Arno: The Best Darn Arduino Starter Kit Ever
We’re huge fans of the Arduino around here at GeekDad, so we’re particularly enthused about the “Arno.” What makes this kit stand out among the dozens of Arduino-based boards out there? Well, the Arno includes a dozen pre-wired devices such as LEDs, switches, and temperature sensor, and the Arno includes the best guidebook I’ve seen. If you are interested in getting started with embedded computing but is reluctant to mess with a soldering iron, this is the kit for you!
The guys at Olympia Circuits, the Makers behind the Arno, described their motivation for the board:
When Kevin and I started selling our own Arduino boards at Maker Faires, it became clear that there were still people (a LOT of people!) who just weren’t ready to go for it. This point was driven home when we put together an “Intro to Arduino” class at a local community college. Instead of attracting artists and hackers, the class filled up with retired engineers and electronics technicians. It was a great group of people, but it made us realize that there are still barriers to entering the Arduino world.
The Arno Kit is our answer to the problem of getting people over the “hump” and into the world of Arduino. We created the Arno board, a “beginner-kit-on-a-board,” and wrote a book that 1) covers the basics of electronics and programming, 2) explains how the circuits on the Arno board work, and 3) provides over 40 example sketches with explanations. With the Arno, we get rid of the bins of components, the jumper wires, and the solderless breadboard. The Arno is not a “shield” to be used with another Arduino board, rather it is a complete, functional Arduino board with the basic circuits from a beginner kit already built-in.
The Arno includes a dozen on-board components: 4 LEDs, 2 momentary switches, an RGB LED, a piezo buzzer, a phototransistor, an IR emitter, a thumbwheel potentiometer, and a temperature sensor. As mentioned above, these devices are pre-connected to the I/O lines of the Atmega 32U4, making them immediately ready for use. These elements provide everything a budding hardware hacker needs to master the basics of digital electronics, and enable the creation of some very interesting projects along the way.
In addition to the excellent hardware, the Arno includes a guidebook that is absolutely top-notch. The book provides a gentle approach to learning, starting out with a basic introduction to electronics concepts, a balanced review of the Arduino IDE and programming, and a great explanation of how hardware meets software in a microcontroller. After those background topics are covered, the rest of the guidebook consists of a series of projects that lead the reader from the usual blinking-LED “Hello World” app all the way up to emulating a USB mouse to control a paint program on a PC. The progression of the projects is very linear, making for a smooth and easy learning curve. I’m particularly impressed by how well the book is written, and how smoothly the material flows. Teachers take note: this would make a fantastic basis for a high-school course in electronics and computer science.
The guidebook is available on the Olympia site, and I encourage you to take a look at it to get a sense of the quality of work these guys have produced.
The Arno is, of course, available for order from the Olympia site.
The Olympia guys have also put together a short YouTube video that provides an overview of the features of the Arno:
And finally, the guys behind the Arno, Peter Gould and Kevin Warner, are just as interesting as you’d expect, and they were kind enough to answer some questions for us…
GeekDad: Kevin and Peter, please tell us a little bit about yourselves.
Olympia: Peter’s been involved in building and repairing things since he was a kid. It was only a few years ago that he came across the Maker scene and realized that it was full of people like him. He’s the father of two kids: an eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old. He got into Arduino seriously when he realized it could help him with projects in his day job as a research scientist in forest biology. He has built environmental dataloggers and is currently working on a combined datalogger-sensor package to measure the diameter growth of trees.
Kevin has also been tinkering since childhood, picking up hands-on and technical skills along the way. He’s a mechanical engineer with quite a bit of experience in the electrical and energy fields. Several years ago he decided to learn more about electronics and eventually got involved with microcontrollers. All along he’s had a hand in hardware, building and using many CNC machines in his shop. He has recently built a smoker controller for the popular Traeger Grills and a quadcopter system for aerial photography. He’s a father of two elementary aged kids who believe that breaking things is OK, since “Papa can fix it.”
Olympia: The two of us started Olympia Circuits to bring some of our projects to the point where we could start selling them. Our first commercial project was the LeOlympia, an Arduino-compatible board like the Leonardo. As we started selling it we came across a lot of people who had heard of Arduino and were interested in getting started with it. It seemed like many people hesitated because they didn’t know how to get started. The combination of learning programming, electronics, and breadboarding all at once seemed intimidating. On the ride home after an event, we came up with the concept: what if we put the components and microcontroller on one board and created a complete manual to guide new users through the process of getting started? Peter writes scientific papers in his day job and the jump to technical writing for the Arno seemed feasible enough. The project started with the title “simple Arduino” and Kevin came up with the name Arno, after the river valley where Leonardo da Vinci was born. We came up with the circuits for the board together and Kevin did the final layout for the board.
GeekDad: Has the Arno been well received?
Olympia: There’s been a lot of interest in it. A lot of people seem to get the concept right away. We’re trying to get the word out there that this project is now available. We’ve shown it to people with a range of familiarity with Arduino and they all seem to see how they could benefit from it. (Kevin is using one as a programmable “keyboard” to fill in repetitive fields on documents at work.)
GeekDad: Did you have to negotiate with the official Arduino team in any way? Do you have a sense of how they view projects like the Arno?
Olympia: We haven’t negotiated with the Arduino core team. We haven’t communicated with them about the project so we don’t have a sense of how they view it. Our feeling is that we’re trying to fill a different niche than the official Arduino releases. Our board is focused on beginners. We also put a lot of effort into the book with the idea that we could bring something new to the market by interweaving the hardware and book. It’s clear to us that this is the type of project that the core team intended to spawn by making their hardware and software open source. Of course, we’re indebted to the Arduino team for all of the amazing work that they’ve put into the project. We’re hoping that we can make a contribution to this community.
GeekDad: Where and how is the actual Arno hardware assembled? How difficult was it for you to start up the production?
Olympia: We assemble the Arno by hand in our workshop. We designed the PCBs and had them made for us. We take the bare PCB, apply solder paste, and assemble the parts. We use a vinyl cutter designed for scrapbooking to cut stencils for applying solder paste. We reflow the solder in an oven we modified for the job (it has an Arduino-powered temperature controller that Kevin designed to controller a smoker!). This is the second project, after the LeOlympia that we have built in quantity so we had a good understanding of what it takes as we started this project. We’ve also done smaller quantities of several projects that use surface-mount components. We’re both still amazed at how easy it is to do it once we figured out the steps. It’s a great feeling to see the completed product. We have begun talking with fabricators to perform the assembly, when our workshop capacity is exceeded.
GeekDad: Do you have any followup projects in the works?
Olympia: We always have lots of projects in the pipeline! We’re getting close to finishing an Arno shield for people who want to follow our book but prefer to use their own standard Arduino board. We’re also brainstorming an Arno Pro with more advanced features. Peter has been going through several iterations of environmental dataloggers. He deployed loggers this summer with sensors to measure the diameter growth of trees. One part of his professional research has been to understand how tree growth is controlled by the environment and how it may change with climate change. The sensor project has been successful and he’s now working on a more compact sensor-logger combination that could be mounted directly to a tree. The quadcopter controller is in the final testing stages and will soon be released along with a simple, durable airframe. We anticipate these applied products will be our primary focus in the future, mixed with Arduino learning projects that we may come up with.