The Sparkfun Inventors Kit arrived, and I have to admit that it was better than I expected. Packaged in a nice box, it has plenty of goodies, and projects to play with. There are enough parts that I am sure I can go well beyond the scripted projects.
Last night, I did the (really minor) assembly, but didn’t dive in. However, this morning, I dove right in, and did the first project.
As one would expect, it was a pretty simple introduction, probably more to ensure that the software was setup and the hardware is functional.
The goal was to blink an LED at 1 second intervals, and to accomplish this you need to download the Arduino developer’s kit, download the sample source files from Sparkfun, and finally to install the USB->FTDI drivers. Nothing too difficult, but the process is documented well enough that a grade school kid should be able to do it. (more…)