Arduino lesson 5 : Getting started with Arduino boards

Choosing board :

1. First of all determine your type of project.
2. What kind of hardware you needed to complete the project ?
3. Have a look on budget you want to spend on project.
4. Determine the number of Inputs/outputs for project.
5. Always choose the board that suits your needs.
6. Have a look on the processor of board about its speed memory speed and version.
7. You can also include size in here as Arduino mini and Pro mini are smaller enough for little spaces.
8. Try to get authentic arduino board listed on its original website for better support later on.
9. Search on you own behalf to get familiar with that board you have chosen to buy and read reviews on it so you can judge more precisely.

Mostly arduino boards exhibit same properties and can be programmed as alike but for my own sake of demonstration i will here choose Arduino UNO R3 board.

Go get you board :

    There are many sources from where you can buy your own arduino board online sources like its own original site the arduino distributors list is also available on their main site.

You can also order one at ebay.com and in Pakistan digipak.org and arduinopak.com on your own behalf. 

First tests :

Once you get your board in your hands its time for real fun with it to do some initial tasks so come on lets do together.

Here I assume that you have arduino IDE software installed on your PC and have a arduino UNO R3 at your hands.

1. Carefully inspect your board that it is not broken or damaged during shipping or don't accept the opened package.
2. Insert the the USB cable in arduino board USB female jack and other side of cable in your PC.
3. let the PC identify the serial port for board and drivers for arduino board will automatically be loaded into PC once attached through USB port.
4. Open up the Arduino Software in you PC and follow this sequence.
   File>Examples>Basics>Blink.
5. Once correctly opened Upload this code to your attached board and wait for at least 10 seconds to see the results.
6. Now if uploaded correctly without any error you will notice that the on board LED of Arduino will start blinking continuously after short intervals as defined in code.
7. If this step goes correct you have done it correctly and uploaded your first code into your arduino board the one of the most basic codes used for testing.
8. Notice that every time you unplug your board from PC and then connect again the LED will automatically start blinking without again uploading code example.