There was a time when building electronics and building software were two distinct activities. These days, almost any significant electronic project will use a CPU somewhere, or — at least — could.

The Arduino platform lies somewhere between Technic Lego and the low level geek world of circuit building. It consists of two parts; the hardware and the software, and with these you can build almost ...

Before opening the Arduino software, wire up the Arduino according to the circuits page using the 8MHz minimalist breadboard circuit but with a 10k pull-up resistor on the reset pin (physical pin 1).