Product of the Week: Arduino Uno Plus Arduino Mega 2560 Plus 2 “Hardware Manual” Books

Arduino stands for beginner-friendly and fast development of embedded projects. Playing around with Arduino boards is fun, but not the most efficient way to expand your knowledge. Elektor has therefore bundled two of the most popular boards with two books, packed with information about pins, interfaces, power supplies and many other hardware specifications. The look under the hood allows beginners, advanced and professionals to get the most out of the hardware.

Arduino Uno Board & Book ...

The Arduino Uno board itself will hardly require any introduction here. Even though it has gone through some minor upgrades since its introduction around the year 2004 (!), it is still the same-old hardware platform for all kinds of electronics projects. As author Warwick A. Smith states, the Ultimate Arduino Uno Hardware Manual has been written for “anyone interested in the Arduino Uno who would like an easy to use hardware reference, including hobbyists, makers, experimenters, teachers, students, and professionals such as electronic engineers”. Like most other books on Arduino, it contains some basic information to get started, installing the Arduino IDE, connecting the board to the computer and testing some software examples.
What I like about this book, is that this information is kept as short as possible; the main part is – as the title promises – about the hardware of Uno itself and, of course, about connecting additional hardware to the board. There is also a chapter on using a digital multimeter and oscilloscope to test your own developments or troubleshoot an Uno. And if the ATmega328 microcontroller gets damaged (we all make mistakes), the book guides you through the process of replacing the socketed DIL-IC and/or (re-) programming the bootloader firmware.

... plus Mega Board & Book

The Arduino Mega 2560 board is probably less known than the Uno, and you may even have skipped this Arduino board in favor of more popular or more recent hardware in the Arduino family. However, it has some more horsepower than the Uno, as it offers more digital I/Os and analog input pins than the Uno, and is a good alternative for this board for applications that need more hard- and software resources than the Uno can offer. The Ultimate Arduino Mega 2560 Hardware Manual is from the same author and the table of contents is about the same as in the first book, but of course tailored to the Mega 2560 board. One difference though: if the microcontroller on this board is fried, it is probably cheaper and easier to buy a new board instead of replacing a 100-pin TQFP.
 
Now a special Arduino Hardware Manual Bundle is for sale in the Elektor Store, containing the two books and both Arduino boards. Neither of the books contains any earth-shattering new information or data about the Uno or Mega 2560. Everything can be found 'somewhere' on the Internet. Indeed, 'somewhere'. But where was it again, and is the information you have just found there correct and reliable? As Smith says in the introduction, the latter was one of the important motives for him to write the books about the hardware of these Arduino boards and, in my opinion, he succeeded brilliantly. Together with the two microcontroller boards, this bundle provides everything you need when you want to go further with Arduino than standard, boring, blinking LED examples only.

Click here to order the bundle (2 books + 2 boards) and save €35 now >>