ELEGOO Mega R3 Project The Most Complete Ultimate Starter Kit Barebone PCs Compatible with Arduino IDE with Tutorial

Initial Thoughts As a Computer Scientist & Engineer doing teaching and research in robotics and embedded systems I’m used to using Arduino Uno’s for teaching and development work, but I found in a few recent projects, that the trust Arduino Uno’s were struggling with memory, digital I/O and a lack of serial ports, so looked at the alternatives including the MEGA 2560 R3, see below. Arduino Uno R3 Mega 2560 R3 Digital I/O Pins 14 54 Analogue Inputs 6 16 PWM 6 15 Serial Ports 1 4 On Board Memory 32KB Flash 256KB Flash EEPROM 1kB 4kB SRAM 2kB 8kB As can be seen for projects requiring more digital inputs and PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) used by servos for example, the MEGA is a significant boost in use. So I looked around for a kit that would allow me to get started with some development work and this one from ELEGOO seemed like a bold statement kit, i.e. the Most Complete Starter Kit, well how can I resist that. Unwrapping the Kit Upon receiving the kit, I was pleasantly surprised with the extra packaging placed around the box stamped with an ELEGOO label, and promptly opened it to find a very slick looking kit as shown in Figure 1. The box was bigger than I was expecting and actually quite heavy, yet I still wondered how they could claim to have the most complete Starter Kit in a box of this size, so proceeded to open the box to find out. Inside I could see a familiar feel to ELEGOO kit, • CD Rom • Thank you card with direct contact details, such a relief with things bought over the internet. • A key to the component inside in the ld, and a plethora of components for doing some development work with. • All packaged carefully, as though care had been put into the kits presentation. • Rummaging around the box I located the MEGA tucked away carefully in the front of the box, in a very wise anti-static bag. The bags are useful as the human body and plastic can cause significant electrical discharge to components in the several thousand volts range that can cause unseen damage in microelectronic components like development boards. Build Quality Well build quality is a significant issue for me when buying kit, as I like to build things that can be demoed for at least a year or two. Having set up a range of small demo projects in robotics and embedded systems and seen them prematurely fail or break, I was keen to see what the quality of the main board in this kit was like. As can be seen from the screen shots in Figure 3 the board has been well made, features all the components I would expect to see, and has some very useful information silk screen printed onto the PCB including the Comm’s pins for Serial I/O and the PWM for servo control. Pins on the opposite side are labelled very clearly, and the pin headers are also printed with information on the outside which is handy when a shield is attached. Getting Started with the KIT I decided to build a 3 small projects to test the board, • LCD Display • A temperature sensor • A Maze • An RFID Reader Using the kit in the box. LCD Display I wired up the 1602A LCD included with a 10K pot (included) and resistor for the LCD back light (100ohm) just in case. No problems there. A very vibrant display which was easy to read. LCD panel was pre-wired ready for use, and felt robust being inserted and removed. Temperature Sensor For the next test I decided to use the DHT11 Humidity & Temperature sensor as strangely I haven’t actually used one before, I generally use just LM35 temperature Sensor. For this one, have to confess that the DHT11 could do with labelling up of the VCC and GND as differing images on the internet have these pins in different locations, depending how the board has been wired. I started with the code on the Elegoo CD included, copied the library file for the DHT11 into my Arduino Library folder, then modified the sample code to work with the LCD as shown. As can be seen from the image, the pin closest to the “S” on the DHT11 board I connected to a digital input. The second to VCC +5V and the 3rd to 0V gnd. All worked as expected, even got my fan heater close to it to have a look at what would happen, and the temperature went up while humidity dropped, which is what I was expecting. MAZE Next I decided to create a simple maze on the MAX7219 8 x 8 matrix As can be seen in Figure 6, pretty straightforward to wire up, I wired VCC to +5V (Arduino) GND to 0V (Arduino) DIN to pin 12 (Arduino) CS to pin 11 (Arduino) CLK to Pin 10 (Arduino) Worked as expected which is always good. What can I say I like display technologies? RFID READER I decided to try the RC522 RFID card reader/writer with the mega, and to see if I could detect the tag Remember with the Arduino Mega slight changes need to occur with the Elegoo code included, or in fact any code, so heed this table that’s included UNO MEGA RST 9 46 SDA/SS 10 53 MOSI 11 51 MISO 12 50 SCK 13 52 And change these of course #define RST_PIN 9 // Configurable, see typical pin layout above #define SS_PIN 10 // Configurable, see typical pin layout above Or it won’t work. ANYWAY worked a treat and read the card included and detected the tag type and data on it. Anyway Figure 7 shows my progress with the code included. Closing Comments Though the kit does cost considerably more than the UNO starter kit, consideration has to be taken into account of the significant number of additional components that are included with this kit such as the RFID BOARD, MAX 7219 LED MATRIX, POWER Supply, HC-SR04 ultrasonic unit, Joystick, plus so many I struggle to list, all soldered ready for use, which is a blessing as many items bought separately are not pre-soldered and so unusable out of the box. I would have to say at this point that this kit truly does seem to be a very comprehensive kit for use with an ARDUINO MEGA 2560 (that is also included). In fairness I struggled to think of a project I normally create for teaching, that I couldn’t make with this kit alone. Lovely stuff Elegoo.

I had been curious about Arduino for a while, but to get plenty of value out of one, you need plenty of I/O devices to interface with it. Luckily this has plenty! The box it comes in is rather good actually, and packed full of goodies! If you add up the cost of everything, it would certainly come to more than what the kit costs. It's nice to see that the modules and components are very good quality, and they haven't just gone with the cheapest. I was hesitant to buy a board that wasn't made by Arduino, but this is extremely well made. I had no issues whatsoever connecting to my laptop and for the Arduino IDE to recognise the board. For my first project, I actually used a GPS module that wasn't included in the kit, but I wired it to the board and used the 16x2 LCD display to show my location. It performed just fine with no issues. I wasn't going to bother with the CD, but after browsing the projects I couldn't resist! In my opinion, it is perfectly fine for beginners with very clear instructions, and shows you where the code and libraries are and how to use them. I was curious to try the RFID module and literally had it running in less than 10 minutes. Next was the 8x8 LED display, with the code having a nice scrolling demo display. All instructions were easy to follow and diagrams very clear. As a starting point, you cannot do better for the price. It's a good stepping stone and I would absolutely encourage playing around with the code. After that, there are millions of pages full of resources to tinker with. There are no real negatives. I suppose if you're not computer literate it may take a little longer to grasp, but not out of reach. The included wires aren't the best, but they do the job just fine and you can obviously use whatever wires you're used to. One of the best and most interesting things I think I've ever bought! Well done Elegoo. You have a brilliant quality product here.

Loads of components to work with that are good quality. Progress through the pdf instruction manual and build knowledge and understanding. I built a PCB kit recently and realised I didn’t really know how it worked. So I bought myself this. Still being a kid at heart, I love tinkering on a kit in some form….this teaches, it’s good to learn new things at my age, keeps the brain going strong. This kit, will occupy you for quite a while, with the best of both worlds, tinkering, making stuff and learning….All comes neatly stored in a well made case. Plug and play to my windows pc. I advise you to visit the Elegoo website and download the latest libraries for your chosen kit. These are installed, uploaded onto the main board you connect to when going through all the lessons. You learn coding too. All in all, well worth my money.

I've had this a few months now and decided to do a review. The first thing to say is that the kit is extremely well packaged and the specification is very comprehensive. There is everything here that you will need to become proficient in both arduino programming and the underlying hardware theory. The manual and projects are well set up and easy to follow. I can imagine that the kit could form the basis of term or two of lessons in a school. The only reason I have dropped a star in my rating is the due to a fault on the breadboard power supply. if you search amazon for a breadboard supply you will see many that are identical to the one supplied here but with different brand names. If you read the reviews of all those supplies you will find a significant number that complain of high voltage on the 5 volt rail. In all those cases, unregulated input voltage is being passed straight out to the 5 volt rail. That was the case with the one I had supplied in the kit. The 3.3 volt output works correctly. Elegoo have a circuit diagram of the power supply on their website. Looking at that, the only way to get input voltage on the 5 volt line and still get regulated 3.3 volts on the 3.3 line is if the 5 volt regulator is short circuited, either internally or through a board fault. Don't let my complaint about the supply put you off buying this kit. It is still a well presented, comprehensive kit which will teach you a lot about arduino programming and hardware interfacing. However, please check both outputs of the supply before connecting to anything. I managed to blow six 74HC series logic chips when the supply put 11 volts on to chips rated at 6 volts maximum.

The kit is comprehensive. Comes in a well designed case that keeps all the components tidy. The Arduino software is good you can learn coding in byte size chunks seeing the result as you go. You need to load Arduino software so you can write the code to program the kit. The browser version didn't recognise the Elegoo control board but watching the video and downloading the software solved all the problems. The Elefoo documentation we downloaded is terrible and only refers to ancient versions of Windows. We didn't use the code library in the download. There is a comprehensive code library accessible from in the current Aduino design software. Luckily using the Teacher of Computing YouTube channel we got everything sorted out linking up the PC loading the Arduino agent and design software and carrying out all the configuration. Getting the led to flash at different speeds gives you a real sense of achievement. I disagree that you need a knowledge electronics to get started you only need a basic understanding which you can get from YouTube. My 8 year old grandson mastered the wiring-up very quickly. The coding is more demanding and needs patience. The programming I learnt 50 years ago is came back in no time. The projects go from simple to very demanding and anyone of any age would find it interesting and good fun.

What a great starter kit, very comprehensive. I’ve not started using yet, I’m taking my time by reading through the downloaded tutorial which in itself is excellent.

Fantastic

As described, great value and fast delivery. Nice storage box included. Very pleased.