I discovered Arduino last week, while I was looking for a solution to transform an idea I had into a working prototype. It took me only a google search and few minutes to realize Arduino was what I was looking for and to fall in love with it: easy to use, quite cheap, great community, almost endless possibilities for new projects. How could I not?

I bought my first Arduino kit on Monday morning from an online shop selling on ebay and I got it delivered the following morning. To be honest I wasn’t expecting such a quick delivery (especially considering it was free), but obviously I’m very pleased with that.

I decided to create this blog to share my experience and my projects and I thought the best way to start this was from the very beginning, so my first post is about the unboxing of my first Arduino kit.

To my surprise, the box I received was pretty small, not much bigger than a normal DVD.

box containing an Arduino kit compared to a DVD

Once opened I realized the Arduino Uno board is definitely smaller than what I thought… Basically most of the box was used for the breadboard and cables.

boxed Arduino kit

This is what I found in the kit:

• Official Arduino UNO Rev3 2012 board with USB cable
• Large 700 tie-points Breadboard
• 65 Male-male jumper wires
• 25 Mixed resistors
• 15 Diffuse 3mm LEDs
• General Purpose Diode 1N4148
• 5 Mini push-button switches
• 32mm Mylar speaker
• 16X2 LCD Module with blue backlight with 16-pin header
• 10K Potentiometer
• Ultrasonic distance measuring module HC-SR04
• 9V Battery lead

content of the Arduino Kit

I was also lucky enough to get a free light dependent resistor (worth £0.5) which was dropped in by mistake by whoever assembled the kit. Well, I won’t complain of course.

Now it’s time to set everything up and start my first project, but I’m going to write more about that in my next post. Even if I already have few ideas, If you have any suggestions for my first project please leave a comment as the more the merrier.