Why the Avocado Beginner Board?

While there are hundreds of circuit boards designed to help you do complicated things easily with the Arduino, there is no board to help you do the basic beginner programs. Now there is … the Avocado Beginner Board. It collects all the beginner circuits into a nice little board that allows you to focus on the programming instead of the wiring.

With the Young Person’s Guide to Arduino Kit, no wiring is needed. Nine LEDs, a light sensor, temperature sensor, two switches, and a speaker are permanently wired to a sturdy circuit board that snaps right into an Arduino microcontroller. With the our board attached to your Arduino, it is fast and easy to create programs and see instant results.

The Young Person’s Guide to Arduino makes learning programming simple, fast, and fun. With the Young Person’s Guide to Arduino kit and an Arduino microntroller, you can learn how to program at a fast and engaging pace. 

The great thing about working with the Young Person’s Guide to Arduino is how quickly you can iterate and experiment as you learn. Just like a science class, you learn through iterative experiments of increasing complexity. Each lesson starts with fundamental programming principles, a review of the commands that will be used, and an example program. After coding and executing the sample program, problems are presented that require the learner to synthesize and apply their learning in new ways. You will quickly change and execute your modified code to test your guesses. This iterative approach quickly builds problem solving aptitude, a critical skill for any person in a technical field.

Each chapter consists of an experiment and each experiment has four parts.

1. Description and link to a video showing how the program is supposed to work.
2. Example program to try. This is entered into the Arduino software and uploaded to the microcontroller.
3. Overview of the programming commands that were used in the chapter. How commands were used and why they were used.
4. Word problems that expand the students learning beyond the example program. Two types of problems will be posed:
   • Type 1: What do you have to change in the program to change the result to X? Perform the change and see if you are correct.
   • Type 2: If you changed Y in the program, what do you think will happen? Try it out and see.

There is an index of the commands used in the book so that students know exactly which page to see when they need to remember how to use a certain command with the Arduino. The answer key is also available for download.

What our customers say . . .

Thank you very much for getting this out. I am sure I will enjoy going through this with my daughter. I really appreciate the effort and enthusiasm you put into this project. – Ray T.

I’ve backed a number of “educational” Arduino projects and yours is by far the best. Learned quite a bit working through it. – Jack H.

The Avocado Beginner board is just terrific. It allowed my 12 year old to start programming immediately. He said ‘this is more fun than Minecraft!’ That’s high praise! – Michael C.

What can the kit DO?

With the Young Person’s Guide to Arduino, you have 15 projects for beginners:

Starter Projects:

• Pin 13 & Pin3 lights – Turn on the Pin 13 light on the Arduino and then the Pin 3 light on the Avocado Beginner Board
• Blinking lights – Turn two lights on and off
• Button lights – Turn lights on and off by pressing a button
• Beating lights – Make the lights turn on and off like a beating heart
• Tone generator – Make the Arduino output a sound from the speaker

Beginner Projects:

• Knob lights – Make lights turn on and off by turning a knob
• Roll the die – Press the button to make 1 to 6 lights turn on randomly, just as if you rolled a die.

• Crazy lights – Lights flash on and off randomly.
• Trick cell phone & Doorbell – Make the Arduino sound like a cell phone and then a doorbell.
• “It’s my turn” timer – Arduino counts down so everyone get’s their turn.
• Serial Commands – Make the Arduino send information back to your computer.
• Temperature lights – Arduino turns on lights depending on how hot or cold it is.
• Burglar alarm – Arduino makes a noise when a burglar comes around.
• Night light – Turns the lights on when it gets dark.
• Rising tone – Turning knob makes the speaker tone go up and down like in a spooky song.

Each Kit Includes:

• Young Person’s Guide to Arduino Book with 15 projects
• Fully-assembled Avocado Beginner Board
• Online access to videos & companion website
• Arduino-compatible R3 Microcontroller

This product is no longer available for purchase. Special production runs may be available for bulk orders of 10 or more. Contact for details.