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Arduino Workshop, 2nd Edition: A Hands-on Introduction with 65 Projects
Long-awaited revision of this best-selling book on the Arduino electronics platform (35,000+ copies sold). Readers gain an in-depth understanding of the Arduino -- beyond just making simple projects.
The Arduino is an inexpensive, flexible microcontroller platform that makes it easy for hobbyists to use electronics in DIY projects. With its wide range of input and output add-ons, sensors, indicators, displays, and motors, the Arduino offers you countless ways to create interactive devices.
Through 65 hands-on projects, Arduino Workshop will teach you the tricks and design principles of a master craftsman. This edition has been updated for the latest version of the Arduino IDE and revised to reflect current hardware and technology. It includes coverage of general electronics concepts as well as schematic diagrams and detailed images of components. You’ll experiment with touchscreens and LED displays, explore robotics, use sensors with wireless data links, and control devices remotely with a cell phone.
Build projects
• An electronic version of the classic six-sided die
• A GPS logger that records and displays travel data
• A keypad-controlled lock that opens with a secret code
• A binary quiz game
• A motorized remote control car with collision detection
Whatever your skill level, you’re sure to have fun as you learn to harness the power of the Arduino for your own DIY projects.
NEW TO THIS
• A chapter on creating your own Arduino libraries
• Updated robotic vehicle projects
• Newer shields that leverage GPS, 3G, and LoRa data transmission capabilities
• A chapter on MAX7219-based numeric LED displays and LED matrix modules
Covers Arduino IDE 2.x
The Arduino is an inexpensive, flexible microcontroller platform that makes it easy for hobbyists to use electronics in DIY projects. With its wide range of input and output add-ons, sensors, indicators, displays, and motors, the Arduino offers you countless ways to create interactive devices.
Through 65 hands-on projects, Arduino Workshop will teach you the tricks and design principles of a master craftsman. This edition has been updated for the latest version of the Arduino IDE and revised to reflect current hardware and technology. It includes coverage of general electronics concepts as well as schematic diagrams and detailed images of components. You’ll experiment with touchscreens and LED displays, explore robotics, use sensors with wireless data links, and control devices remotely with a cell phone.
Build projects
• An electronic version of the classic six-sided die
• A GPS logger that records and displays travel data
• A keypad-controlled lock that opens with a secret code
• A binary quiz game
• A motorized remote control car with collision detection
Whatever your skill level, you’re sure to have fun as you learn to harness the power of the Arduino for your own DIY projects.
NEW TO THIS
• A chapter on creating your own Arduino libraries
• Updated robotic vehicle projects
• Newer shields that leverage GPS, 3G, and LoRa data transmission capabilities
• A chapter on MAX7219-based numeric LED displays and LED matrix modules
Covers Arduino IDE 2.x
432 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 2012
90 people are currently reading
292 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 12, 2016
What a disappointment! This book started out very focused and project-path oriented and then devolved into a seemingly random collection of disarticulated topics that were never consolidated into a coherent "workshop" approach to teaching. This type of approach leaves me feeling disoriented, confused, and without a sense that I've learned anything useful.
I really had high hopes for this book and after a good start I felt that I was really let down by the author's rambling approach to teaching. As someone who's been involved with developing course material myself, I see this type of workshop as superficial and lacking direction.
This could have been such a better book if he would have focused on directing the projects towards a final master project like the tank but with building blocks working their way towards that goal. Need to control servos? This project will allow us to use this code later to do that. Want to create a remote control, no problem, let's take some baby steps towards that goal. The book never explains WHY you're doing what you're doing or just how to troubleshoot effectively when things don't go the way you planned. You're left with no help to work your way through it yourself and the online searches I did for forum discussion provided no additional insights.
The last and fatal part of this book is the numerous problems with the project coding itself. Two main examples stand out to me as exemplary of my main complains. Chapter 7 has you interfacing with a 2 line LCD display. You have to use the command lcd.setCursor(column, row); in order to place your text on the display properly. The author proceeds to reverse the columns and rows in the lines of code and causes the LCD to display a garbled version of the example. I was able to figure this out for myself after much headscratching, but his is simply bad editing at its worst.
The second example comes in Project #31 where you are controlling an unrelated stopwatch and the author has the pinouts reversed in the code. It's a simple fix once you recognize the problem, but I shouldn't be troubleshooting his code, he and his editors should be!
Unfortunately, there are simply too many glaring errors, lack of direction, no connection between and among the projects, and simply a wandering approach for this book to warrant a good review. I would give it 2 stars for having some solid examples that can be gleaned if you're willing to wade through the tremendous amount of unrelated content and mistakes throughout the book.
I really had high hopes for this book and after a good start I felt that I was really let down by the author's rambling approach to teaching. As someone who's been involved with developing course material myself, I see this type of workshop as superficial and lacking direction.
This could have been such a better book if he would have focused on directing the projects towards a final master project like the tank but with building blocks working their way towards that goal. Need to control servos? This project will allow us to use this code later to do that. Want to create a remote control, no problem, let's take some baby steps towards that goal. The book never explains WHY you're doing what you're doing or just how to troubleshoot effectively when things don't go the way you planned. You're left with no help to work your way through it yourself and the online searches I did for forum discussion provided no additional insights.
The last and fatal part of this book is the numerous problems with the project coding itself. Two main examples stand out to me as exemplary of my main complains. Chapter 7 has you interfacing with a 2 line LCD display. You have to use the command lcd.setCursor(column, row); in order to place your text on the display properly. The author proceeds to reverse the columns and rows in the lines of code and causes the LCD to display a garbled version of the example. I was able to figure this out for myself after much headscratching, but his is simply bad editing at its worst.
The second example comes in Project #31 where you are controlling an unrelated stopwatch and the author has the pinouts reversed in the code. It's a simple fix once you recognize the problem, but I shouldn't be troubleshooting his code, he and his editors should be!
Unfortunately, there are simply too many glaring errors, lack of direction, no connection between and among the projects, and simply a wandering approach for this book to warrant a good review. I would give it 2 stars for having some solid examples that can be gleaned if you're willing to wade through the tremendous amount of unrelated content and mistakes throughout the book.
May 11, 2015
Straight to the beginner's problems.
Very good for beginners.
Very good for beginners.
June 25, 2016
Ardunio enthusiasts unite! John Boxall's book, Arduino Workshop, has the depth and breadth required for novice to advanced Ardunio experimenters. The list of experiments are in a building block manner, starting from simple coding experiments to more advanced projects incorporating sensors and output devices. The first few experiments can easily be accomplished by parts on-hand or from your local electronics supply store. Later experiments, however, will require more specialized hardware such as Arduino shields. The coup de grace of the book are the projects connecting an Arduino to the internet and the cellular network.
The text has notation information spots, a wonderful addition from No Starch Press books, to give in-depth coverage of lines of code.
If I had to find a downside, the schematic diagrams would be better served with Fritzing diagrams common in Arduino programming books. Block schematics are great for students and teachers, but give little awareness to an experimenter about their project's "form factor."
Bottom Line: You're an Arduino experimenter? Get this book.
The text has notation information spots, a wonderful addition from No Starch Press books, to give in-depth coverage of lines of code.
If I had to find a downside, the schematic diagrams would be better served with Fritzing diagrams common in Arduino programming books. Block schematics are great for students and teachers, but give little awareness to an experimenter about their project's "form factor."
Bottom Line: You're an Arduino experimenter? Get this book.
June 30, 2018
It has it's good and it has it's bad.
Good - it is well written, reads easy and can be followed with ease as well. It covers wide range of topics an devices, so in the end you'll have nice toolbox - accent on "tool" part. This is not recipe book, where you follow A to Z and get ready product. These are tools that you will use to make ready product yourself. All loops, function definitions and hardware uses are in there, you just have to pick them up, arrange in your own notebook and reuse as your project requires.
Ugly - well, first is that is has no partlist. For book of this type I'd like a "You will need these things" at first page or maybe even download before buying, so everything can be prepared and gathered at once. Nope. I even mailed publishers asking about this and asking if, for example, one rather extensive kit would be enough. They said, that it should cover everything - it didn't. So either you spend first evening with book compiling list, or go to shop for each chapter.
As good place to start as any, so why not give this a try.
Good - it is well written, reads easy and can be followed with ease as well. It covers wide range of topics an devices, so in the end you'll have nice toolbox - accent on "tool" part. This is not recipe book, where you follow A to Z and get ready product. These are tools that you will use to make ready product yourself. All loops, function definitions and hardware uses are in there, you just have to pick them up, arrange in your own notebook and reuse as your project requires.
Ugly - well, first is that is has no partlist. For book of this type I'd like a "You will need these things" at first page or maybe even download before buying, so everything can be prepared and gathered at once. Nope. I even mailed publishers asking about this and asking if, for example, one rather extensive kit would be enough. They said, that it should cover everything - it didn't. So either you spend first evening with book compiling list, or go to shop for each chapter.
As good place to start as any, so why not give this a try.
November 1, 2025
I think the Arduino Workshop book had many more flaws than positives. This book is a pretty simple entrance point to working with breadboards and the basics of Arduino systems so I would have to recommend it to anyone who is interested in such a thing but tragically this book falls flat in giving any space for creativity to the reader.
This book overall proved to be a great starting point for my journey into understanding and being able to wire using Arduino systems and despite me having no prior knowledge including having never heard of an Arduino before getting this book on a whim one birthday this book allowed me to very easily get involved in these kinds of machines granting me complete freedom to do most everything I wanted as I already had knowledge of the code I would need.
Fortunately for me I already understood how to code in the language the Arduino IDE uses but this book mainly focuses on the more physical wiring aspect over coding and simply provides the exact code you will need for your wiring, this severely limits the amount of freedom given to where even if you changed the wiring you wouldn't be able to change much. This makes the book limiting to those with little or no experience in both fields and it would be nice if they had extra or challenge problems that would give you a way to have a little more difficulty or freedom in what you make. That's not to say that the book doesn't let you as in theory you have everything you need to make what you want to make but with nothing prompting the reader it comes off as one dimensional.
This leaves me giving the book a solid 4/5 as it's a great starting point which is also its primary flaw leaving not much space for things beyond the beginner level.
This book overall proved to be a great starting point for my journey into understanding and being able to wire using Arduino systems and despite me having no prior knowledge including having never heard of an Arduino before getting this book on a whim one birthday this book allowed me to very easily get involved in these kinds of machines granting me complete freedom to do most everything I wanted as I already had knowledge of the code I would need.
Fortunately for me I already understood how to code in the language the Arduino IDE uses but this book mainly focuses on the more physical wiring aspect over coding and simply provides the exact code you will need for your wiring, this severely limits the amount of freedom given to where even if you changed the wiring you wouldn't be able to change much. This makes the book limiting to those with little or no experience in both fields and it would be nice if they had extra or challenge problems that would give you a way to have a little more difficulty or freedom in what you make. That's not to say that the book doesn't let you as in theory you have everything you need to make what you want to make but with nothing prompting the reader it comes off as one dimensional.
This leaves me giving the book a solid 4/5 as it's a great starting point which is also its primary flaw leaving not much space for things beyond the beginner level.
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November 24, 2021i paced smoothly through the beginning of the book, but quickly the projects started becoming more and more complex and i stopped being able to keep up. my electronics knowledge is very weak and i felt like the introduction given in this book wasn't enough to make me feel prepared to deal with some of the projects. so, i decided to quickly overview the entire book and then move on to one that can teach me these basics. after that, i'll definitely return to this book, because the projects look so exciting and the instructions are very concise and clear. overall, it was an encouraging book that i definitely want to come back to many times
September 5, 2020
Well structured projects that build skills in using the Arduino and show it's potential. The projects introduce designs for building basic circuits which can form the basis for more sophisticated projects combining different techniques.
March 14, 2022
I have recently gotten into coding Arduino as a side hobby.
This was a splendid book that gave examples and code for a ton of different projects.
Would recommend this book as a way to learn all the many things you can do in Arduino.
4.2/5
This was a splendid book that gave examples and code for a ton of different projects.
Would recommend this book as a way to learn all the many things you can do in Arduino.
4.2/5
May 15, 2020
Bom livro para começar apesar de alguns exemplos estarem um pouco ultrapassados mas é um mal de livros de tecnologia.
August 2, 2021
The best book to help with Arduino learning I have read so far.
November 11, 2014
This is a great book to walk anyone, especially those new to electronics and programming, through a gradual introduction to the Arduino. The Arduino is a small hobbyist computer platform for creating programmable electronic projects. The explanations were simple and the projects were fun. They even got a bit complex towards the end. I skipped actually building some of the projects and now plan to go back to many of them.
November 10, 2013
I may decide to buy an Arduino project module. There are several nice things about the Arduino. But right now I'm still busy with the X86 system.
September 6, 2014
Great!
Builds an introductory parallel software and hardware knowledge.
Builds an introductory parallel software and hardware knowledge.
February 1, 2016
No Starch Press consistently has the best intro technical how-to books out there. Love this one too! Working through binary activities with Arduino for 4th and 5th graders.
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February 19, 2016629.895 B7887 2013
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews