There are so many great arduino projects out there, I’m really interested in making some hardware toys with it.
Does anyone have any experience with it? Can you point me towards any recommended resources or beginners guides?
I want to make stuff like this
I’ve thought about it, but i got so much else to concentrate on, so i haven’t taken the step yet.
I’d probably buy a starter kit or two and experiment with it a bit. There are some really cheap kits on aliexpress.com, though i don’t really know how useful they are.
I’ve got a sparkfun redboard, one of the many arduino clones out there:https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12757
If you don’t have a bunch of wires and extra stuff to play with, I might recommend something like the inventor’s kit:https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12060?gclid=CP_Oi5OK_sYCFQQHaQod_rMBPA
What’s your experience with programming? Ever played systems like this?
If not, I’d first say: you’re going to spend a ton of time learning the system and making lights blink before you get to doing something like that novation video… unless you have someone there to tell you how everything works.
Do you know how you’d like to connect the arduino to your devices? I’m not sure if you can use the usb interface on the arduino, or if it’s better to do something like this:https://www.arduino.cc/en/tutorial/midi
Either way, you’ll probably need this too:http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/MIDILibrary
Good luck!
Your links doesn’t work and i noticed some of the stuff on the page you mention is way more expensive than similar stuff on AliExpress, i mean like maybe up to 5 times or more expensive!
There are also an insane amount of modules there like these MIDI interface modules:
USB module, 2$:
Imagine what you can control with these 37 sensor modules for under 18 bucks:
Starter kits:
Maybe top your project with some illuminated buttons similar to these would do the trick?http://www.aliexpress.com/item/High-Quality-Ring-Light-Red-Led-Illuminated-Metal-Self-Latching-Push-Button-16mm-5-Pin-Boat/32391082637.html
Doh! I don’t know how that happened. Apparently, only that inventor’s kit link works now.Mah bad.
Yeah the redboard is $20. The inventor’s kit comes with a crapload of stuff probably not immediately useful in this case, but I recommended it as a learning platform, as OP doesn’t really seem to have much experience here. That said … awesome starter kits you’ve listed!
Good looking out for the cost. The few places I’ve seen had things like the Uno and Redboard/kits within $5 of each other. I guess I’m further out of the loop than I thought!
It was especially the starter kit i saw, on the page you linked to, where the price seemed unreasonably high at 150$. There seems to be a lot more components in the kit i linked to at 35$. 
Thanks for the info chaps. I’ve got a bit of experience coding - some lua in Renoise, and over 10 years of using pd / maxmsp.
A friend of mine is an absolute coder animal but he doesnt have time to show me how to do it, so I said I’ll go off and learn as much as I can. We want to start working on arduino projects together one day
I tried to link to this earlier on the arduino site, but … failed miserably. I guess they put their stuff up on GitHub, heres the Midi library:https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library/releases/tag/4.2
Edit: geez I guess I suck at posting links here. I think it works now??