Intro To Arduino: Some Materials for The Noobs

Looking at the Automation Forum I see a lot of really cool Arduino Projects. I don't see much in the way of an entry point though for someone who is at the beginning of the process and is hitting the ground running. I figured I'd compile a few good resources to start off.

Books - These Range From Absolute Beginner to General Reference:
-Getting Started With Arduino
-Practical Arduino - Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware - Jonathan Oxer & Hugh Blemings
-The Arduino Cookbook - Michael Margolis
-The C Programming Language - Kernighan and Richie (This isn't an arduino book per-se, but, Arduino's speak an offshoot of C and its general structure and functions are best understood through a knowledge of C)

Blogs -
To get up and running you can immediately get your hands dirty right at the source. Arduino has a very good tutorials page to begin with.

As to more advanced learning are a lot of good tutorials out there but the end all be all as far as I'm concerned is TronixStuff. Starting from the most basic the tutorials build on each other to very advanced stuff and are the best way to learn Arduino, if not basic C programming and hardware basics, that I've found online.

For more specific things once you're more advanced (or you don't want to learn linearly) searching Instructables generally results in a pretty solid tutorial.



-Hope this helps a few people out there.

I have been slowly assembling an Arduino controlled electric brewing setup and TronixStuff was my go to site for getting into arduino. I had a small background in programing but not anything that I use regularly so it was an amazing refresh course.

Thanks! I've been playing with Arduino's for a few years but I still like to read about them. Very powerful cheap little boards. Has anyone played with Microchips PIC brand of single chip controllers? I've played around with them also, but the Arduino is by far, much eaiser.

For people JUST starting with Arduino, check out the YouTube videos by Jeremy Blum and Element 14. That kid put out a lot of great information quickly & in a matter that was easy for me to absorb.

I need to find the Raspberry Pi equivalent now!

This is awesome, thanks! Just got a Mega, Ethernet shield, some LCDs, and flow sensors to keep track of how much beer is left in my keg. I know very little about engineering type stuff, but I figured this was a simple enough project to get my learn on.

I picked up a cheap starter kit from yourduino and have been slowly working through;
Pre-Engineering: Intro to Micro-controllers, Steve Dickie, Michigan's MI Learning
From iTunesU (free). Pitched at a beginners level.

Vague plans to build a forced fermenting thingee.

mragin said:

… and flow sensors to …

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Would you share the information on your flow sensors?

chuckjaxfl said:

Would you share the information on your flow sensors?

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I'm generally following the process from this thread.

The flow sensors are from Adafruit. The ends are 1/2" NPT, so I spent a little time trying to figure out if I could attach them directly to the shank rather than somewhere in the middle of the beer line - seems like that would give more consistent measurement. So rather than beer line/hose barb to female thread/flow sensor/female thread to hose barb/beer line, I would have shank/some unknown adapter/flow sensor/female thread to hose barb/beer line. No dice as far as I could find.

mragin said:

I'm generally following the process from this thread.

The flow sensors are from Adafruit. The ends are 1/2" NPT, so I spent a little time trying to figure out if I could attach them directly to the shank rather than somewhere in the middle of the beer line - seems like that would give more consistent measurement. So rather than beer line/hose barb to female thread/flow sensor/female thread to hose barb/beer line, I would have shank/some unknown adapter/flow sensor/female thread to hose barb/beer line. No dice as far as I could find.

Click to expand...

Be careful with those sensors as the operational temp range appears to top out at 80C or 176F, this is only slightly over mashout temp. They probably won't melt, but depending on the plastic used it might start to leach out chemicals into your beer. These would work nicely for fly sparging though assuming they are calibrated properly. As for where on the line you place them as long as the sensor is mounted somewhere and not loose it doesn't matter where in the flow path it is mounted as it will be the same. If you use them on the Boil kettle, they will have to be placed after your chiller as 100C might actually melt them.

Blauhung said:

Be careful with those sensors as the operational temp range appears to top out at 80C or 176F, this is only slightly over mashout temp. They probably won't melt, but depending on the plastic used it might start to leach out chemicals into your beer. These would work nicely for fly sparging though assuming they are calibrated properly. As for where on the line you place them as long as the sensor is mounted somewhere and not loose it doesn't matter where in the flow path it is mounted as it will be the same. If you use them on the Boil kettle, they will have to be placed after your chiller as 100C might actually melt them.

Click to expand...

I'm actually using them in my kegerator, not for brewing. I'm attaching them to the beer line to keep an output of how much beer is left in my cornys. I'll also have the beer name, style, and ABV/IBU on there as well.