The history of the Arduino combines art and technology. For more information, visit http://aliciagibb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/New-Media-Art-Design-and-the-Arduino-Microcontroller-2.pdf.
More relevant background will come from the Getting Started with Arduino by author Massimo Banzi, which is the standard starter book. Also, most publishers, like Packt Publishing, have dozens of books on Arduino. We won't duplicate any of that material. We will show how data collection and analysis works with customized gadgets.
The Arduino supports the idea of physical computing—computing that interacts with the real world through sensors and actuators. To this end, the Arduino board has a processor, some pins that the processor can sense, and some pins that the processor can control. There's also a small reset button and a USB connector, plus miscellaneous parts like a crystal for the clock and a connector for power that can be used instead of the USB connector.
Each...