Nice. Since you’ve got an Arduino it’s clear you plan on adding software to your hardware designs, which I think is a great thing to do. But I recommend you look at ESP8266, and in particular at a WeMos D1 Mini or NodeMCU. Mini’s cost under $3, you can use the Arduino IDE as your dev environment, and they are significantly faster. Plus, you get built-in wifi. I like to build clocks and it’s great to be able to hit a time server to stay accurate at all times.
You can build a weather station and get online weather information. And if you build some Blinky light project you can add a small web page to your design so you can adjust the blink rate or colors or whatever without adding switches or other hardware to your design.
The first thing I always do with a new board and / or programming toolchain, is exactly this. “Is it alive?” *looks at blinking light “Yup, good to go!”
And many more to come! My version of this was on one of those Radio Shack electronic project boards back in the mid-80’s. My enjoyment of the hobby lives on with the arduino. Have you used code to make it blink? Enjoy!!
I started my hobby with just a good soldering iron with temp control base unit and stand, side cutter, solder and helping hands, breadboard. First time expense was around 100 Euros. Sone tools are good or great to have but unnecessary such as wire stripper. I still never have one, learnt to strip wires with a side cutter, very easy.
For power supplies I have a full drawer full of old laptop supplies which I always use.
Now I am converting a desktop atx power supply to use as a bench one.
No need for an oscilloscope yet unless I would be building some really complex circuit.
Starting the hobby should not be expensive, you can learn and upgrade slowly.
Welcome to the addiction! Prepare to open your wallet a little wider
Congrats!! I have an [almost identical picture I took in 2008](http://rocket.jonh.net/blog/images/OneSegment.jpg)! 6 months later there were 800 LEDs lit instead of one. What an addiction!
Nice! What discipline in electronics are you most drawn to?
Nice. Since you’ve got an Arduino it’s clear you plan on adding software to your hardware designs, which I think is a great thing to do. But I recommend you look at ESP8266, and in particular at a WeMos D1 Mini or NodeMCU. Mini’s cost under $3, you can use the Arduino IDE as your dev environment, and they are significantly faster. Plus, you get built-in wifi. I like to build clocks and it’s great to be able to hit a time server to stay accurate at all times.
You can build a weather station and get online weather information. And if you build some Blinky light project you can add a small web page to your design so you can adjust the blink rate or colors or whatever without adding switches or other hardware to your design.
Go to [https://www.ebay.com](https://www.ebay.com) and search “ESP8266” for parts and go here: [https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) to get started with the software.
Welcome to the club! Hope you enjoy your experience and have a lovely time building circuits and testing stuff out.
Great. Now you’re hooked. Way to go man.
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Yaay haha we’ve all done it 😊
Everyone starts somewhere! Welcome !
Dawg! You did it!
Awesome and congrats. You will enjoy everything you do.
And so it begins.
More than i ever done with a Arduino.
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Great work.I did some shit in my days with the NE555N.
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I am a product of the 70:s.LOL
Dude, my first blinking light project blew my mind. It worked the first time and I yelled “ITS ALIVE!!!”
its the hello world of electronic 😛
And why do you share it?
The “hello world” of ee
I was interested in getting into the hobby and wanted to know if there was a decent starter-pack type of thing
Welcome to the hobby (it’s honestly more like an obsession)!
That’s a good start if you want to get your feet wet, for sure.
What made you want to try doing electronics?
Good times!
And so it begins…
The first thing I always do with a new board and / or programming toolchain, is exactly this.
“Is it alive?”
*looks at blinking light
“Yup, good to go!”
And many more to come! My version of this was on one of those Radio Shack electronic project boards back in the mid-80’s. My enjoyment of the hobby lives on with the arduino. Have you used code to make it blink? Enjoy!!
thats a heck of a lot of transistors for your first circuit, great work.
Oh crap, now youre hooked.
Lets see how soon you’ll need to buy an oscilloscope.
next post:
“so i made my own 32 bit RISC CPU with Transistors”
Did you enjoy the software or hardware aspect of your project more?
I started my hobby with just a good soldering iron with temp control base unit and stand, side cutter, solder and helping hands, breadboard. First time expense was around 100 Euros. Sone tools are good or great to have but unnecessary such as wire stripper. I still never have one, learnt to strip wires with a side cutter, very easy.
For power supplies I have a full drawer full of old laptop supplies which I always use.
Now I am converting a desktop atx power supply to use as a bench one.
No need for an oscilloscope yet unless I would be building some really complex circuit.
Starting the hobby should not be expensive, you can learn and upgrade slowly.
where are your decoupling caps?!
A simple circuit, but quite effective.