Arduino Sensors Kit, 37 in 1

An organiser where every compartment is a module on a small board: a sensor, a button, a buzzer, an LED. Thirty-seven of them, with an insert sheet of pictures that tells you which is which.

This is a kit for the first step. The question “how do I even measure temperature with a microcontroller” gets answered here in ten minutes: take a module, three wires, a library example, and there is your number. What to do next becomes clear on real hardware rather than in theory.

What is in it

The exact contents are on the insert, but broadly:

• Environment: temperature and humidity, an analogue temperature sensor, light
• Position and motion: tilt, shock and vibration, a hall sensor, a reed switch
• People: buttons, a rotary encoder, a touch sensor, a pulse sensor
• Light and IR: LED modules in various colours, an IR transmitter and receiver, a laser module
• Sound: a microphone, active and passive buzzers

Almost everything connects the same way: power, ground and one signal pin, analogue or digital.

What not to expect from it

This is a learning kit, not instrumentation. The sensors here give you an order of magnitude and the fact that something happened — “it got warmer”, “something knocked”, “the light came on”. If you need real accuracy, get a proper sensor and read its datasheet rather than this organiser.

And the modules are built for Arduino's 5 V logic. With a 3.3 V board some of them will work, some will not, and some will put five volts on a signal pin and ruin an input. Check before you connect.

How to use

1. Find the module on the insert and take it out of its compartment.
2. Work out what chip is on the board and find an example: most of these modules have a ready library.
3. Build it on a breadboard. Jumpers and breadboards are in the component boxes.
4. Put the module back in the same compartment. A kit with everything mixed up stops being a kit: searching it takes longer than ordering a new one.

Access

The organiser is in the hackspace room, so a plan that includes hackspace access is required. No induction is needed.