Hacking Electronics: Learning Electronics with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, Second Edition

Book Preface

This is a book about “hacking” electronics. It is not a formal, theory-based book about electronics. Its sole aim is to equip the reader with the skills he or she needs to use electronics to make something, whether it’s starting from scratch, connecting together modules, or adapting existing electronic devices for some new use.
You will learn how to experiment and get your ideas into some kind of order, so that what you make will work. Along the way, you’ll gain an appreciation for why things work and the limits of what they can do, and learn how to make prototypes on solderless breadboard, how
to solder components directly to each other, and how to use protoboard to make more complex soldered circuits.
You will also learn how to use the popular Arduino microcontroller board, which has become one of the most important tools available to the electronics hacker. There are over 20 examples of how to use an Arduino with electronics in this book.
You will also learn how to use the Raspberry Pi (a tiny Linux computer) as a tool for electronics hacking.
Electronics has changed. This is a modern book that avoids theory you will likely never use and instead concentrates on how you can build things using readymade modules when they are available. There is, after all, no point in reinventing the wheel.

Some of the things explained and described in the book include

● Using LEDs, including high-power Lumileds and Addressable LED strips (Neopixels)
● Using LiPo battery packs and buck-boost power supply modules
● Using sensors to measure light, temperature, acceleration, sound level, and color
● Interfacing the Raspberry Pi and Arduino with external electronics
● Using servo motors

Some of the things described in the book that you can make along the way include

● A smartcard RFID tag reader
● An Internet-controlled hacked electric toy
● A device for measuring color
● An ultrasonic rangefinder
● A remote control robotic rover
● An accelerometer-based version of the “egg and spoon” race
● An audio amplifier
● A bug made from a hacked MP3 FM transmitter
● Working brakes and head lights that can be added to a slot car
● A smart-card reader/spoofer

You Will Need

This is a very practical, hands-on type of book. You will therefore need some tools and components to get the most out of it.
As far as tools go, you will need little more than a multimeter and soldering equipment.
You should also have a Raspberry Pi, or Arduino or both, as quite a few of the projects use these handy boards.
Every component used in this book is listed in the Appendix, along with sources where it can be obtained. The majority of the components can be found in a starter kit from SparkFun, but most electronic starter kits will provide a lot of what you will need.
In many of the “how-tos,” there will be a You Will Need section. This will refer to a code in the Appendix that explains where to get the component.