The song was written by a man named Laurie Johnson. He is a British composer and the song is called “Happy Go Lively”. It’s owned an licensed by a company called Associated Production Music. Production Music, is a term given to music that’s essentially made for the sole purpose of licensing it out for productions (movies, television, etc)

Considering how well-known and familar, but unidentifyable this song is, I thought I’d post it to a page and stick as much google-glue as I could on it. If you found this page through a search engine after having some difficulty, give me your search terms and I’ll put them in the keywords, so people like us don’t need to struggle to find this delightful little song.

Here’s a little clip:

See, back in November SparkFun Electronics, a hobby electronics store, decided that they wanted to do something special. They decided to have a “Free Day” where they would give every customer up to $100 of product on their site. This spread like wildfire on the tubes, and when the day finally arrived there was far more traffic than Sparkfun could handle. I want to say that there was far more traffic than *anyone* could handle. The result could be categorized as a disaster. Many people could not load the page at all, many couldn’t log in, and even if they were at the logged in point, checking out was just as bad.

Lots of people are angry. They put in a lot of effort and ended up with about 2 hours of not getting free stuff. I’m not too tolerant of people who are whining because they feel entitled to the SFE free stuff. My expectation is that many people who got things will be reselling them at worst, or at best the items will end up in a drawer waiting for a project that will never happen. I’ve heard rumors and whispers (okay, comment posts) that FreeDay was going way farther than expected, ending up on frugal shopping and coupon websites. The result (I imagine) is that there were a lot of people looking to get free stuff, not understanding what SparkFun Electronics was, or what they sold. By the time they got to the site, they were just compounding the problem.

So now, on ebay there will be a few dozen more Arduinos up for sale. I think this is a good thing…”What?!?!” you say? Well, economics is an interesting thing, even on eBay. See, if you have a dozen Arduinos suddenly hit eBay, the supply has suddenly increased. Market forces work their magic and for a bit, Arduinos on eBay will be cheaper. Maybe $15 instead of $30. A quick glance at eBay shows that Arduinos are already selling cheaper there than from SparkFun, or anyone else.I think the thing that really gets me is the number of people who feel that they should have gotten something, but didn’t. I’m sure I’ve felt a sense of entitlement where it didn’t belong, but I also like to think that I’ve grown out of that. Many people have not.

Am I thrilled about Free Day? I’m thrilled about the idea. That a company would say “Hey, we’ve had a great year, let’s give back to our customers, and have some fun with it.” was brilliant. I think it’s that kind of thinking that will allow businesses to function exceptionally well in the 21st century. Do I think it went well? Obviously not for me, but I’m not relying on free items to forward my projects. When I have the funds, I’ll buy the things I need. I hope next time they’ll do it a bit differently so the traffic isn’t as bad, and I get a chance at something. It went well for a lot of people, and it generated some press for SparkFun (though it may not all be good press.)

In the end I think that maybe the lesson to be learned here is that there’s still no such thing as free. Many people ‘paid’ the price of waiting online for two or three hours only to get nothing. I don’t think SparkFun could have anticipated the traffic they’d get. Initially I didn’t even predict the kind of hailstorm that “Free” brings on the internet. I hope SparkFun finds the future to be just as bright. I don’t think this will turn out to be more negative than positive. I hope if they do anything like this again, it’ll work out to be a little smoother, offering something for everyone.

There’s a major downside of live Christmas Trees: Watering. I know, it’s really not a huge deal, but if you fail to properly water your tree, you end up with a dry, ugly, failing tree a week before Christmas. We don’t want that, so I’m very interested in keeping the tree moisturized. It presents a couple of problems: 1) You need to remember to water the tree   2) You need to get under the tree to water it. As I said before, this tree is a behemoth. We didn’t trim the bottom branches much, but even if we had, sliding under on your tummy and precariously balancing your pitcher to get water in the stand is not an easy feat.

The Solution: The distance-tree-waterer.

I didn’t invent this idea, and I’m certainly not the first to come up with it. I do take a little pride in saying that I thought of it before I went out to the internet to find it. However, I didn’t think of sticking the water-bucket under a present-shaped box.

Okay wait, tell me what’s going on here…

Allright. So I mentioned that I didn’t want to crawl under that big ol’ tree to pour water in it. Well, there’s this magical physics trick that allows you to move water from one place to another. It’s called a Siphon. Water likes to go downwards. You’ve seen this in streams that flow off mountains. Gravity pulls water in a certain direction, and then, so long as their is a difference in equity of two bodies of water, it will continue to pull more water along with it.

So the trick here, is that the bucket hidden behind the present facade has a water level that’s higher than that of the water in the tree stand. I started the water moving by sucking it through a length of tubing. So long as the water in the gift/reservoir is a higher level than the treestand, water will flow. When the tree stand equals the reservoir, the water stops flowing. The water will stay neutral until the reservoir is filled back up.

All in all, this project took me about 45 minutes to put together. 10 minutes to setup the actual mechanism, and an additional 35 to get a nice facade put together so it didn’t look like I had a random bucket of water sitting on the floor. The “Present” is made of 3 sides of  cardboard, and a top which goes over them. It’s wrapped in regular wrapping paper. On either side of the water line, there’s a short length of copper wire (what I had available at the time) that serves as a clip to hold the line in a particular position. As the system is dependent on the flow of water, we don’t want these tubes falling out and flooding the living room.

So far the system is a resounding success. I haven’t had to crawl under the tree or even at this point refill the water. As the tree draws water, the tree stand will refill from the reservoir. I just need to put water in as the reservoir gets closer to empty.

The trouble (and what I’m saying is not new) is that DRM does it’s job quite poorly. DRM is supposed to prevent intellectual property piracy. Unfortunately DRM doesn’t prevent piracy. The people who are truely interested in pirating whatever it is that’s locked up are the same people who happen to have the time and the resources to eliminate the barriers in their way. The CSS protection on a DVD won’t stop the guy producing 100,000 copies of that DVD and selling them. What DRM does is prevent a causual user from doing what he or she likes. It’ll probably stop your Mom from copying that DVD onto a video tape so the kids can watch Toy Story while visiting Grandma (but really, even Grandma has a DVD player at this point, cmon!)

I don’t like DRM. I bought this movie to watch it. I bought this Music to listen to it. I bought this game to play it. I didn’t buy it so you could tell me when, where, or how to watch, play, or listen. The dedicated advocates hold to their word. Until Apple stopped selling DRM-laced mp4s, they didn’t shop on iTunes. Until they could buy that eBook with no lockdown, there was no sale. I’m not as good as they. My computer is full of DRM locked materials. In part this is because I feel a moral and ethical obligation to buy my media. I don’t have a problem with buying media. The industry I think has this expectation that no one wants to pay for things. I admit that there is a set of people that just want to get all of their media for free. Most people I think are willing to pay for their media, but only on acceptable terms. That is to say “I can watch what I want, when I want, where I want.”

So I but my media because I think it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t like that I get locked down by one method or another. An XKCD comic explians the inevitable problem you face when you purchase DRM-laden material:

There’s not really a way around it. In fact, the Recording industry (or rather, one of their lawyers) came out and said that users shouldn’t expect to be able to access DRM-protected material forever. I don’t think it’s an unfair statement. Formats are subject to the realities of time and progress. If you’ve got an 8-track collection that you’re still clinging to, your options for new equipment are limited. Conversley, if you have such equipment, the medium has also slowed and dropped off out of production.

The trouble here is that the change in technology availability isn’t a matter of market forces, but is an arbitrary decision made by a company who no longer wants to support a particular choice they made. Market forces almost universally mark shifts gradually. In one particular case WalMart announced they were going to shut down their DRM servers, rendering purchases made even a week before worthless. The backlash was so strong that WalMart kept their support servers up for another year.

The greater issue at hand is obvious. If a company can arbitrarily decide when (and where) a piece of media can be played, then they have market control by threat (rather than by natural market forces). In part this is why Apple has had such a strong market with the iPod. People don’t want to lose their music and so remain connected with the iPod environment. Such power breaks the normal market forces and creates a large barrier of entry for other market players. I’d like to think that the iPod’s continued market dominance is due to other factors like product superiority and familiarity, but it can’t be denied that lock-in is a factor.

So I’m stuck in the middle here. On the one hand I want to be a good market citizen and encourage growth. On the other hand, I don’t want to be stuck with anybody (even Apple, whom as mentioned before I am quite attached to.) The XKCD option sometimes seems like the most logical. You’re a criminal either way, so you might as well be on your own terms.

Though I had long argued that Apple never would, they made a smart phone… and it was glorious. Besides the occasional hiccup (MMS, Copy & Paste,etc) the iPhone was a dream. At the initial release, it wasn’t an option for me. My wife and had decided to go with Tmobile because they offered a deal that made it more practical for us. Free calling to any 5 numbers.

Smarter people than me figured out that Tmobile and AT&T are really just cousins when it comes to network technology. The iPhone was promptly hacked and come Christmas 2007, I was happily using an iPhone. A year later, we got one for my wife.

I read today about how AT&T is finally about to offer a similar program to Tmobile and Verizon’s options, and so I thought I’d check it out. There are a few things I want that my current iPhone doesn’t have: GPS being chief among them. I’ve heard some bad things about AT&T, but I admit every now and then I hear the iPhone’s siren call, or at least, the iPhone-3Gs-legit-network-supported-phone siren call.

I did the math. This is what I can back with…

The thing that gets me is the plan cost vs number of minutes. Between my wife, her sister, and myself on our 700 minute plan, we rarely go over. This is because we have the “favorites” that allow us to make calls without using minutes. While the $10 difference with AT&T is not a big deal, we end up with more minutes than we could ever hope to use. We just don’t call around that much… The result is that we get a plan for that has a feature we won’t EVER use. Or rather, we use it, and we end up with an absurd amount of remaining minutes.

Because we’ve been good customers, we pay Tmobile around $115. It’s a good deal.  I’m pretty willing to move to the $160/month with AT&T, until the details start to creep out… the details being that MMS isn’t included, and in the family plan it’s $30 for unlimited messaging. There’s no middle ground. And tethering is possible, but not yet… and they’re likely to charge extra for it. And the 700 minute difference makes the “free-to-call-to-numbers” irrelevant. Given that we bump up the rate on our tmobile plan for full 3G access, and noting that Tmobile doesn’t offer visual voicemail (something that is cool, but not a dealbreaker)

This is according to my calculations trying to make the most balanced comparison of what I would have vs. what AT&T offers. It does not include taxes or fees. $30/month difference.  The other difference is the phone subsidy. $299.99/32GB iPhone vs ~$850/32GB iPhone.

Let’s do the numbers (cue Marketplace music):

Here’s the initial cost of two sold-on-the-open-market Black iPhone 3Gs’

$1900

Since we’re paying $599.99 either way (The subsidized cost on AT&T), we can remove it from the equation, leaving us with:

$1300.02

Okay, now there’s a $30/month difference contractually. $30 * 24 months = $720.00

$580.02

We can also skip the activation fees -$62.00

$518.00

I think that’s probably all I can shave off of the price. Since I’m probably sticking with Tmobile for a while, I can probably subsidize myself over the next 24 months (esp because I’m not paying that extra $30)

$518.02 / 24  =$21/month

$149.88+ $21 = $170.88

A bit more than $9 difference, when all is said and done. The biggest difference between the two is that I have to have about $2000 up front. The other problems, some listed above are as follows:

a) Little-to-no support, though tmobile usually offers some help if you call.
b) No Visual Voicemail

The point of this whole exercise is to recognize that AT&T  pretty much screws it’s customers, and there is an alternative. Part of me says “Hey, capitalism! If an iPhone is worth more to me than my money, then I should get it.” Another part of me says “Hey, if I’m smart enough to work this out, and I’m not using deception or coercion, no harm, no foul.”

If I do follow through with this, one thing I can expect is a better network situation than a lot of iPhone users. A quick look at the web will show you that AT&T has major problems with their network, and with delivering the features that they’re supposed to be. One hope that I have is that at the end of AT&T and Apple’s exclusivity deal, Tmobile will start to carry the iPhone.  Assuming the data rates will be the same as the Android, it all looks like a better deal.

Now that the world’s economy has fallen apart and the Auto industry has fallen to pieces, things have started to change a little bit. The market finally began to push hard and Automakers found themselves with an awful lot of SUVs that nobody wanted. The government bought American auto-makers (more or less anyway), and somewhere along the line automakers have finally abandoned the absurd idea that a hydrogen based fuel-economy was ever really going to happen.

A couple of EVs have made headlines in the last couple of weeks, and that makes me happy. Nissan announced the LEAF. So far the only thing I don’t like about it is it’s name. 100 Miles to a charge, four doors, it looks like a car, and it’s expected to come in at a reasonable price (hopefully about $25,000.)

The Nissan LEAF (No, it's not an acronym)

This is really the EV that I’ve been waiting for. Tesla came out with their roadster a while back, but let’s not kid ourselves… $100K? They’ve sold plenty of them, but the only people who can afford them have them now I think. Tesla’s model S, while a little more practical, still unfortunately falls in the $50K range. About $25k more than I want to, or could hope to spend. The LEAF represents the first practical EV. My greatest hope is that they are actually willing to sell it, rather than just lease. (Take note guys… the EV1 was a complete failure because you couldn’t buy it.)

The original, meaner Volt

Then there’s GM. Chevy has been touting a concept for a few years now called the Volt. Up until a couple of months ago, it looked like a mean sports coup. More recently, it’s started to look like sleek sedan. The Volt is actually not a true EV. It’s an extended range EV, meaning that it has an onboard gas engine that will allow it to make longer trips. This is a similar design to the Toyota Prius Hybrids, except that the Volt uses it’s battery power exclusively as long as it can. They estimate currently that it’ll run for about 40 miles before needing to start the gas engine.

A Kinder, Gentler Volt

You may have seen in the last few weeks a commercial with a green background, a 110 Volt outlet, and the numbers 230-8-11. The internet has been mildly buzzing about, trying to figure out what it is. It turns out it was an announcement for today (8-11) that GM’s been preparing for. They announced that the fuel economy of the Volt is judged to be 230 Miles-Per-Gallon. Pretty exciting, though somewhat misleading. The math assumes that you include your first 40 gasless-miles as part of the calculation.

On top of that, I have to say that GM dropped the ball a bit on this… if you google 230-8-11, or a variant thereof, you don’t end up on a specific GM website. Although you get news items this morning, the first thing you should see is the official Volt website, or at the very least, a 230-8-11 website… Unfortunately, neither are anywhere to be seen in this search.

So I’m excited. Automakers are making EVs. I’m still a little hestitant. I’m waiting for the opportunity to acutally buy one of these vehicles. When it comes, you can bet I’ll be first in line… well, for the LEAF anyway.

My dad asked me a few months ago about e-Book readers. He had a stroke a few years ago and doesn’t have great control of his left hand. Books can be a bit difficult for him. I whole-heartedly recommended the Kindle because I thought it was amazing. It still is to some degree, but Last Friday the Kindle book fiasco happened. You’ve probably heard the story: Amazon found out that one of the books they were selling wasn’t properly licensed, so they yanked it from the store and from every single Kindle. It’s an invasion of privacy, personal space, and property.

Suffice it to say, It would take a bit of a miracle for me to buy a Kindle. Amazon’s CEO, JEff Bezos, issued an apology, but I echo the comments in response to that. It’s great that you recognize it was a mistake, but what are you going to do about it? Where’s the guarantee that you’re not going to play reading police again?

Yesterday, My wife and I went down to the Mall to the Sony store (Which is called Sony Style for reasons I cannot fathom) to check out their eReader. It’s a 2008 device, compared to the Kindle 2 which is just a few months old, and it has a few shortcomings. The reading library available to it is significantly smaller than Amazon’s and there’s no wireless option… at all. Sure, I can’t go out and buy books wirelessly, but also no one can come in and take books wirelessly. There’s also no annotation options. If I want to make notes about books, I’m going to have to do it on paper.

Still, I kind of want one. I like the technology, and I doubt I’m going to give the Kindle another shot. Still, I think we’re on the eve of a bigger tech war than it seems right now. Several days back, Barnes & Noble announced a deal with a company called Plastic Logic, to sell books in connection to that device. Plastic Logic expects to release their reader towards the end of this year, or early next year. I also expect Sony to update their reader pretty soon, or they’re going to start looking like their standing still. Hykel said she might buy me a reader for Christmas. If I get enough fun money before then, I might buy one myself…

I’m hoping that Amazon’s fumble, and the introduction of Plastic Logic’s device will spur Sony to update their reader to new heights. If there’s one thing I like, it’s competition. Competition drives products to be better, and benefits the consumer.

Disclaimers: I wrote this over two weeks. I tried my best to make it look nice, and be readable. Sorry if it’s not. Also, I started out with 4 European provides, but only ended up with 3. They’re all actually from the UK. I hope that doesn’t cheese anyone off. Anyway, on with it all.

First, let me say that looking at some of these kits, it’s clear that “Starter” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. To some, it means “Beginner”, to others it means “Introductory”. The difference is that some kits are put together for the person who’s not familiar with Arduino and how it works. Other kits are built to get you up and running with an Arduino. They give you lots to work with, cool things to do, but not the know-how or “already have”-ness that you get from being an Electronics hobbiest. I’m not going to differentiate here, except in the conclusion, where I’ll lay out which kits seem to fall into which category.

Kits are listed by their providers, as they’re pretty much all called “Arduino Starter Kit”; Providers are in alphabetical order…

All kits contain an Arduino Duemilanove board with an ATMega328 unless otherwise noted.

Cool Components

The Cool Components starter kit is a neat looking kit, and has a few surprises in it. Forgive me for the pun, it definitely has some cool components in it. It weighs in at $80.10 (US), They’re based in the UK though, so you’re probably expecting something in pounds: £48.22 is the magic number.

1 x USB cable – This is kind of a given… Looks to be 3′ from the picture.

2 x Mini breadboards - I expected 1, two sweetens the deal here. You can either work on two small projects, or have on projects separated into sections. I like this.

1 x Male & Female Jumper Leads - I think the 1x refers to “1 pack of jumpers”  The photo looks to have about 10 of them. While Male jumpers are fantastic, I’m not sure how Female jumpers are going to be put to use here. You could connect the directly to the sensors, but then you’ll still have to use Male jumpers to connect them the Arduino, or to the Breadboard.

6 x LEDs (mix of red, green, yellow) – A good mix of LEDs, nothing special though.

2 x 15 degree Tilt Switches - This is a very cool addition, and a slightly unexpected one. I’d love to play with some tilt-switches, but I kind of wonder why these were thrown in…

Resistors (220, 10k, 200k Ohm – 5 each) – Always good to have a mix of resistors to work with, especially if you’re giving people breadboards to plug stuff into.

2 x 1N4007 Diode – You will thank your lucky stars when you don’t fry a valuable component because the current decided to go the other way. Diodes are nice to have…

4 x BC547 NPN Transistors – Transistors are the basis of modern electronics. They are in everything, including quite a few in that Arduino up there. While they’re definitely cool, I’m not sure about their inclusion here. Most of what you do with transistors can be easily accomplished with Arduino programming, and most projects aren’t going to be large enough or complex enough to encourage the use of Transistors. That said, they’re a basic component of learning electronics, so why not?

2 x Opto-isolators – I didn’t know what an Opto-isolator was until a few minutes ago. It’s a little IC that has an LED (InfraRed) and a little photodetector (or light sensor) that’s all wrapped in a light-tight housing. You can use them to eliminate electrical noise or to transmit signals between different voltages.

1 x Piezo buzzer - Make noise! Because you can! A great little addition, because it’s so easy to use, and so obnoxious.

The Cool Components package is cool, but seems to be suffering from a kind of identity crisis. Is it a beginners electronics package, or a beginner’s Arduino package? The price feels a little high to me, but I’m not familiar enough with UK electronics economy to tell. It turns out Cool Components doesn’t sell individually a lot of the components listed in the kit, so I couldn’t get a very accurate price for individual parts. My guestimate comes to about £44.00, which is less than they sell the kit for…

EarthShine Design

Freeduino Board (100% Arduino Compatible Clone) – “What does that mean!?!” You say… It means that your Arduino is not an official Arduino board, but instead, a compatible board. It doesn’t say on the site, but I’m guessing they give you this board, instead of this one. What does that mean for you? It means your board will be orange instead of blue. The Freeduino board is 100% compatible with all hardware and software for the Arduino. The people who created Arduino intended the design to work like that. There’s a whole bunch of different Arduino-compatible boards out there. Anyway, the point of all this is: Don’t shy away from this because it’s not an official Arduino board. You can still do everything you want with zero problems.

USB A to B Cable – Don’t know how long. Expect 3′ to be on the safe side.

“The Complete Beginners Guide to the Arduino” eBook - According to the listing, this book has more than a dozen projects for you to do with your new Arduino. Smart to make it an eBook. Additionally, there are links to code provided. Note: Mike, who runs Earthshine Design and is very active in the Arduino Community, has decided to release this book freely. This is way cool as it provides a learning opportunity not limited to only those who buy the kit. I think this is a great way to promote Earthshine and provide something for the community. You can get the book here.

9v DC Power Supply (UK Socket) – A UK plug to get the power you need for your Arduino.

Full Size (700 tie points) Breadboard – This is a welcome addition. A full size breadboard. I like the mini-boards, but it’s nice to know there’s someone out there considering what you’re trying to do.

Red Diffused, Green Diffused, Yellow Diffused, Red, Green, Blue LEDs (10 each) – Yeah, that’s 60 LEDs right there. The latter 3 are clear.

100, 150, 240, 470, 1k, 1k5, 1M Ohm resistors (10 each) - For someone getting started (as I’m sure I mentioned before), having a good selection of resistors is essential. I’m glad to see the wide range.

5 Tactile Switches – Buttons!

74HC595 Shift Register IC’s (3) – Shift registers are a good way to multiply pins you don’t have. You can turn 8 pins into just 3, saving you 5 pins to use else where. Great if you’re working with a component that takes a lot of pins (LCD screens for instance)

Turned Pin 16-Way IC Sockets (3) – So you don’t have to solder those Shift registers…

BC547B NPN Transistors (2) - A couple of transistors for amplifying or… something

TIP-120 NPN Transistor – I’m not sure about the inclusion of this, as I don’t really know the differ

8×8 Mini LED Dot Matrix Display – A nifty inclusion. The one they offer in their shop they note it’s easy to control via a shift register (included above)

LM35DT Temperature Sensor – Rises an falls in temperature could provide for some cool projects.

Light Dependent Resistor – Almost a given in a starter kit

4K7 Potentiometer – Another common item. Nice to have.

DC Motor – This one is a bit of a surprise to me, as A motor isn’t a common thing to include. It’s defintely a nice addition, but there’s no H-bridge in the kit for motor control. I don’t know the project they have in mind when they include this, don’t expect anything but basic on-off motor…

3-Way Terminal Block – This is a  block screw down posts to make it easy to connect and disconnect wires to an from connections. Useful during prototyping.

Piezoelectric Sounder – Make noise with this… but don’t plan on it being pretty.

75 Piece Molded-End Jumper Wire Kit – I think it goes without saying that you need wires.

Quality 7 Compartment Raaco Case – This is a great point of all of these kits. If you’re getting started in  electronics, you’ll quickly find that the random doodads that you’re picking up have nowhere to go in your house. Having a little case to stick them in is really indispensable.

This is a BIG kit. A lot bigger than what I was expecting for a starter kit. The strength of the kit lies in the projects that they give you to do. More than a dozen projects to learn with and the components that you need to complete them. I think as you go through these projects you’ll find that you’re learning the things that you need to make your own projects, and realize the things you’d like to build. The price for the kit is £49.99 or about $81.00 US. A parts breakdown, makes it more than £53.00 (Not all parts were available to price), so you do get a price break. However, it is a little high when you’re looking to get into the basics.

Hacktronics

Solderless Breadboard – A bit bigger than the kits reviewed so far, it’s nice to have what I’d call a “project breadboard”. It has room enough for an entire project, which I think would largely be

12  Flexible Wire Jumpers – All Male it looks like, which is good.

Red, Green, Blue & White (5 each) – LEDs are great fun. These are all diffused (they look like the color they give off)

330, 680, 1k, 4.7k, 10k Ohm Resistors (5 each) – A wide selection of resistors is great.

1  Tactile Push Button – Many of the cool things that you’ll want to do has to do with pressing buttons to get responses out of the Arduino.

1  USB Cable for programming and powering the board – From the picture, it looks to be a 6 foot cable.

This is a good kit for basic Arduino experimentation. You could make a few projects with LEDs that respond to a button-press. I don’t see a lot of flexibility beyond that though. The sells for $39.85. Parts breakdown total is $49.25 (The breadboard in the kit doesn’t appear to be for sale on the site, so I substituted the closest similar…)

MakerShed

MakerShed is the store corner of Make Magazine, and a way for them to provide parts and materials for the projects they show off in the magazine. When I started writing this I was actually looking at the kit they’re retiring. They’ve since replaced it with 3 kits for different needs: The Arduino Projects Pack, the Advanced Arduino Starter Kit, and this one – the Getting Started with Arduino Kit. If you get a chance, I recommend you look at all three as they vary to suit needs.

Getting Started with Arduino book – I have a copy of this book myself, though I got it long after I’d gotten started with my Arduino. It’s a good little book that covers history, and explains basic concepts of programming and electronics.

USB Cable – They don’t say, but the previous kit’s cable was 3 feet. I’d guess the same for this one.

1K & 10K Ohm Resistors (10 each) – A couple different values to meet your needs.

1 Tactile Switch – It’s a button.

1 Photoresistor – See the light! Or at least change resistance based on it.

2 Force Sensing Resistors - With these, you can sense force, like how heavy something might be, based on the force it’s pushing against one of these.

LEDs: 1 Red, 1 Green, 1 Superbright Blue, & 1 RGB (1 each) – A good mix of Colors. While I think I’d want a few more of each, I can’t really tell you why you’d need them. 4 LEDs is a good set for a starter package.

140 piece Jumper Wire Set – This is a lot of jumper wires! They are all Male-to-Male

Breadboard – Nothing is stated explicitly about this breadboard, but the picture for the thing seems to imply that it’s a pretty large one.

9V Battery Pack w/DC Plug – This is a nice extra to have. Giving you an easy option of powering your Arduino away from the computer. It’s not a necessity, and I’m not too fond of the external power supply, as it doesn’t give you the right voltage out of the 3v3 pin. Still nice to have. Also, you get a 9v Battery to go with it.

MakerShed’s kit is a good one for a beginner. If nothing else, the inclusion of the “Getting Started” book is a good move. All of the information in the book can be found online, but not all in the same place, and often not as well written. The kit has enough going for it that I would recommend it for someone actually entering the Arduino field for the first time. The  kit comes at $69.95, which is a little steep for a kit, but you’re getting some good stuff. Ala Carte, I estimate this stuff would probably run you about $90 give or take (not all components were available separately, so I had to guess at the costs.) In that light, it’s a very good deal.

Oomlout

Breadboard – A nicely sized Breadboard.

Acrylic Holder – As near as I can tell, this device holds your Arduino and Your breadboard together in a fashion that make it’s easy to work with the pair. If you’ve never worked with an Arduino before, it can be difficult to get your boards to cooperate in the same space. The Arduino isn’t heavy, and wires can provide a lot of tension.

75 Piece Jumper Wire Bundle – This looks to be the standard in most of the kits I’ve looked at, some offer more or less. I think 75 is good. I currently have 30 and I haven’t managed to use them all.

Printed 29 page Experimenter’s Guide & 11+1 Breadboard Layout Sheets – This is where I think this kit really shines. It comes not only with a book that gives you starting points and projects to work on, but it gives you overlays that will fit on the included breadboard. Copying a schematic can be difficult sometimes, especially for beginners. With this, you just place the sheet on the breadboard, and start sticking components through where they’re marked. For me, doing is worth more than just reading about, so this practice I expect will help beginners. I hope very much that the guide includes circuit schematics. This is a great tool to teach schematic reading.

USB Cable – I don’t know how long it is. When in doubt, expect 3ft.

Multi-compartment Plastic Storage Box – I kind of think every kit should have one of these, but really it’s probably more just the kits that are designed for beginners.

Red, Green (5mm), Red (10mm) LEDs (10 each) – A good selection.

Toy Motor – I’m gonna guess that this is a 3v3 motor, possibly 5v.

Mini Servo Motor – The first inclusion of a servo, I think this is more valuable than a DC motor. This is easier to control than a vanilla motor, and the libraries available for Arduino are solid.

8-Bit Shift Register – Glad to see this again, as a method of preserving pins for other uses.

Piezo Element – Hooray for obnoxious noise!

Pushbuttons (2) – Buttons are an absolute necessity.

Potentiometer 10K ohm – Adjustable Resistance is also a necessity in doing a lot of cool stuff. The pot they give you is big, but it’s nice to have a large knob to turn… The pots that I have right now need to be turned via screwdriver, and it’s a pain in the neck.

Photo Resistor – How bright is it?

Temperature Sensor (TMP36) How warm is it?

Relay – I think this is a very cool addition to the pack. A relay has been on my list of things to get for my Arduino for a while. Think of it as an electronically controlled switch. Setup a lamp, plug this inbetween, and you’ve got yourself a switch. If you’re willing to put in some effort, you can make that a web-enabled light switch

Transistors - Again, I think they have a plan for these. I don’t know that they belong in a beginner kit,  but if there’s a project utilizing them, it can be a good opportunity.

Resistors 560 Ohm (25) 2.2k Ohm (3), 10k Ohm (3) - You need a variety of these. I suspect the values they’ve given you apply in the pack.

Diodes - Keep your power going the right direction.

This kit is pretty dang awesome. While it doesn’t provide the same variety of sensors some of the others do, it’s an awesome kit for someone getting started with the Arduino and with Electronics in general. I would not recommend it for someone who already has some electronics background, as you’ll probably get several things you already have. This kit costs £55.00. As of this writing, that’s about $90.00 US. That’s not cheap, but you get so much with this kit, I can’t argue against it. Sold separately, I estimate this kit running about £50.00 or so, but that doesn’t include any estimate at the value of the printed instruction materials, so it’s probably about dead on. (Caveat: I do not live in the UK, I don’t have a lot of experience in pounds -> dollars exchange, so I might be way off.)

Oomlout also offers their kit in variations. You can buy it without the Arduino or without the Arduino and no project guide/breadboard layovers. I like the “levels” of kit available. I would have loved to be able to buy a kit minus the Arduino back when I first got one. I was so thrilled about getting the Arduino I didn’t think about other stuff I might need.

Thoughts

Initially, there were 6 kits that I was going to review in this second shot. I took too long though apparently. I checked tonight to do the last kit, and it was gone! According to the changelog, I’ve been working on this post for nearly two weeks. That’s really about a week more than I wanted to work on it. It’s been a bit slow going too, as copying, pasting, commenting, and formating is not fun, especially not when you have to do it 5 times. All the kits are good kits. I don’t know how to rank them really, They fall into their different places well, all fitting somewhere on the spectrum of “For total beginner” to “For someone who needs components and an Arduino.”

Let me start by splitting them into Europe and North America, mostly because that’s how people are going to order . First the remaining US kits:

When I looked at Sparkfun vs Adafruit’s kits, I found them to be sort of in that equal-but-opposite situation. As you may recall, The Sparkfun kit had a bit more variety to it. Adafruit’s kit was much more focused towards the person who didn’t have experience doing electronics. The two remaining kits are the MakerShed, and Hacktronics. The Hacktronics kit is, to me, about as barebones as you can get when it comes to an Arduino kit. Not too much included, but not too little either. It’ll give you a few things to mess around with if this is your first foray into Microcontroller programming. A button, some lights.

Makershed does a bit better. They include the Arduino Book, and a few more types of sensors. So we get a few things to play around with and some instructions on what to do. The book is a good choice because It not only gives you an overview of basic electronics, but also an overview of the Arduino itself. The ideas behind it and the goals of the project. It will get you in the right mode when you get going with your Arduino. All in all, I still favor Adafruit’s kit most. It provides the most complete experience.

On the European side, the kits I’ve looked at are pretty dang cool. My top choice is defintely the kit from Oomlout. They’ve put together a solid kit with lots of room for growth. As I said though, it’s spendy. The Cool Components kit gives you something to do, but not a lot. Like the Hacktronics kit, there’s nowhere to go but up. The Earthshine kit is HUGE and comes in just a bit under the Oomout. Both are strong kits, the thing that pushes it over the edge for me is those breadboard overlays. They’re just a really smart idea. That said, if you’re willing to play around with an Arduino, you probably don’t need a color-by-the-numbers concept. You can figure it out! You’re smart!

Okay… I’m sick of looking at Arduino Kits. I hope this guide is useful. If I recover from this exercise, I’ll put together a useful kind of table that compares things better. Good luck with your Arduino experiences. If you have questions, or whatever, leave a comment.

I have the classic Arduino “Blink” sketch loaded up to the Arduino. It goes through pin 13 and the close by Gnd pin. Those pins are connected to the mini-breadboard which has an IR LED connected to it. So when the LED would normally blink, the IR LED blinks. We dont’ see anything because we can’t see Infrared. Immediately across from the IR emitter, is the IR Detector. It is an Infrared PhotoDiode. This thing looks like and LED, and I think that was not the best decision. First, you must remember which is the detector and which is the emitter (I got my pair from Radio shack ) and secondly there is no marking which suggests that the detector is not simply a clear LED waiting to be turned on. Additionally, I think because the device is receiving light rather than sending it, this thing probably ought to look more like a LDR (Light Dependent Resistor)… maybe with a special marking somewhere? Bad Design Radio Shack… but it’s probably not your fault. You don’t make these things, other people make these things.

Anyway, the IR emitter blinks into the IR Detector. The Detector in this case acts as a switch. The more Infrared light that comes into it, the higher voltage it produces. We use that voltage to bridge between the Gnd, and a Green LED connected to the 3v3 pin on the Arduino. The Result? Blinking green light!

As expected, when you drape something between the emitter and the detector, the green light stops blinking. One thing I found though is that light can be sneaky. Initially, I placed a peice of cardboard (product packaging) between the emitter and detector and the light didn’t stop blinking, it just blinked dimmer. At first I thought the light was somehow getting through the cardboard… which would have been a superman-feat of physics. In reality, the light was bouncing down from the cardboard (which was a bit reflective) and then bouncing up off the breadboard to the detector. As not all of the light was making it, the detector wasn’t creating as much voltage.

It’s pleasant

Right now, we’re in sort of a strange limbo when it comes to computers. Many many years ago, computers were not like they are today (duh, you say.) The most common computers were terminals, and they were basically screens, keyboards, and a bit of electronics that connected you to a machine somewhere deep in the bowels of your company or university. I never really had to use one of those. The benefit of these machines was that they were cheap. You bought one computer, and a bunch of dumb terminals.

Sometime in the 70’s, hobbyists began to build computers at home. Industry saw this, and started making computers too. Home computers… really the kind you’re reading this on right now. This new kind of computer was a computer that had all it’s processing power under the hood. You did all of your work and saved it locally (to a floppy disk or a hard disk), and your computer never really talked to another computer.

That lasted for several years, and then the Internet really began to be popular with people. The web showed up and provided information in easily accessible ways. Today, because of browser advances and some really smart people, our computers live in a sort of limbo. We store data locally, but a lot (if not all) of our computer’s purpose is to talk to other computers over the web. It’s a neat kind of marriage between the terminal and the desktop computer. We listen to music, watch movies, share videos, edit documents, get books, buy stuff, sell stuff… the list goes on. We do a lot on our computers, but we do even more with the internet and the web.

More recently, we’ve seen a neat little kind of computer emerge at a very low price point: The Netbook. Netbooks are little laptops that don’t have a lot of muscle behind them. They’re designed for internet access, where they don’t need power… just a browser. They’re great little computers. Great enough that I even have one.

Google has taken this idea to the next level. They’re focusing some of their energy on making a new operating system. It will be primarily for netbooks initially, but I suspect they intend to expand out. The OS will be browser based, and is designed to be internet focused. Most of your interaction will be with the net. There are some expectations that we’ll all start storing our data online, and we’ll be connected all the time. Imagine the possibility of having all of your music, movies, documents, etc stored securely online, and being able to access them without a huge hard drive. Now couple that with doing all of your work online. Listening to music, watching movies, writing email, writing papers, etc. These are things we already do. To me it sounds pretty awesome. In some cases, I already do it by having a connection to my computer at home that I can open up when I need to access it.

There is one problem, and I think it’s going to hit us pretty hard. Telecom companies have gotten the hang of this internet thing. There was a time of prospering early on, when ISPs didn’t really follow what you were doing, and nobody really cared (unless you were doing something very dangerous.) But when data started to flow fast and hard, it made people sit up and take notice. P2P, and Video sharing created a lot of data going back and forth, and the problem has expanded as these technologies and others have grown and spread. Telecom companies realized that the amount of data moving was probably costing them more money than they wanted to spend. They’ve wanted to engage in tiering systems, and charge both ends of the connection, that is, when you access Google, they want to charge you and Google for the data you’re downloading. The trouble is, both you and Google already pay for your connection, but Google doesn’t necessarily pay your ISP when they transfer something. Your Telco wants them to.

The problem we face then is, what happens when the ISPs and the Telcos are between us and our data? One concern I face right now is my situation with Comcast, who is my ISP. Comcast limits me to 250GB of transfer a month. Generally speaking, this is way more than I think I could ever hope to use. The idea is that the only way I could use up that much bandwidth is if I’m transfering tons of data (read movies and music), and the only way I could hope to transfer that much data is if I’m pirating it, because what fool would transfer 250GB legitimately? As I don’t keep most of my data online, it’s not a problem, but if I did, it might become one. If you listened, and watched all of your media, and it all had to stream/download from a server, you might find yourself bumping up against that edge. Though compression is getting better, content is also getting heavier. If you pass that point, you might get a slap on the wrist, or you might get your service terminated.

I think this is really just going to an extension of the Net Neutrality issue. I look forward to seeing how it plays out, but I hope it doesn’t end up with the cards all being help by Time Warner and AT&T.

Oh, and the Google Chrome  Logo looks like it’s going to split and turn into an Autobot.