubt you will really feel like it makes sense. Get this as your reference to the Arduino and as your everyday project book. Combine this with the cool resources at adafruit.com and instructables.com and you are set to spend many a Saturday afternoon making stuff!

O livro é muito bem estruturado, com exemplos construídos sobre conceitos fundamentais dá eletrônica. Sou estudante de sistemas de informação e consegui aprender muito dos conceitos de eletrônica com o método de ensino desse livro. Não apenas voltado para o software, mas também, contempla a engenharia! Excelente Livro!