Ah yes, it is finally time to make your Arduino do something! We're going to start with the classic hello world! of electronics, a blinking light. OK it doesn't sound too exciting, heck you can just flip your desk lamp on and off without needing a microcontroller.. but I promise you, you'll learn a lot!

This lesson will basically get you up and running using the Arduino software and uploading a sketch to the Arduino board. Once you've completed this step we can continue to the really exciting stuff, which is when we start writing our own sketches!

These instructions mostly show Windows software. Except when indicated, the software is identical on all platforms.