What to buy
Parts List
- Some flavour of Arduino Nano or Uno* microcontroller and USB cable
- Breadboard 830 tie-point
- USB 3.0 – USB-C converter (if needed for MAC)
- Ultrasonic range sensor
- Box of jumper wires
- Single-colour LED (2) – short leg is the cathode
- Tricolour LEDs (2) – long leg is the common cathode (ground); other three are the colours
- Resistors (three 360 Ω – or thereabouts)
- A digital multimeter of any variety is always useful to have around
* In creating this tutorial, we used an Arduino Nano AT328P. The Maker Uno is slightly more expensive, but looks an attractive option as all the inputs have LEDS that light whenever there is an input signal, and this simplifies troubleshooting.
Many kits available on such as Amazon contain these parts and much more for a few tens of dollars: type “Arduino Kit” into the search box and take your pick. I have tested the “ELEGOO UNO Project Super Starter Kit” ($35.99 as of July 2020) and found it to be excellent value (but does not include a multimeter or USB-C convertor).
Modules
- Buying Parts
- Preparing the Arduino
- Setting up Python on your PC
- Learning Python
- Arduino for Data Collection
- Ultrasonic Range Sensing
- Pendulum Experiment