I ordered an Arduino Duemilanove a few months ago, and other than simply testing it to see that it starts up I haven’t touched it. It’s been lying on my desk, making me feel guilty every time I saw it.

Today, having a few spare hours and because I just finished reading “Programming Embedded Systems”, I decided it was time to finally do something with it.

I spent ~3 hours soldering the Proto-Shield that came with it. It was the first time I ever did any soldering and I think it turned out OK, after some help from Dad.

Then, I made a simple ‘Hello, World’ application that changes LEDs according to a button press. What can I say, the amount of satisfaction from such a simple thing is so big! Maybe, it has to do with the fact that as a software developer, I rarely do things that have a physical effect.

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