Reddit mentions of ELEGOO UNO R3 Project Most Complete Starter Kit w/Tutorial Compatible with Arduino IDE (63 Items)

Awesome!


Couple of resources for ya:

• Junkbots <-- excellent book on electronics basics and low level electronics hacking. I can't recommend this one enough.
  
• Arduino Starter Kit

I've started to get into electronics myself, and I can say that soldering is easy, but you need the right tools for the job.
You'll need an adjustable temperature soldering iron and 1/2 milimeter iron/lead solder as the bare minimum.

I suggest grabbing some tip tinner, solder wick & vacuum, and some cheap boards to practice soldering.

This video shows how to do the actual soldering, while this video covers the tools you'll need and explains their use. These videos are made by EEV Blog and explain soldering in GREAT detail, which is how I learned to do it.



As far as making actual circuits, you have to have an idea AND parts to fulfill your idea. The Arduino UNO is a great way to program and test circuits. It's essentially a small comptuer designed to repeat whatver task you give it over and over. Alternatively, there's the Raspberry Pi, which comes in a few different models. The difference between the Pi and the Arduino is that the Pi is essentially a mini computer. You can literally hook it up to a monitor via hdmi and slam an operating system into it.

Both boards typically come in kits like this one for the Ardunio, or this one for the Raspberry Pi. The Ardunio kits with come with a lot of peripherals, like sensors and LEDs that actually do things, while you'll have to invest more with a Raspberry Pi. These kits come with detailed instructions, code you can copy and paste, and are a great way to learn how circuitry works, and is exactly what I'm doing right now. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, I've just done a decent amount of research to find out what's what.

There are two ways to hook up circuits - temporarily and (somewhat) permanently. Breadboards are used to prototype circuits without having to solder anything, typically using these wires to link different parts of the circuits together. Soldering components to those green boards I linked earlier is what you'd do when you have your circuit up and running and want to move it to something more permanent. I say "more" permanent because you can usually de-solder stuff if you needed a component for something.

Adafruit has a decently sized library of projects you can try. They often sell stuff in kits where you get everything you need to make something -- for example, this DIY MIDI controller.

Sparkfun has a great series of articles that explain the very basics of circuits and electricity

Hopefully I've explained everything enough so that you can venture off on your own. Feel free to ask questions!

Yes I know, sorry the video is vertical. And I know there's a lot cooler ones out there but I sunk a lot of time into this so I thought I'd share. If anyone is interested I've got a fritzing diagram of the wiring for everything. I used an Arduino Mega, and pretty much everything else used came in this kit. The color sensor I used was here. Pretty much everything else to actually build the mechanical portion was found in one of my groupmate's garage.

If you do decide to go with a kit I recommend this https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01CZTLHGE/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487129320&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=elegoo+complete+starter+kit&dpPl=1&dpID=61kMrFJImZL&ref=plSrch

The Elegoo is a knockoff, but completely works with the Arduino IDE and has more components than the equal name brand kid.

Get something like this or this, it should arrive pretty fast and give you a good idea of what you can do with arduino. Once you have the basics down you can order more specific parts and go from there. This is better than buying components in that it all comes together as one and you won't be missing any parts right off the start in order to get led's blinking etc..

I can't vouch for anything, but I just ordered this kit. Not sure if it's available to you, but has pretty good reviews, seems like a really good deal. Excited to get started on whatever the fuck this stuff is. Looks like it's having a lightning special offer right now too. Damn.

That would do the job, but you can find kits with a wider variety of input and output devices in other places for the same money.

Amazon, for example.

The branding on the kit is less important than the variety of things you can do with it.

As someone who has mainly dabbled with Arduino during university courses... I have no idea how is your tool any different than any of the ones I have used during classes or what makes it stand out. It's not unique.

Which I assume is part of why it sells poorly online - if I type "Arduino kit" on amazon I get hundreds of options and some seem both cheaper and more interesting than yours at a first glance, eg. this one.

here is a really good starter pack for 50 dollars
https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Project-Complete-Starter-Tutorial/dp/B01CZTLHGE

Here is a link to an Arduino hobby board kit with a bunch of different sensors, LEDs, motors, and accessories. They usually ship with a book, but I found the book Exploring Arduino: Tools and Techniques for Engineering Wizardry to be a nice explanation beyond the high level dumbed down examples they give you in the "instruction manual" shipped with the kits. It teaches about communication protocols, power, timing, and basic embedded techniques. It also uses step by step examples which you can replicate from materials in that kit.

link

I highly suggest the Elegoo Uno Starter kit. It's a clone of the Arduino UNO. Looks exactly the same and does exactly the same thing. The pins and set up are exactly the same so any Arduino brand addons work with it. It even uses the same software for coding it. But the kits are way cheaper AND comes with more things. As a bonus it comes with it's own tutorials AND the tutorials that come with Arduino.

I got the super starter kit from my Reddit secret santa. I would go with that kit or the next one up, the most complete starter kit. Both are really affordable.

Here are their Amazon links.

https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Project-Tutorial-Prototype-Expansion/dp/B01D8KOZF4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483822687&sr=8-2&keywords=elegoo+kit

https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Project-Complete-Tutorial-MEGA2560/dp/B01CZTLHGE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1483822783&sr=8-3&keywords=elegoo+uno+kit+most

EDIT: Both seem to be on sale too. They are much much cheaper than the Arduino kits and both come with more thing. You can also get an addon kit with something like 37 sensors. Although some will be repeats from the kit. but some of those you can use two.

https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Sensor-Module-Arduino-MEGA/dp/B009OVGKTQ

Arduino kits are fun. Either a generic one or one that builds a specific device like a robot car. Both would be different from the typical school project. They look electronics based but there is a lot of coding involved and you can go as deep as you want with the electronics side.

My recommendation would be to pick up a kit like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CZTLHGE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and start running through the projects. (There is a CD with a bunch of beginner projects on it) Once you have the kit you can also just google "Arduino beginner projects" and pick some of those, the kit will likely have everything you need for most beginner projects.

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Edit: I have that exact same kit and am very impressed with it.

Edit2: If you want to see what is included in terms of projects see here: https://www.elegoo.com/download/ and download the package for the kit you are looking at getting.

People generally frown upon kits here but I think they were key to my development. Here is a VERY unofficial starter kit that has some typos and may have a defective part or two, but it is filled with parts and is very cheap. Here is a companion set full of sensors that may inspire you to start a project you are passionate about. Lastly, here is a cheap LCD screen that will be cheap enough to play around and get good with at least until you are ready for something bigger. You will definitely not make use of every part in these kits but they will each give you a different idea of how basic circuit components can come together to make cool projects. They come with sample code that needs a little debugging here and there (actually, this may be a good thing so you learn how to troubleshoot your projects!). I would also recommend buying another arduino uno at some point to learn about interfacing. Others may disagree and encourage you to start with a project or something, but everyone learns differently, and I have done well with these kits and found them to definitely be worth the money.

EDIT: Also, all of these products are available on Prime and will ship in 2 days, unlike most eBay products that take upwards of a month.

Thank you all for your answers. I'll buy then. I just want to know, which to buy, if Arduino's at all, because I see many comments about how "expensive" it is. Can you direct me which kit to buy?(I know, that's expensive, but I want to get an easy start. The rest of the parts, sensors etc I'll get from eBay/Aliexpress)

https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Complete-Ultimate-TUTORIAL-Mega2560/dp/B01EWNUUUA/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1504512661&sr=1-2-spons&keywords=arduino&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Starter-Kit-English-Official/dp/B009UKZV0A/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1504512661&sr=1-6&keywords=arduino

https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Project-Complete-Starter-Tutorial/dp/B01CZTLHGE/ref=sr_1_14?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1504512661&sr=1-14&keywords=arduino


Or if you have something else to show, I'll be happy..

amazon has kits at pretty much every price point, just search arduino kit. make sure it's got an arduino uno clone, a breadboard, breadboard wires, basic stuff like leds, buttons, resistors, potentiometers, a couple transistors, stuff like that. plus some cool things like sensors and lcd displays.

something like this, although it might not be the best one at that price point https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Project-Tutorial-Controller-Projects/dp/B01D8KOZF4/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=arduino+kit&qid=1574021245&sr=8-3

this one has a lot of good stuff too https://www.amazon.com/EL-KIT-001-Project-Complete-Starter-Tutorial/dp/B01CZTLHGE/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=arduino+kit&qid=1574021245&sr=8-7

i'm sure somebody can link one with a slightly better spread of parts, but in general if he doesn't have specific projects in mind any kit will do well enough to get started

how much are you looking to spend specifically? 30ish is a good price point, but there's options below and above that. i'd say stick to amazon kits instead of buying more expensive kits or individual parts if you don't know what you're looking for.

It looks like this kit contains the NFC Shield and Arduino. I saw the kit you linked contained the same setup as mine below and an additional NFC shield.

Do I need to order anything extra besides the kit below?

Elegoo UNO R3 Project Complete Starter Kit with Tutorial for Arduino MEGA2560 NANO (63 Items) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CZTLHGE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RpOOyb14D8BE8

Check out this one.

It comes with tutorials on how to use all of the sensors and input devices with both example code and illustrations of all physical connections.

Thank you for this post! Tons of great information to help me get started. In regards to kit, what do you think of this kit? It has a bit more parts than the ones linked and it is within my budget.