Arduino

So I have to admit that I am a late comer to the #maker revolution.  I literally had no idea that Arduino existed until January 2013.  How sad is that?  I suppose my family, career, and automotive hobby kept me pretty busy, but still, no excuse given the fact that I grew up on the Vic 20, Apple //c, etc.

Oddly enough, I learned about Arduino from my love of the Raspberry Pi.  I suspect most people it is the other way around.  I digress...

My first Arduino project was to be a soil sensing automatic plant waterer.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the Soil Sensor did not work as I had hoped, and I kind of gave up on it.  I thought, I should sell a few Arduino's here and there, but that should be about it.

Enter the Adafruit 16x32 LED matrix.  This thing officially blew my mind. Within an hour of unboxing it, I had it up and running using an Arduino Uno. Adafruit has a variety of tutorials on the 16x32, be sure to check them out!

I now understand the true power of the Arudino, its simplicity.  It cannot function as a media player or a full fledged mini computer, but if programmed correctly, it can do lots of cool stuff.