Solarbotics has been producing the Arduino-Compatible Experimenter’s Kit here in North America for over 5 years, and we’ve now updated it to include our new Sketchboard. The Sketchboard is a fully-built, ready-to-use blend of Freeduino, Duemilanove, and Uno R3, at a budget price, lowering the cost of this popular Arduino-Compatible training system.

This open-source project features 12 experiments that are step-by-step simple, and with a full-colour template overlay for your breadboard, you’re unlikely to go wrong. We’ve combed through the documentation to make it as clear and concise as we can, and have posted it in Documentation.

We’ve selected hardware for our version of the kit that easily meets or exceeds the requirements of the Experimenter’s Kit. Of particular note are:

• 12 colour breadboard template overlay sheets. These make identifying the right place for each connection very simple.
• The 5-cell AA battery pack holder. 7.5V means the 5V power regulator on your SketchBoard will run perfectly with no fear of a voltage sag, even comes with 2.1mm Barrel jack
• Large 11 x 7″ plastic case has plenty of space for your whole experimenter’s package – even the manual!

The rest of the kit contains a veritable plethora (“lots of neat things”), including:

• The Solarbotics SketchBoard
• 300 point half-size breadboard
• Laser cut acrylic base-plate (colors may vary)
• USB A-B cable
• 70-piece flexible jumper wire bundle (these are nice)
• 10 x Red 5mm LEDs
• 11 x Green 5mm LEDs
• 1 x massive 10mm blue LED
• 1 x DC Motor
• 1 x Micro Servo
• 1 x 74HC595 8-bit shift register IC
• 1 x Piezo Speaker/sensor element
• 2 x Pushbuttons
• 1 x 10k Trimpot with handy finger-sized knob
• 1 x Photo resistor (CdS cell)
• 1 x TMP36 Temperature sensor
• 1 x 5V DPDT relay
• 2 x 2n2222 transistors
• 25 x 560 ohm resistors
• 3 x 2.2k resistors
• 3 x 10k resistors
• 2 x 1N4001 diodes
• Acrylic base mounting hardware
• 4 x 2-pin male header (for pinning the templates to the breadboard)
• 2 x 20-pin male header (for pinning more templates to other breadboards)
• RGB LED (Common Cathode)

It’s a great way to get started learning about electronics. With a laptop (with Internet to download code samples) and this bundle, you really can just sit down and get right to work! You can find the code for the circuits under our resources tab. The code is Arduino 1.0 tested and found compatible.