Hack Your Holiday Decorations

jfruhlinger writes "Tired of your code only executing in digital space? Why not hack your smiling snowman? OK, this crash course only shows you how to make pretty LED lights blink in a sequence of your choosing, but it serves to introduce you to Arduino, an open-source platform that uses C-like code. Really, any project that involves a soldering iron is good fun."

use a 555 and a shift register

[Osgeld]

save 30 bucks ....

I love my arduino, its a great introduction to microcontrollers, but really? Front page of slashdot is "blink a led"? Maybe the story after this one can be "install ram in your PC"

Not "C-Like"

[Anonymous Coward]

Its C. Its compiled by avr-gcc. The Arduino SDK links in a main routine for you and defines a library of standard routines and Macros. Again, not C-Like...it is C.

Re:use a 555 and a shift register

[thegarbz]

Even if you take the lame arse summary at face value the whole point of the summary was to put your PROGRAMMING skills into hacking electronics.

As an EE I fully agree with you about the 555, except I'd implement blinking lights using a bistable multivibrator. However this board is absolutely loaded with people who have no idea what any of the above are, don't have a clue about transistor logic, and definitely don't know their way around analogue electronics.

Write a post like this on hackaday or make, and you should expect the flaming you are getting, but if you're trying to entire programmers then this would be a great way to get them to dip in their toes.

Some computer systems engineers are EEs, others are Software Engineers. Both have to start somewhere.

Re:use a 555 and a shift register

[XxtraLarGe]

That's great, if you know what a 555 and a shift register are. We're not all engineers. Like you said, "it's a great introduction to microcontrollers." This might be the type of project that a lot of us who were not previously interested in Arduino to get started.