Cool, I'd been meaning to get an Arduino microcontroller myself.
Can anyone give examples of the more interesting projects that are being done with the Arduino that you know of?
Can anyone give examples of the more interesting projects that are being done with the Arduino that you know of?
It's fairly complex as far as Arduino Projects go (it involves timer interrupts, a Serial Peripheral Interface with shift registers, and a homemade PCB), but hey, I managed to do it, and I didn't have a lot of prior experience with either C or hobby electronics.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/aeroquadan-arduinopowere...
The official Arduino blog always has lots of interesting examples too - http://arduino.cc/blog/
http://www.janspace.com/b2evolution/arduino.php/2010/06/26/s...
There's also some interesting stuff if you poke around hackaday.com
If you're interested in learning the whole parts procurement process, you can also buy a PCB of pretty much any arduino-based board with no components, then pick out the components you want yourself and solder away.
You can desolder and reuse pretty much any component: connectors, passive elements (resistors, capacitors), switches, active elements (diodes, transistors), LEDs, speakers, relays. You can even reuse bigger functional blocks like power supplies or power amplifiers. I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager.
Nothing like having an idea at midnight and scavenging the components to try it out at once, and not having to wait next day to buy them. Plus, it reduces e-waste, which is horrible to recycle, despite what we are told.
And stay safe, learn you electric safety rules!
PS: nice first project idea - light alarm that wakes you up in the morning, like the fancy, pretty expensive Phillips Wake-up Light Alarm devices. Later, make the light able to fade-in using maybe a thyristor. A nice enclosure is hard to make though - that's where Phillips has the advantage.