So you're interested in Arduino or making your own robots -- but where do you start? What parts are essential, and which are just nice to have? And how do you organize it all? Dale Wheat, the author of Arduino Internals, will show you how to build your own electronics lab complete with tools, parts, and power sources. You'll learn how to create a portable lab, a small lab to save space, and even a lab for small groups and classrooms. You'll learn which parts and tools are indispensable no matter what type projects you're working on: which soldering irons are best, which tools, cables, and testing equipment you'll need. You'll also learn about different chips, boards, sensors, power sources, and which ones you'll want to keep on hand. Finally, you'll learn how to assemble everything for the type of lab best suited to your needs. If you need to carry everything to your local makerspace, you can build the Portable Lab. If you plan to tinker at home or in the garage, there is the Corner Lab. If you're going to run your own local makerspace or you need to set up a lab to teach others, there is the Small-Group Lab.No matter what your gadgeteering needs may be, Building Your Own Electronics Lab will show you exactly how to put it all together so you have what you need to get started. What you'll learn * Essential components of every electronics lab, and how to get them without going broke * The differences between types of electronics parts, accessories, and tools you may need * Designing a lab for portability * Designing a lab to save space * Designing a lab to share space and resources Who this book is for Electronics hobbyists, Arduino enthusiasts, hardware hackers, ham radio tinkerers, or anyone wanting to build their own makerspace. Table of Contents * Planning Your Electronics Workshop * Building Your Tool Chest * Parts -- Both Spare and Not-so-Spare * Portable Mini-Lab * The Corner Lab * The Small-Group Lab * Appendix: Getting Started with Tool-Building

Arduino Internals guides you to the heart of the Arduino board. Author Dale Wheat shares his intimate knowledge of the Arduino board - its secrets, its strengths and possible alternatives to its constituent parts are laid open to scrutiny in this book. You'll learn to build new, improved Arduino boards and peripherals, while conforming to the Arduino reference design. Arduino Internals begins by reviewing the current Arduino hardware and software landscape. In particular, it offers a clear analysis of how the ATmega8 board works and when and where to use its derivatives. The chapter on the hardware heart is vital for the rest of the book and should be studied in some detail. Furthermore, Arduino Internals offers important information about the CPU running the Arduino board, the memory contained within it and the peripherals mounted on it. To be able to write software that runs optimally on what is a fairly small embedded board, one must understand how the different parts interact. Later in the book, you'll learn how to replace certain parts with more powerful alternatives and how to design Arduino peripherals and shields. Since Arduino Internals addresses both sides of the Arduino hardware-software boundary, the author analyzes the compiler toolchain and again provides suggestions on how to replace it with something more suitable for your own purposes. You'll also learn about how libraries enable you to change the way Arduino and software interact, and how to write your own library implementing algorithms you've devised yourself. Arduino Internals also suggests alternative programming environments, since many Arduino hackers have a background language other than C or Java. Of course, it is possible to optimize the way in which hardware and software interact - an entire chapter is dedicated to this field. Arduino Internals doesn't just focus on the different parts of Arduino architecture, but also on the ways in which example projects can take advantage of the new and improved Arduino board. Wheat employs example projects to exemplify the hacks and algorithms taught throughout the book. Arduino projects straddling the hardware-software boundary often require collaboration between people of different talents and skills which cannot be taken for granted.For this reason, Arduino Internals contains a whole chapter dedicated to collaboration and open source cooperation to make those tools and skills explicit. One of the crowning achievements of an Arduino hacker is to design a shield or peripheral residing on the Arduino board, which is the focus of the following chapter. A later chapter takes specialization further by examining Arduino protocols and communications, a field immediately relevant to shields and the communication between peripherals and the board. Finally, Arduino Internals integrates different skills and design techniques by presenting several projects that challenge you to put your newly-acquired skills to the test What you'll learn * To understand the internal heart of your Arduino board * How to replace parts of the Arduino board with new, more powerful elements * How to build a new Arduino board * How to build your own peripherals and shields * How to optimize your own code and existing libraries to run on your own Arduino device Who this book is for This book is geared towards intermediate-level Arduino hackers and makers, embedded system designers who want to know what Arduino is about, hardware designers who would like to change Arduino to suit their own requirements, and developers who would like to write optimized Arduino software. Table of Contents * Hardware * Software * Atmel AVR * Supporting Hardware * Arduino Software * Optimizations * Hardware and Software Combined * Example Projects * Project Management * Hardware Design * Software Design * Networking * Tabletop Robot Project