Over the weekend I started to delve into the world of Arduino. This platform is one that is supposed to make pulling microprocessors and sensors together simple and without too much hassle. That's not quite my experience so far. The board itself is small is and houses a few led's that elude to the status of processors thinking. My board however seems to be unique in its ability, leaving me quite suspicious as to its origin. Firstly it took several hours to get the thing recognised by windows 7.
Drivers installed, check.
IDE installed, check - oh no hang on a minute it says there is a newer version available I'll download that from exactly the same link I used no more than 15 minutes ago.
Start up IDE.
IDE shuts itself down.
Download IDE again.
Load up basic Arduino version of a hello world application (a blinking LED - yes blinking in both senses).
IDE wont compile or communicate with board.
Check correct com port and board is selected, check. uninstall drivers. reinstall drivers, check.
Look for green LED on board to indicate everything is ok with that, uh oh its red.
Waste an hour or so googling the answer and try and give it a go myself and load up the blinking LED programme.
It works!
So the board looks like a real one, occasionally behaves like a real one, but, is almost certainly a fake. This could be a difficult relationship. having said that that platform is so well supported and the documentation progressive at a speed that even I can cope with it it was only a few hours before I was writing and understanding the elementary programmes I was writing (read copying). It makes me think of the programmes that used to be written out in computer magazines when I was a lot younger that I used to copy out and get the comma in the wrong place and the whole thing would go mental in all the wrong ways or just stubbornly refuse to do anything. I see a nostalgic experience as well as one fraught with errors (by me) in my future - bring it on!
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