- Home
- Product Categories
- Books
- SparkFun Inventor's Kit Guidebook - V3
SparkFun Inventor's Kit Guidebook - V3
The full-color SparkFun Inventor's Kit Guidebook V3 contains step by step instructions of how to connect each circuit with the included parts. Full example code is provided and explained and even includes troubleshooting tips if something goes wrong. Once you make your way through all of the example circuits you will have a much better grasp on programming electronics!
- PDF Version (English)
- PDF Version (Spanish)
- Individual Circuit PDFs
- SIK Code Library
- SIK V3 Wishlist
- Circuit 1: Blinking an LED
- Circuit 2: Reading a Potentiometer
- Circuit 3: Driving and RGB LED
- Circuit 4: Driving Multiple LEDs
- Circuit 5: Push Buttons
- Circuit 6: Reading a Photo Resistor
- Circuit 7: Reading a Temperature Sensor
- Circuit 8: Driving a Servo Motor
- Circuit 9: Using a Flex Sensor
- Circuit 10: Reading a Soft Potentiometer
- Circuit 11: Using a Buzzer
- Circuit 12: Driving a Motor
- Circuit 13: Using Relays
- Circuit 14: Using a Shift Register
- Circuit 15: Using an LCD
SparkFun Inventor's Kit Guidebook - V3 Product Help and Resources
Comments
Looking for answers to technical questions?
We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
Customer Reviews
No reviews yet.
Hiya, a bit of a problem with circuit #12, spinning a motor.
I checked all of the components multiple times, but couldn't get it to work.
Finally I checked the code, and saw that you need to open the serial window (is that what it's called?) and input a speed. Aaaargh!
Maybe a pro would have taken less time to work it out, but for this n00b it took a loooong time. And the book doesn't mention the serial window at all.
Other than that, fantastic!
I've found a problem with Circuit #3 RGB LED.
In the circuit diagram, and also in the sketch, we are told to connect the RGB LED common to ground. I've tried 3 different types of RGB LED's and even changed the resistors to 270 ohm (that came with the RGB's) and it will not work. However if I connect the RGB LED common to 5 volts it works perfectly.
Are the instructions wrong or am I doing something wrong?
Sounds like you may have received a Common Anode (CA) rather than a Common Cathode (CC) LED. For many projects you can probably use it just fine; as you have noticed already, connecting the common to 5V will make it do something - however, what it's doing is probably inverted from what was intended.
Essentially, with a CC configuration, if the sketch writes HIGH to the LED pin, it means it lights up (~5V goes from the pin through the LED to its common GND, and if the sketch writes LOW to the LED pin, it turns off again.
However, with the CA configuration, if the sketch writes HIGH to the LED pin, there will be ~5V from the pin, but there will also be ~5V on the LED's common 5V pin, so nothing happens. If the sketch writes LOW, then 5V goes from the LED's common pin, through the LED to the pin the sketch is controlling.
So the behavior is the opposite of what was intended - inverted. In the sketch provided, where it is supposed to start out as RED, GREEN, BLUE, you'll probably see CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW instead.
Correcting for this inversion is pretty simple here, change all the HIGH to LOW, and LOW to HIGH for any of the LED control pins.
The RGB LED is used again in Circuit #10, and that will be a bit more tricky to correct, but if you get stuck, just drop a line here :)
Of course, given that the schematics, code, etc. all call for a CC LED and it seems like you were supplied a CA LED, it may be a good idea to run out and get a CC one anyway, or poke at techsupport@ and see if they can send you one.
Couldn't have said this better myself :)
Hi Will you plan to translate this V3 of the book in foreign languages (french, spanish, ...) ? http://ardx.org/src/guide/2/ARDX-EG-SPAR-FR-WEB.pdf Kind regards Didier Remark: I teach Arduino programming to not english fluent students.
We are actually working on getting the versions we have available currently on our GitHub page. This will allow anyone who wants to work on a translation for any language post to be available for the entire community.
Thank you for posting the pdf on here. Looks great!
Great design, you know if you go for that sort of thing.
What software do you guys use to create the graphics for this?
Hi! We use the Adobe Creative Suite. Mainly InDesign and Illustrator. For the schematic graphics are from Eagle (also use an Eagle ULP, from the Eagle site, to convert schematics and board files to nice svg files) and touched up. Hope that helps! If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask! :)