Course Content
The Arduino UNO
In the following three lessons, you will get to know your microcontroller - the Arduino UNO. You will learn more about its history, its functions, and most importantly: how to power it.
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Overview
Power Supply
The Arduino UNO Rev4
The Arduino IDE
For beginners, the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is usually the first choice – and for good reason. You can program all Arduino boards with it and manage libraries for sensors, displays, etc. It also features the "Serial Monitor," where you can output data and troubleshoot.
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Installation
Get to Know the IDE
Your first sketch
In the following lessons, you'll get to know the basic structure of an Arduino sketch and write your own programs. Let's get started!
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Setup and Loop
Make the LED on your Arduino Blink
The Serial Monitor
Now let's turn our attention to the Serial Monitor – a feature of the Arduino IDE that you will use in virtually every one of your projects.
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Overview
Hello, World!
Variables
No programmer can avoid variables. In the following lessons, you'll learn what types there are and what you can do with them.
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What are variables good for?
What Types Are There?
Variables in Action
Controlling an LED
Now it's time for more hardware! In the next lessons, you'll connect an LED to your Arduino. You'll first turn it on and off with a button. After that, you'll build a dimmer to control the brightness of the LED.
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How to Connect an LED
The Prototyping Shield
Controlling the LED with a Sketch
Conditional Statements, Comparison Operators & Modulo
Connecting a Potentiometer
Controlling the LED’s Brightness
Lie Detector
Discover the entertaining side of electronics by building your own simple lie detector with your Arduino. This fun project uses basic components to measure skin resistance changes when someone might be telling a fib, perfect for adding some playful suspense to your next gathering with friends.
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How to build this project
There’s music inside!
Your Arduino can do much more than "just" make LEDs shine at different brightness levels. For example, it can make music. In the following lesson, you'll learn how to use a piezo buzzer and coax some charming tones out of it.
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Connecting a passive piezo
Your First Arduino Instrument
A Music Box with Loops
A Theremin with Ultrasound
Do you want to make a bit more music? In this lesson, you'll build a theremin that you operate with your HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor. You move your hand toward and away from the sensor - your Arduino calculates the pitch of the tones from the distance, which are then played through your piezo buzzer.
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Connecting the HC-SR04
Measuring Distances
Setup of the Theremin and the Sketch
Arrays
A Fixed Scale for the Theremin
The Sound Sensor
Ready to explore how your Arduino can respond to sounds? In this lesson, we'll connect a sound sensor to your Arduino and learn how to make it respond to both digital noise detection and analog volume levels.
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Using the Sound Sensor
Build an Alarm System
In this project, you will build your own alarm system. It consists of three components: the sound sensor, which you have just learned about, the active piezo buzzer, and the RGB LED.
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Connecting the active piezo and the RGB LED
The Sketch for the Alarm System
The DHT11 Temperature Sensor
Let's move on to another component that you'll certainly use in many projects: the temperature sensor. In this case, the popular DHT11, which can measure not only temperature but also humidity.
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Connecting the DHT11
Installing and Using Libraries
Measuring Temperature & Humidity
Arduino Course for Beginners

Do you remember the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner of your sketch window? Clicking on it opens the Serial Monitor – provided your Arduino UNO is connected to your computer and you have selected the correct USB port.

Serial Monitor

 

The Serial Monitor functions as a communication interface for your Arduino. It can display measurement values and other data, allowing you to check them. But this interface also works in the other direction – you can send commands to your Arduino through the Serial Monitor.

Let’s first take a look at the most important parts of the monitor:

Serial Monitor Window

 

In the top right, you’ll find three buttons:

  • Autoscroll: The Serial Monitor scrolls along with the incoming data – the newest entry is always visible at the bottom.
  • Timestamp: The data is marked with the exact time of its arrival.
  • Clear Output: All entries in the monitor are deleted.

To the left of these buttons, you’ll find an input field. This allows you to send data and commands to your Arduino. For now, however, we’ll focus on reading data.

The largest part of the window is reserved for output – this is where you’ll display text in the next lesson.

The Baud Rate

The baud rate (or symbol rate) refers to the number of characters transmitted per second. Projects with an Arduino UNO often use a rate of 9,600.

If you open the dropdown menu, you’ll see many other baud rates available. These will become relevant if you later build projects with an ESP8266 or ESP32, as these microcontrollers are significantly faster than an Arduino UNO.

One thing is important: This dropdown menu must always be set to the same baud rate as in your sketch (you’ll learn how to set it there in the next lesson). If the baud rates in the sketch and monitor differ, nothing will break – but you’ll often see a jumble of characters. 😉

One more note: Your Arduino can communicate not only via USB but also via pins 0->RX and 1<-TX. Therefore, you shouldn’t connect anything to these pins unless you specifically want to use them for serial communication later.

In the next lesson, you’ll get practical experience by activating the Serial Monitor and displaying your first characters there.

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