Learning with the Lilypad Protosnap Development Board

I started playing around with the Lilypad Protosnap Development board. I found this awesome Sketch (what Arduino calls a program) that utilizes all the sensors, switches, and LEDs on the development board and provides a great test bed to learn the basics of the board. This sketch has proven invaluable in understanding how the pins on the Arduino output to various components, as well as basic Arduino code syntax. By having all the components already connected on one board minimizes the frustration of wiring things together yourself, so that you can focus on understanding what is happening in the code rather than trying to troubleshoot whether you have a loose wire or connection somewhere in your circuit.

Here is the codebender embed of the Protosnap Development Platform Test Code.

I also put together a very rough and rambling video demonstrating the board running this sketch. One of the really neat things is the serial monitor that allows the Arduino to communicate things back to the computer. In this sketch, the serial monitor is programmed to display the real-time status of various switches and sensors. I show this in the video below. There is certainly a sense of satisfaction in getting lines of code to do some visible and interactive functions.