This new book is smaller, has fewer projects, requires the purchase of fewer components, is an accordingly less expensive book, and perhaps most important for some people, requires no solder!

The projects consist of a steady-hand game, a touch enabled light, an alarm you can put on your cookie jar or similar container, a night light that detects when it is dark, various sorts of blinking or party lights, a musical instrument, and of course, an LED Marquee. You need just over 20 components to build all the projects, which mainly use breadboards. The book suggests which parts to buy from Jameco, and many of the parts come in one or a couple of Jameco kits. (Jameco company sells individual electronic parts, like the old Radio Shack, and also, kits you can use to make cool stuff like an Infrared Escape Robot or a Dual-Output Adjustable Linear Regulated Power Supply.)

All the instructions are clear, the illustrations are excellent, and the projects are fun, if a bit basic. This is well within the range of a seven to ten year old kid with adult supervision, and without the adults for ten and up. Depends on the kid, of course.

What I like about this book is that there are traditional circuit diagrams accompanied with descriptions of how the electronics work at a basic level. For many of the projects, you are expected to use the breadboard to assemble the parts using the traditional diagram. This is a much better way to learn the way circuits work than many other guides or books, which hold your hand through assembly at the cost of holding your hands through understanding. In many cases, there are photographs of the assembled project with sufficient detail and clarity to get you past any ambiguity. But, the key is this: The circuits are both interesting and simple, so nothing can go wrong.

There are also sections for many of the projects that help you past when something goes wrong.

There are many places these projects can go, on modification, and there is plenty of inspiration in here to lead to interesting results. I highly recommend A Beginner’s Guide to Circuits: Nine Simple Projects with Lights, Sounds, and More!, perhaps as a holiday gift for a young one.

That was the amateur geek electronics project of the 1950s and 1960s.

For younger kids, there is also the more recently developed Snap Circuits, which are pretty good and fun until you are about 8.

But today, with inexpensive microcontrollers like the Arduino and small computers like the Raspberry Pi,and significant advancements in LED technology, the game has been upped, and with the mere ability to follow instructions, you can make a plethora of projects that blink, whirr, and amaze your neighbors.

DIY 10 LED Projects for Geeks: Build Light-Up Costumes, Sci-Fi Gadgets, and Other Clever Inventions by Jon Baichtal (ed) provides instructions to get you up to speed with LEDs, to make a UFO, a dice roller, a music visualizer, an automated infrared remote control, an optical screwdriver, an LED costume, and numerous other things. Since you will want to solder many of these things (though you could get away with not for several of them) there is even a chapter on soldering.

This is not the most basic electronics book. Watch this space for a review of a recent and excellent volume that serves that niche. These projects are challenging, but they are also very adaptable. Though these are LED projects and thus light up, LEDs also admit infrared, so you learn to handle that technology as well. All project books have a couple of LED projects. This brilliant book focuses on the bright lights themselves.

The instructions are clear and VERY well illustrated. Each project comes with a very clear set of parts you’ll need. Many projects use Arduino controllers.

You will learn about available electronic components you may not have known about but will suddenly need. For example, there is a tiny card that goes on the end of a USB cable and allows serial output directly to an infrared stream. How cool is that? You can take over the world, with that!!!

10 LED Projects for Geeks: Build Light-Up Costumes, Sci-Fi Gadgets, and Other Clever Inventions is not for the absolute beginner, but frankly, the unafraid beginner can do these project with some patience.

Just so you know, here is the list of contributors and their brief bios:

John Baichtal has written or edited over a dozen books, including the award-winning Cult of Lego (2011 No Starch Press), LEGO hacker bible Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects (2012 Maker Media) with Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler, as well as Robot Builder (Que 2013), and Hacking Your LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Kit (Que 2015). He’s hard at work on his latest project, a compilation of Minecraft projects for Maker Media. John lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children.

Contributors to 10 LED Projects for Geeks:

Kaas Baichtal became interested in computers and electronics around age 12, taking every available electronics class. As a technician Kaas worked mostly in the entertainment industry, doing equipment repairs and travelling system installs for theatrical dimmer manufacturers AVAB America and Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) as well as multimedia integrator BBI Engineering. Kaas has run her own servers at home since 1998 and specializes in writing custom code to solve real life problems.

Matthew Beckler is a computer engineer who lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats. His day job usually consists of writing firmware for fancy microcontrollers, and he is a co-founder and engineer of a fun side-hustle called Wayne and Layne, where he and Adam Wolf design and sell electronic kits and help create interactive museum and art exhibits.

Kristina Durivage is an independent software developer by day and a hardware hacker by night—specializing in data visualization and making the world a brighter place with LEDs. Her work is collected at portfolio.gelicia.com and her opinions and cat pictures can be found on Twitter, @gelicia.

Lenore M. Edman is a co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a family run company that designs, produces, and sells hobby electronics kits, drawing machines, and retrotechnological objects. She writes for the accompanying project blog on the topics of electronics, crafts, cooking, science, robotics, and anything else that catches her fancy. Many of the blog’s projects have been featured at science and art museums and in Make, Wired, and Popular Science magazines. She holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies; English and Greek.

Mike Hord has been working at SparkFun Electronics designing products and projects for makers for six years. His making skills run the gamut from metalworking, woodworking, and 3d printing to coding and circuit design. When not creating his next Big Hack, he’s raising two small children to question the veracity of everything except the need for toothbrushing.

James Floyd Kelly is a full-time technology writer in Atlanta, Georgia. He has written over 25 books on a mix of topics that includes Open Source software, LEGO Robotics, basic electronics, Arduino programming, and more. He and his wife have two young boys who are showing the early signs of Maker-ness.

Michael Krumpus has a master’s degree in computer science and 25 years of experience as a software engineer. He discovered a passion for electronics design later in life and formed a small electronics company, nootropic design, where he designs and manufactures innovative electronics for hobbyists, designers, educators and industry. Michael is based in Minneapolis, MN.

Windell H. Oskay is the co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a Silicon Valley company that has designed and produced specialized electronics and robotics kits since 2007. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories also runs a popular DIY project blog, and many of its projects have been featured at science and art museums and in Make, Wired, and Popular Science magazines. Windell was also a founding board member of OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association. Previously, Windell has worked as a hardware design engineer at Stanford Research Systems and as a research physicist in the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He holds a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Lake Forest College and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Adam Wolf is a cofounder of and engineer at Wayne and Layne, where he designs DIY electronics kits and interactive exhibits. He also does computer engineering and embedded systems work at an engineering design services firm in Minneapolis, MN. When he isn’t making things blink or helping computers talk to each other, he’s spending time with his wife and sons.

Like the previous volume, Volume II is for people first exploring the world of homemade DIY microcontroller fun.

The idea is very simple. An Arduino is the same sort of device that is hidden inside most modern things you plug in or that have batteries and that are more complicated than a flashight or an electric toothbrush. But some electric toobrushes have pretty complicated controllers in them too. It is called a “prototyping” device because it is generalized, has lots of inputs and outputs, runs a powerful but very learnable computer language, etc. So you can take an Arduino, a handful of resistors and other parts, and build a thermostat, or an alarm clock, or a temperature sensor for your garage, or a mini web site that displays video of the people who come to your front door, or a brethalyzer, or a computer game, or whatever.

Both of the “Handbooks” assume nothing, you don’t have to get Volume 1 to use Volume 2. Both provide the information you need to start messing around with the Arduino, and both provided details on how to build several projects. Most of the projects are designed to help you learn how to use the Arduino system, and a few produce actual useful results that you can deploy, such as a device that detects when something is near and the sprays water on it. Everybody needs one or two of those in the house!

Most importantly, the projects are well documented, clearly spelled out, and specifications are well done and accurate. You won’t get part way through a project and realize that you are missing something or that some instruction is unclear.

Also, the illustrations, which are critically important, are extremely well done. Also, No Starch publishers backs up its technology and coding books with excellent on line support, to download code, to pass information on errors to the book owners, etc.

Just so you know what you are getting yourself into, an Arduino Uno controller, which by itself does very little but can be hooked up to inexpensive parts to make projects like the ones in this book, costs about $30. You can get cheaper knockoff clones, which are not considered reliable, but if you are making several projects, buying a bunch of clones and expecting some of them to not work is an option. The Uno is only one of several controllers, the are advanced, larger and more powerful versions, but Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2 uses only the Uno, which is the archetype of all others.

You can, however, design circuits that use the same logic but a much simpler board, if you want to come up with your own power supply and other dodads included with the Uno. This can be done with the Nano, a miniaturized and scaled down Arduino. You can get tiny Nanos in groups of ten for the same price, roughly, as one Uno. You will need to be somewhat more expert and know how to solder, but note that many projects in books and on line use Nanos, so the expertise part is not necessarily a big deal.

People starting out with this often buy kits that include an Arduino and a bunch of wires, resistors, breadboards, etc. One of the better kits out there now is the Elegoo UNO Project Super Starter Kit , but there are many others.

You can also buy Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2 and look on page 11-12 where there is a list of parts, and get the parts you need there. For instance, go to Amazon, enter “6 AA Battery Holder With 2.1mm x 5.5mm Connector 9V Output 2 Pack by Corpco” and you will find “6 AA Battery Holder With 2.1mm x 5.5mm Connector 9V Output 2 Pack by Corpco” and then you can buy that part.

Have fun on your Arduino adventure!

Author Bio

Mark Geddes is a lifelong tinkerer and gadget enthusiast from Dumfries, Scotland. Frustrated with the lack of practical, visual guides to help him teach his ten-year-old how to build with Arduino, he set about recording his own experiments, and Arduino Project Handbook is the result. Geddes has a bachelor’s degree from Edinburgh College of Art.

Table of contents
Part 1: LEDs

Project 1: LED Light Bar
Project 2: Light-Activated Night-Light
Project 3: Seven-Segment LED Countdown Timer
Project 4: LED Scrolling Marquee
Project 5: Mood Light
Project 6: Rainbow Strip Light
Project 7: NeoPixel Compass

Part 2: Sound

Project 8: Arduino Piano
Project 9: Noise Level Meter

Part 3: Motors

Project 10: Old-School Analog Dial
Project 11: Stepper Motor
Project 12: Temperature-Controlled Fan

Part 4: LCDs

Project 13: Ultrasonic Range Finder
Project 14: Digital Thermometer
Project 15: Bomb Defusal Game
Project 16: Serial LCD Introduction
Project 17: People Counter
Project 18: Nokia LCD Pong Game
Project 19: OLED Mini Breathalyzer

Part 5: Security

Project 20: Utrasonic Soaker
Project 21: Finger Printer Scanner

Part 6: Advanced

Project 22: Arduino Robot
Project 23: Internet-controlled LED
Project 24: Bluetooth Voice-controlled LED
Project 25: GPS Speedometer

This time I tried the AGPtEK M20S 8GB Mini MP3 Player(Expandable Up to 64GB), Lossless Sound Touch Button Metal Music Player with FM/Voice Record,Silver and I love it, enough to recommend it.

Here are some of the specs from the manufacturer:

<li>Tiny and Solid Construction: The metal body makes it sturdy with some weight. Mini and portable,only 3 x 0.3 x 1.2 inches.</li>

<li>Lossless Sound Quality: High sound quality brings crystal clear sound wherever you are. Support audio formats: MP3/WMA/OGG/APE(Normal/Fast)/FLAC/WAV/AAC-LC/ACELP.</li>

<li>Easy Operation with Touch Button: Designed with 6 touch buttons and 5 metal buttons,independent locking and volume control. Fashion and convenient operation.</li>

<li>Multi-function: With music play, FM radio, FM/voice recording, resume playback, folder view, clock screensaver, bookmarks etc.</li>

<li>Long playback time: Up to 14 hours of audio playback with 2 hours of full charge. 8 GB digital storage media capacity, supports up to 64 GB (not included). To avoid incompatibility, please use AGPTek Memory Card.</li>

Did you see that it holds a microSD? I’ve not used that feature, but that is pretty cool. It has folders you can divide the music up in, which is, essentially, a very efficient way of making a play list. I’ve also not tried to record music off the radio. I’ll probably never listen to music on this radio. I may, however, record Rachel Maddow now and then..

At this point, being fairly new, I think it goes well beyond the 2 hour charge estimate.

It is complicated, this little device, and therefore can not be operated with a single button like a Shuffle. So, it will take a little while to lerarn how to use it (perhaps a full five minutes). Just remember, the reverse U button backs you out, and that’s a great way to change modes. The menu hamburger button, while listening to a radio station, lets you make a preset or change the presets.

I’m not sure that I loved the headphones. I remember not being too impressed with how they fit, but that’s going to be true for everybody vis-a-vis various headphones. I just plugged in my favorite headphones and used them. I’d grab them and look them over one more time to give you my opinion, but it is possible that the cat ate them.

Also, I just noticed, that if you get the AGPtEK now and buy an additional item with it, like a microSD card or a wall charger, you can get a discount on something. I’m not in the market for any of those things so I didn’t look closely.