Our first circuit

To begin working with digital outputs, we are going to connect a very simple circuit to our Arduino board and write some code to deal with it.

In the rest of the book, I'll present you with different circuits that we will have to assemble and connect to the Arduino board. Regarding the external circuits assembly, nowadays we don't really have to solder all parts to a printed circuit board to get our circuit up and running. We can simply use a bunch of short wires, called jumpers, and a breadboard.

Before going on with our first circuit, let's take a look in detail at what a breadboard is and how to use it.

Using a breadboard

A breadboard is a square panel built in such a way that it allows the connection of the electronic component plugged into it without the need to solder them together or use any other form of connection among them.

A typical half size breadboard

As you can see in the preceding picture, the breadboard has a lot of holes distributed in four different...