Help BEFORE the first project

[racerfern]

I have a couple of projects in mind and it appears an Arduino is the way to go. I'm a total newbie and wonder what I should start with. Unlike RPi3 there are loads of choices or so it seems.

Of all the kits available, is one more useful than others? Looking perhaps to some one wire stuff and perhaps some general knowledge to keep me curious.

It seems some of the kits are a lot of fluff...

Any comments are appreciated.

[lhfarm]

I have a couple of projects in mind and it appears an Arduino is the way to go. I'm a total newbie and wonder what I should start with. Unlike RPi3 there are loads of choices or so it seems.

Of all the kits available, is one more useful than others? Looking perhaps to some one wire stuff and perhaps some general knowledge to keep me curious.

It seems some of the kits are a lot of fluff...

Any comments are appreciated.

I was looking for a way to monitor water pressure and found just what I wanted using the Arduino. Being a total newbie, I had to go searching to find out what an Arduino was. I found this tutorial - http://www.toptechboy.com/arduino-lessons/

This guy is a high school teacher and it was just my speed. He makes a recommendation for a kit, but I think any of the ones offered on Amazon and other places will work. I didn't complete all the projects, but plan to go back at some point and build the GPS tracker.

Once I had completed my project, I tried a couple of others and was able to find good videos for those as well. But the tutorial really was a requirement for me.

Barry

[racerfern]

Thanks for the link. In fact part of this project is monitoring water consumption to determine if there is a water leak. I'll add this to my required reading.

[lhfarm]

Here is the project I copied. https://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=175455

I am running the code on the Arduino and sending data to/from HS. I added an LCD, just because I could. I'm monitoring my water pump. We are located on a hill and have to use a booster pump for the "city" water. If the "city" water gets interrupted, the pump will just spin and eventually burn up. So I shut the pump down if the pressure drops below 25PSI.

The Arduino is in my utility room. The pump status comes from HS. The pressure and temp are sent to HS whenever there is a change. It really isn't that warm. I have the temp senor (1-wire) in side a plastic one-serving food container. I'm going to move to the outside.

Barry