I received my Arduino UNO!

Another victim of Mr. Wizard's 'science'

After spending the last month doing a lot of late night reading about electronics, schematics, data sheets, and LED's I finally decided to order some electronics from Jameco.  I ordered a few grab bags with servo's and motors as well as capacitors, resistors and switches.  I also ordered the Light Organ kit to fix an old 60's era lamp that used to be able to pick up audio via an old electret condenser mic (I think that's what it used, haven't torn it all apart yet) and lights inside would 'dance' to the beat, you know what the 60's had instead of a computer running visualizations of MP3's.

Awesome thing was just 60 minutes into playing with the Arduino I was able to control a couple of motors with the UNO and added a couple of POTS to make it easy to vary the speed of the mirrors and was able to make a very simple laser light show that looked a lot like a spirograph drawing.  With the two motors having variable speed I was able to dial in all kinds of weird shapes.  I had been thinking it was going to take weeks to be able to do anything with the UNO, but the first evening I was able to try out all kinds of ideas and get a quick idea of this little products huge potential.

Arduino UNO ordered from Jameco... it's like Electronics Porn.

I'll keep posting my progress, frustrations and (hopefully) success as I work on a few projects.  My plans are to do a few preset kits and basic Arduino projects and then begin building some of my own creations.  I'm mulling over the idea of documenting all the parts and process so I can post it up on Instructables.  I'm relying so heavily on the community that has come up around this amazing product that I really want to support and help enrich the community.  Since all of this is built on the backs of those that geeked out on electronics well before I ever got the idea.

Finally I'd like to thank LadyAda of Adafruit Industries it was her thorough Arduino guide that convinced me to dive into electronics.  No, I have never met her or even exchanged email, but her website, guides and store should be a guide to others for how a electronics hobby kit website should be run and be leveraged to build a community.