As you know, I am Eli the computer guy.

And today we're going to be doing a review of the official Are DWI no starter kit?

So if you've been following me for any length of time, you know, I'm trying to get Maur into that io ti world.

Start doing more classes again.

And, of course, an Arduino and raspberry pi in these type of devices are what the cool kids are playing with now.

So I decided to dive right in and is a good old geek.

I went out there and I bought a starter kit.

Now some people may look at me buying a starter kit and say all this.

This proves why Eli is not a real computer guy, Really.

Computer guys would have gone out there and bought each individual transistor on their own so that they could have saved money.

Well, the reason that I bought a starter kit is because honestly, as a real technology professional, my time is worth a little bit of money.

You know, I'm not saying my time is worth Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

Tight money, but it's worth it's worth a couple of bucks and one of the nice things with going out and buying starter kits or people laugh at me for buying dummies books is you go and you pay for this thing.

But then it gives you everything that you need to be able to jump in and to be able to understand the environment that you're going to be working in.

So if you've never dealt with an Arduino before, you need to know, how do you code for a nerd?

We know what does code for nerd we know look like.

Okay, you've got all of these pens.

What does that actually do for you?

And by having a kit, then you can just dive in.

This has 15 individual projects that takes you through a lot of the different capabilities for the Arduino you can go through.

You could do paint by numbers.

You go.

Oh, okay.

That's how you do it.

And then you can go from there.

I personally like the Arduino, and this is this is actually on our Tween official Arduino starter kit because again won the problems we run into when we try to save money.

Especially when things like starter kits is The question is, do you know if the components themselves they're working so many times when you're learning a new technology, you don't know if you miss coded something or if the hardware you're using is broken.

So if you go out there and you might be able to buy a a unofficial Arduino starter kit for, let's say, $30 or something.

But are you sure the transistors air gonna work, right?

Are you sure the Arduino board itself, everything is going be functional on it.

There is just a quality control with buying the official thing.

Um, officially, officially, the says it's $99.

I personally went over to micro center and purchases for 85.

So, honestly, when I look at this ah, you get the start.

So the starter kit comes with all the components that you need for 15 projects including, you know, including a pretty detailed book that goes into it, plus the yard, we know board and everything else.

I got this for $85 so literally for less than I used to charge for one hour of labor back in 2009.

I get the entire kit and I could just jump right in.

So at least for me, at least for me, that makes a lot of sense.

If you're interested in this if you go over you take a look at Arduino dot cc.

They actually have and you can see this is the official Arduino starter kit.

It goes through.

It explains everything that you get to d'oh!

You know, getting to know your tools, love O meters mood Kyul, mood cues, motorized pinwheels So on and so forth.

So I think overall, this is a good product and so we're gonna be just doing an overall review of this.

So you have an idea of if you buy this for yourself what you should expect out of it now, before we get into the review, we do have to talk about our sponsors because the sponsors who pays the bills we have cumulus networks keep most networks.

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So the first question that has to be asked any kind of starter kit is what is the book like?

Especially especially when you're talking about a starter kit for open source projects.

Ah, this is something that that I always keep in mind.

I always take the heart because, as I talk about my father was a PhD or guest is a PhD level engineer, and he used to bring home things like electronics projects for me when I was a kid.

And there are just times like Dad, I'm eight eight.

What?

How does this even mean, right?

Um, and that's when the problems you get Thio is, Ah, a lot of times when ah, when people create starter like starter books or starter projects or whatever.

Ah, basically they say, Well, well, I mean I mean, really, Eli, Really, Eli, anybody with their PhD in electrical engineering will be able to pick this up and understand exactly what's going on, right?

So a lot of times when you're dealing with the the starter books, they can be really high over people's heads as and yeah, if you have a bachelor's degree in engineering, you understand what's going on.

But you know, a young person isn't gonna understand what's going on, or it may just be edited poorly or just very low quality.

And one of the issues we run into in the open source world is that so many people think man pages.

It's not just that man pages are good enough.

It's not like, Well, if you don't have anything else, you can use the man pages they look at man pages ago.

Who who would want anything more than a man take man pages are the best things humanity can write.

And he said, They're like, Oh, God, all right, that's a big question, you know?

Or do we know being an open source hardware project, especially Think it since it's a nonprofit, the question is, is what is this book gonna look like?

And I was a little worried, honestly when I bought it, But I do have to say this is very well done.

Apparently they got some professional writers and some professional graphic artists and all that kind of stuff to create this, Um, and it's good just all the way around.

It's laid out very well.

It's very easy to read all the diagrams and everything.

It is very easy to understand, so I really I do have to say that the book is just very good life.

You look at it, you can crack it open and you can see things.

So here, I mean, you can see you can see everything looks very nice.

Everything looks very pretty.

This isn't just like some weird, weird ass Xerox book.

Not only that, with the diagrams you can see everything is laid out very well.

So that shows you the diagram of the Arduino board.

Then you have lines that go to text to explain to you everything that's going on with the Arduino board and why you should care about the specific things as you go through.

When you look at the projects here, they give you the actual view of what, the board, what the Arduino board should look like, how the bread board should be set up, and then down here, they give you the electrical diagram.

So this is for normal humans to understand.

And then this down here starts to give you an idea of what you're actually doing.

So if you go through, you'll see the fonts are very nice.

The color is very nice.

Everything is laid out there.

There were very few parts in here where I had to scratch my head and didn't understand what was going on.

There were a couple, but you know, I mean, with a project book this long, it's pretty easy.

They give you like these air the code snippets so they show you.

And that's a nice part.

Two is you'll see how they how they lay everything out.

Uh, this is all the code for this particular project, but they lay it out.

So Okay, this is where you set up the energy.

ERM, this is where you set up the long these where you set up this next backs of energy ears, and so it divides everything out.

So it's much easier to read and to follow along with.

So overall, I thought the book was just very well done is just a very, very, very, very well done book.

Very colorful.

And that's it.

It's easy to follow, easy to read.

And I think anybody, at least with high school education, should be able to follow us pretty well now, one of questions that comes up, though with it is some people have asked with this particular kit?

Is this a paint by numbers kit or do you come out of this really feeling like, you know, Arduino Eli, Do you know ard?

We know now and I do have to say no, not really.

Once I get done with this video, I'm gonna go to micro Center by a couple more books.

Basically, this is a paint by numbers book shows you the Arduino board.

It shows you the components, it shows you how to do things.

It doesn't in depth.

Explain why you're doing those things.

And I don't feel like I come out of this with a deep knowledge of our do.

We know what I feel like I come out of this with is an understanding of the capabilities of what Arduino can d'oh!

I come out of it feeling like I can implement those capabilities.

But I don't feel like I have that that deep understanding what's going on basically, the way that I would explain it is let's say I want to create an Arduino over device that, based on the temperature, would turn on a fan.

Here's the thing I could go through and be like Okay, so the temperature project is here.

All right, so I gotta take some of that, and the fan project is here, or the motor projects here, so I'll take some of that.

All right, so take some of the take some of that and then basically super glue and duct tape something together, and it'll work.

Um well, I think you have to understand, in the technology world is there is a difference between making something that's functional and understanding why it's functional.

So I feel like coming out of this, I could create functional devices.

I don't really feel like I know why they're doing what they're doing right here.

Look here, Look, it does what you needed to D'oh!

Oh, wow.

Cool, Eli.

So, uh, so explain to me what's going on here.

Uh, it does what you needed to, you know, it s so that's that's what I would say with the book Very well done all the way around.

It's good for what it's good for, but is paint by numbers.

If you want to get something like Maurin depth, do what I'm going to dio literally when I get done with his video, go over and actually buy.

Buy another book that's gonna get Maurin depth and all the concepts.

But this this is something that's good.

You can sit down.

You can run through all the projects.

You can see all the functionality.

You can see whether or not you care about the Arduino is the Arduino the solution for you.

When you sit there and you're doing all of it, you get an idea of what's going on and you can say, Oh, yes, this is going to solve my my clients my boss's problems, or you're gonna go through it.

Go Oh, Oh, yeah, No.

How do you How do you connect your mind to this?

Oh, you can't.

Oh, never mind that this isn't good enough.

So I think that's that's basically what you got to think about the book.

So that's my thoughts there.

So now the question is, what do the projects actually look like?

S o.

I did go through again.

I did all the projects within the book.

Unfortunately, I realized after I did all the projects that in the book I should have documented it better.

If you go over to the Eli Computer Guy live Channel and you search are doing over there, you'll see the different Arduino projects that I did and additional Arduino projects that I'll do as I continue.

So you may want to go over there to take a look at the finish projects.

I figured I just show you some of the components and some of the things that you deal with to get an idea of what you learn how to dio with the whole Arduino Project book.

Now, one of the good things with it is it does show you how to use a display.

So this is an LCD display that you can connect to the Arduino board and so this is a valuable thing if we're gonna be creating I ot devices so that the device can actually tell you what the hell is going on.

Yeah.

Hey, so they show you like they do a magic eight ball thing.

We're able to shake the device and then it'll it'll show you different messages to pace depending on the switch that's triggered.

So that's a pretty good thing along those lines they give you this is like a movement sensor.

It's kind of hard to see.

Ah But basically what you do is you plug this into the bread board.

And if it if it feels any movement of the board itself, then it's able to trigger.