Arduino Tutorial 1: Setting Up and Programming the Arduino for Absolute Beginners 

78 years old and you got me excited enough to just order my kit.

This guy is the best teacher ever, this class was not boring at all, and I understood everything because he explained it so well👍🏽

This guy is the Bob Ross of computer programming.

This is one of the very few teachers I have seen that doesn't assume the viewer already understands the program and the procedures. He walks you through every step, without skipping anything. That is greatly appreciated, and every online teacher should be following this model.

HOOK A BROTHER UP. Every student deserves a teacher/mentor like Mr Paul

I never knew I could be so happy about a blinking led.

this was the quickest 23 minutes of my life. I love this guy already

I'd say a delay of 15 is pretty much the limit, where I can barely detect a flicker. And great class for a complete beginner. Looking forward to the whole series!

Thanks Paul. You are a fantastic teacher.I am just beginning my coding journey at 67 thank you.

At 72, I am just getting into Arduinos, so I can eventually run steppers and servos on my machine tools. (before I die). This first intro is awesome. (and I come from a long varied set of tech careers). Thank you for making it so easy to understand.

The Bob Ross of robotics!! this is my favorite arduino lesson series I've seen. Wish it would have been around when I first started.

Thanks Paul, I am getting so much out of your brilliant tutorials. I did Electronics as part of my Mechanical Engineering course in the 1970s and I've done several online courses since, but they all bored me to pieces. I find that I'm really getting a lot of joy out of doing your tutorials: thanks again.

I love how this guy cracks so many funny jokes with a straight face! Just love it!

New to Arduino, but old to life, retired and loving this series of tutorials while following along with the kit. Thanks for creating and continuing to create them Mr. Paul. Want to add that I was contemplating the Arduino but after finding your lessons and tutorials and watching a few, DECIDED to get the Arduino.

As a previously professional teacher - Paul, you are spot on. I already knew this level of UNO basics, but still found the video engaging. Believe me, keeping me interested is not easy! Can't wait to keep going.

I'm a retired software developer in my 80's and throughly enjoying this series. Having taken innumerable programming courses over a 50 year career, I can definitely say you are the absolute best technical instructor I have ever encountered. Everything you say is absolutely clear, concise, and a teaching moment. I'm currently on tutorial 22, but returned to tutorial 1 to encourage new students to get the starter kit and do the exercises as you progress through the series. I have one suggestion. Unless I missed it somewhere along the way, you don't talk about comments in your coding. Comments embedded in code are a great assistance in going back over the code if problems develop months or years after the code was written by the original developer or someone assigned later to maintain the code. Adding comments is as simple as beginning the comment line with //. Comments following the // will not be compiled and appear in the code as "grayed out." An example of comments is the " // put your code here, to run once: " in the beginning of the void setup paragraph.

around 15 you can see a bright light that is you can say buzzing . i just started arduino and i love the way you teach Mr Paul

This is exactly what I’m looking for! I did a semester of Computer Engineering at school and I really enjoyed it! Though I lost everything I had learnt once I finished the class, since I didn’t have any way to apply it to anything in my life at the time. Now though, I want to learn again and this channel is perfect!

Between 14-15ms for me it started to look too solid to tell by eye. Thank you for this series. I'm just starting it now and already having a blast. I learned Fusion 360 from you as well so I have no doubt this is going to be a solid list of lessons.

Yes, Mr. McWorther, you are a natural as a teacher. I had bought your Arduino Uno kit several months ago, and put it away for a while, and am now back into it. Thanks for your excellent and lucid presentation.

I really love how relaxed he looks…. That’s the demeanor of somebody that master something

Advice for those who are starting this course: from someone who has just finished it I had already an Arduino starter kit but not Elegoo's; I thought that I would spare some bucks using my kit and buying the few components that I hadn't. Do not fall into the same mistake. I had to buy quite a few and in the end, I had to spend as much money as I would if I had bought the Elegoo kit, and I had to interrupt the course several times waiting for my new components to arrive. This course is absolutely fun to follow, Paul is a fantastic teacher, and when you finish it you will have a good grasp on Arduino and electronics in general. I had never done anything with electronics and I couldn't even distinguish potential from current when I started; so, if I could do it, anyone can.

This is, without a doubt, the best Arduino tutorial out here on RU-vid. Especially for a complete beginner. Thank you for all the hard work!

Most 'beginning programming' videos ignore the crucially important syntax. You explained the program structure in complete detail very beautifully and clearly. The mark of a good teacher is that their descriptions and explanations not only clarify principals but instantly lock the concept into the student's memory. Thank You.

I'd happily sit through a long ass lecture as long as its this guy who's teaching.

This whole series is fantastic. I'm completely new to programming and electronics, and Paul is a brilliant teacher, I especially like that he explains the scientific theory behind what's happening and not just "How to do it". Thoroughly recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to use an Arduino micro controller.

Mr Paul McWhorter, I would like to expess an Heartfelt "THANK YOU" for making this Video Series. With your patient, relaxed, entertaining yet erudite presentations, you've finally made a clear understanding accessible to all, to what was hitherto a complex mystery and seemingly out of reach to many of us. THANK YOU PAUL!!!

I am not new at arduino at all, but i watched this wideo from beggining to end and didn't fell asleep. He is good teacher.

Hey Paul, I hope you see this. I had been involved with dc electronics since high-school. Depression lead me to stop for almost 15years. In the last few months, since November 2021, I have watched all of your arduino videos. It inspired me to pick up a kit and get to work! As of now I've been able to build a little robot for my nephew and I'm almost finished with a "Simon says" handheld built and programmed from scratch. Thank you. Your videos have been educational and given me confidence to try, fail, try better. I hope to start a channel soon to discuss basics of electronics and circuit design. Again, thank you sir -Stan D'eve

I am an old person and I love the way the professor explains this. I am trying to intro my grandson to this technology and I believe I have just discovered how... Thank you. : )

I was a programmer over 40 years ago. I'm blown away by the code overhead that has disappeared in order to do simple tasks. Excellent introductory tutorial into the analog/digital industrial platform. Two thumbs up!

The most relevant Arduino Tutorial on the internet.

Thanks Paul, I've learned a ton so far and I believe that your teaching style is what's making a huge difference. I'm doing all assignments knowing that if I get stuck I'll be able to figure it out on the next video. I'm 1/2 way through and have learned so much, not just how to code but to understand how things work. I think they way you have been building upon previous lessons helps us build a solid foundation. Looking forward to the next 30+ lessons!

I never thought I would enjoy a RU-vid channel as much as I enjoy learning from Paul! Paul you are a great teacher, and I wish some of my professors would learn from you how to teach! For the assignment- I stopped seeing the blinking light at around 10 ms. Thank you Paul, I'm truly exited about this series!

I’m about half way through these videos now, and following along with my kit. I just want to stop by here and say that every engineer should be doing these tutorials. What you learn is invaluable and for only about $40 you learn as much or more than a year long college level course in electronics, and from a world class teacher to boot. Amazing!

I've just started watching this guy, and I'm already hooked on his vids with just his enthusiasm alone! He is what every teacher aspires to be. Fun and engaging.

This guy is a very good teacher, he is very enthusiastic and dedicated to his work and explains it very clearly and puts emphasis on the important things, also this guy's got like 60 of these high quality tutorials can we appreciate the effort?

Thank you Paul for this lesson, my oldest son and I bought the starter kit you recommend and are looking forward to learning adruino and programming. I'm an elevator technician by trade and he is interested in engineering so we're both excited to learn something new! We could still pick up the blinking barely at 13-13

wow, i'm a first year student of software development in college and i'm trying to see what i like and what i might want to pursue further down the road. You've just made me giggle with excitement like a 9 year old in front of my pc! Thank you very much for making these videos, you're really helping me out!!!

WOW! i have watched this series thru a few times now, kind of addicted to this guys teaching style, not cutting the video and editing like most tutorials, he makes mistakes, some on purpose, but you learn by mistakes. i advise anyone watching these, if you are wanting to learn then actually do the projects, try the homework assignments, then go look see if you got it right or not, at least try. amazing.. keep it up paul

This is great! A while ago, I started trying to learn Fusion 360 (and I still used it and love it) and I found this guy to have some of the best, easiest to follow, and simplest linear tutorial videos ever. So glad to find this video for arduinos!

Retired University Astrophysics Professor: Been quite a while since Qbasic, this is definitely so much easier as well as wonderfully explained. Kudos well done!!

oh god, I wish I had such an amazing teacher when I was learning to code the microcontrollers at university. this is my first video on your channel Paul, and I absolutely love it!

The best thing about this guy is that when he says he'll teach from scratch, he means it. Brillaint teacher. He is very clear in his insteuctions.

He is like the Bob Ross of coding! I love his videos so much, they make me so happy!

I love these tutorials! He's like the Bob Ross of Arduino

Paul, I wanted to send you a msg to thank you for your incredibly entertaining and informative Arduino lessons. Before your videos, I knew nothing about Arduino, but I am now on lesson 19 and you do such a great job of explaining things and helping us build confidence in our programming skills. I really appreciate all the work you put in to making these great videos! Thank you for bringing your personality and knowledge to RU-vid!

I love it when you say "this happy little" for every command. It's actually helping me to remember this better. Good Job Sir!

The command is, "wait for it": delay... Barney Stinson is so proud of you :)

Love this tutorial! at first i thought this was just going to be a long video that directly jumps into terms i don't even understand but this man proved me wrong fosho!

Thank you for providing these contents for free Sir! I may not know you very well but what you did will never be forgotten and the knowledge you share will forever be useful to those who come across to your videos.

The older tech guys are always the ones that can explain exactly how a piece of Equipment works instead of just how to use it but not truly understand how its possible or what the functions are actually doing to give the desired result. The people that say to plug wire into port x and upload a premade file aren't really teaching me anything because they never explained why and we're not building a bad clock because we needed one so getting it finished as quickly as possible isn't the goal. I'm glad I found this channel.

This was such a thrill! I got it at 14ms. 15 i can start to see the flicker. Thanks Paul!

Dear Paul. Such a humble character and a teacher of note. So enjoying to be back in a class. A class that inspires because of your skillset and patience. Man, I would have had distinctions in my subjects if my teachers had your skills. Arduino is brand new to me, and you've inspired me to want to learn more. This I a now taking on at 57, all because I want to atomate my greenhouse with watering automation. I have just ordered my online kit. Thank you sir, I appreciated you.

Thank you Paul! This was very exciting for me to learn, however I had the dreaded arvdude error, and it was so disheartening at first, I spent 4 hours trying to trouble shoot, ended up ordering a new arduino, then I ran a bootloader program from another tutorial to get them both working - and finally - now I have returned to these lovely, well presented tutorials. I can't wait to continue with them, but first I'm a hook a brother up with a thumbs up and a subscribe! You are like the Bob Ross of Arduino programming and I look forward to seeing you in the next one!

You have a skill or let's say a bless of simplifying any hard topic into a very simple and easy topic. You are very talented instructor sir.

I’ve just started and this was very helpful, thanks a lot! about 20.

Absolutely thank you for your responsible, thorough and interactive tutorial! I always get lost in other tutorials but yours is so engaging that I actually enjoy learning Arduino now. Cheers with a mug of iced coffee!

I just worked through this with my dad and it was very fun for the both of us 😆 I am an undergraduate for electrical engineering and looked to these videos for help with the Arduino. Super excited to watch all of these videos, thank you for putting this together 👏🏾👏🏾

Paul, I would like to thank you for all your time and hard work. I thoroughly enjoy your lessons and follow them to make my Arduino/electroic learning projects. I am retired and it is nice to learn new things at my pace (very slow) but enjoyable. Thank you once again.

I'm recently getting into Arduino, trying to become a self-made engineer. This tutorial is the best one I've seen yet, and I've seen...I don't know...a lot, at this point. Also, I got my blink down to 16.5, sorta between looking like it's dimming and blinking.

Giving these such high-quality tutorials for free!! Is absolute sweet of you ❤️❤️

I just had to take a moment to say that you are a great man Sir Paul McWhorter, for the first time I enjoyed following along a programming tutorial.

AWESOME! I've been waiting for quite a while to see your updated how-to's. Your how-to's are what got me started. Thanks so much for this.

I'm 16 and I've just started to learn arduino coding I've had a little experience in python but the move over to arduino was a bit daunting. However your tutorial has really helped me out. Thanks. Also for me I stopped seeing the led blinking at around 15 milliseconds

I lately found this gold mine of Paul McWhorter and today got my kit too :) Oh boy, that's like old times (30 years ago) in technical school but now even cooler with such a good teacher and cool kit we didn't have then. In 1995 I found out that there's Z80 and in my first job I had opportunity to work with it's family. This course starts like flashback :) Love it already! Thank you Paul being here for us and doing such a interesting course! Since it's autumn already i better drink hot coffe. No sugar, non needed indeed :) P.S. I barely saw blinking when delay was 10ms (100Hz). Also it acted that way when i didn't have delay set. What gives?

man I'm so glad I came across your video , I bought all the compponants I think I need for running Arduino stepper motors but, I had no idea how to set it up on the pc until now. wow you made it so easy to understand .thank you very much . can't wait to see your other vids.

As far as the homework assignment: I could still kiiiiinda see it blinking at 15/1000 of a second, but I could not tell at 14/1000 of a second...Very very nice tutorial! I am excited to learn more and add this to my cosplay skills!!

Thank you for this series of tutorials! This is an awesome tutorial for beginners: it's well-explained and intuitive to follow. For the assignment, I could really only tell until it reached 13ms. 15ms was discernible, but 14ms was on the brink of indiscernible for me. I look forward to following along these tutorials along with my Digital Logic Design class at my college.

Thanks Paul, this is exactly what i've been hoping to find. Just retired and enjoying flight sims. I'm starting with zero knowledge on arduino and hoping I can build my own cockpit panel by the end of your lessons.

As an old electronics tech who has programmed in Basic and C++, I find Paul's teaching methodology both informative and captivating. I'm following along with my kit (helped the brother) and my coffee. Thank you, Paul. (I've found your other channel; that message is even more compelling!)

Sir, you are absolutely amazing when it comes to explaining and demonstrating, it’s so easy to learn from you compared to others, you always seem so happy and so bright, thank you for your time!!!!

Paul, your teaching style is simply amazing!! You make these lessons so engaging and captivating that it makes me want to learn more and more... Thank you so much for putting out this series!

You are an amazing teacher, just got my kit and learning from you is a great and lovely experience. 😄

I'm still having a good time with my 2019 Arduino Uno. Never did any programming prior, just bought the kit and watched your tutorials. Keep up the great work my friend and thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us. Semper Fidelis!

These videos are absolutely amazing and I'm going to follow through hopefully as many tutorials as I can starting with the Arduino tutorials. So for todays assignment, I recorded the delay to be about 15~20 before it started to seem like the led is just on.

Thank you. This lesson was helpful to me. I appreciate all your work in creating this series. I am looking forward to my journey. Homework: 17 milliseconds is the lowest I could see flickering in the blinking light. Onward to lesson #2.

I've learned more from you in this one video than I have from my professor in the past 3 weeks lmao. Also, I managed to get the delay down to 13 ms before my eyes couldn't tell it was blinking. If we wanna get technical, 15 ms was the last where it looked like a clear blink, 13 was where I could make out the flicker

i have started this week with doing arduino and i am learning so much. i want to thank you for being a great teacher, explaining things so easy to understand. I am completing the assignments you are giving us and it is so fun. keep up the good work.

This video is never going to get old, most excellent! GBWU.

Who else is watching this while under quarantine! :D

Honestly amazing. I got about 12-13 ms

I don't know why but this class was SO entertaining, it was SO cool to watch this. I think he is gonna be one of the best teachers I ever had

I can't believe I finally found a coherent explanation!! So grateful.

Came here, and found more than I was looking for. I'm staying.

Looking forward to this series Paul. I’m a new to Arduino so this is exactly what I was looking for. Big thanks for all the great tutorials you have produced!!

You sir are the best, picked up the kit this week and was following along with the included tutorial, discovered your videos. The way you explain the process is outstanding, Older fella here, getting into a new hobby. Thanks!

I love the energy and passion. I could use more in-person teachers like you. Thank you for the free knowledge ^.^

I was about to throw the towel, then I found this channel and I said: I'll give it a second chance to the arduino.

I went to 25. This guy is good. He gets his inspiration from Bob Ross "Happy little code"

First of all, I guess this is third time I am watching you to learn as a doer and watcher. I would say, you are an excellent teacher for me and I guess all over the world. Your explanation is so easy to understand. You give every details and it helps to understand who has no idea about coding or arduino. I am sure you will be happy to hear me that my elder sister help me to collect your kit from amazon in the USA and soon it comes to me. I am going to be Doer soon. Pray for me to be your best student from watching youtube. And I also thank you RU-vid to give us you as the greatest Arduino Teacher. God bless you. Thank you.

7:27 Love how he aggressively displays arduino

Yes. I finally feel like I can code. You’re an excellent teacher!

My man said “hook a brother up” 😂

He is a great teacher, I had never written code before and thanks to him I am learning how.

I feel like this is asmr and learning nice job

I've never been so happy to see a red light lmao.

What they are asking you to do, is 'hook a brother up'.

You are better than any professor I had in college. At 50 as A Mechanical engineer I have avoided programming for the last 2 decades. I was into Turbo Pascal in the early 90's and am loving how close this language is. With that pascal knowledge I was able to answer the question ahead so I think I will have no problems picking it up. My concern is with things like sending PPM signals but one step at a time right? Thank you so much my friend!

For anyone who did the assignment, I wonder if you got different results 500ms- I could see the blinking 400 ms - I could see the blinking 200 ms - I could see the blinking 100 ms - I could see the blinking 70 ms - I could see the blinking 50 ms - I could see the blinking 30 ms - I could see the blinking 25 ms - I could see the blinking 20 ms - I could see the blinking 15ms - I could see the blinking 10ms - I couldn't perceive the blinking anymore what did everyone else get I'm just wondering if different people can see the blinking differently