With Arduino, you can build any hardware project you can imagine. This open-source platform is designed to help total beginners explore electronics, and with its easy-to-learn programming language, you can collect data about the world around you to make something truly interactive.

The SparkFun Guide to Arduino opens with an electronics primer filled with essential background knowledge for your DIY journey. From there, you'll learn your way around SparkFun's RedBoard (a derivative of Arduino) through a classic entry point—blinking LEDs. Over the course of the book, 12 hands-on projects will teach you how to:

• Build a stop light with LEDs
• Use LEDs to display sound readings
• Design and build a desktop fan
• Create a robot that draws with a motor and pens
• Create a servo-controlled balance beam
• Interface with Processing to make a digital Etch-a-Sketch
• Report weather sensor data to data.sparkfun.com

Each project focuses on a new set of skills, including breadboarding circuits; reading digital and analog inputs; reading magnetic, temperature, and other sensors; controlling servos and motors; and talking to your computer and the Web with an Arduino. At the end of every project, you'll also find tips on how to use it and how to mod it with additional hardware or code.

What are you waiting for? Start making, and learn the skills you need to own your technology!