arduino: hardware, programming language, and community. www.arduino.cc
some high level chips: icubex (good for performers), teleo (a step above breadboards, very easy but more expensive), make controller
the bread board: the strip with the red and blue line are connected horizontally to each other (all holes along the blue line connect to all holes along the blue line). All the other banks have each hole, only within each bank and each row, connected vertically. So one row of 5, in one bank, going vertically is all connected.
solid cable is the only cable you want to put in the breadboard. Stranded wire tends to snap off and fray.
multimeter: black goes into COM, red goes into Temp. continuity tests are never done through the arduino...don't touch it with the test leads, and also never done on the breadboard if the breadboard has power running to it.
analog to digital inputs (A2D) can be used with:
FSR: Force sensitive resistor
Light sensitive resistor
Flex sensor
resistor: resists the flow of current through a system. slows down the electrons. they are not polarized (doesn't matter which way you hook it up)
LED: are polarized. light emitting dioed. diods only allow current to flow through them in one direction. long lead = toward positive.
