As part of O’Reilly’s Cookbok series, the Arduino Cookbook offers a wide selection of recipes for solving a variety of “problems” you might run into when programming the Arduino series of micro-controllers. The recipes range from basics like connecting your Arduino to a Mac or PC and formatting your code to more advanced topics like controlling arrays of LEDs and wireless communications.
In general the recipes are short and to the point. Each provides a code example and a reasonably detailed explanation for what is going on. This isn’t the kind of book you’d read cover to cover, but it is an excellent reference to have on the shelf after you’ve walked through a few basic Arduino tutorials. Whenever you run into a “how do I?” question or just run out of ideas you should be able to get some guidance and maybe inspiration.
I found Chapter 6, Getting Input From Sensors, particularly interesting. With a separate example for each of the most common sensors it provides a good starting point for gathering and reacting to real-world conditions.
Full disclosure: I received a free PDF version of this book for free in exchange for writing this review. I’ve followed the review guidelines set by O’Reilly. Especially (and always) “First and foremost, we want nothing but complete honesty in your reviews”.
