One of the upcoming trends in electronics is Arduino. You can control a lot with an Arduino shield or chip. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings.  Examples are blinking lights, controlling LCD screens, programming a robot or controlling your antenna rotator. This is still a bit from everything which is possible.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

The group got in contact with this under the visit to ON7ERA and it was most appreciated!

All the youngsters did know the basics of electronics or more at the start of the workshop but Arduino was new for some of them. This workshop did focus on the beginning of programming and controlling components.

In the beginning we had a short lecture where the content was explained. Soon we all received a kit and started building by ourselves based on a schematic given to us by the crew. The first goal was to make a blinking LED. After not that long, all the youngsters had made it and was eager to continue with more advance projects.

Quite a lot of us where enjoying building with Arduino so much that we continued making more codes during the week when we had our spare time. Even after Youngsters On The Air, back home, some made more advanced projects with Arduino and are even controlling amplifiers and antennas with it.

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