Follow your Arduino starter kit in the browser
Beginner
Or see every lesson.
- 261parts on the bench
- 31boards running now
- 1.00xreal time, on every board
The circuit running above is the second project in the official Arduino Starter Kit book: a green lamp that waits, and two red lamps that flash while you hold the button. Hold it and see. Nothing to install, and no kit needed to try it.
Mokxi’s starter kit companion follows the projects of three popular kits, in the order each kit teaches them, with every project built from the parts that kit ships and checked step by step on a real Arduino Uno simulation. Use it beside your kit to see a circuit working before you wire it, to find the wire you got wrong, or to keep going when a part is missing or broken. And if you do not have a kit yet, it is the best way to find out whether you will enjoy one.
There is one course for each kit, because a kit owner follows one book from the front. Pick yours below and start at the first lesson, or jump to the project you are on.
Want the step-by-step version? The lesson "Start this project as a lesson" walks through this with checkpoints.
Open the lessonThree kits, three courses
The project book course follows the fifteen projects in the book that comes with the official Arduino Starter Kit, from wiring your first loop to pressing another gadget’s buttons with an optocoupler. Fifteen lessons, about ten hours.
The 24-lesson course follows the tutorial of the Elegoo Uno R3 Super Starter Kit: LEDs and buttons, two kinds of buzzer, a servo, an ultrasonic sensor, a DHT11, a joystick, an IR remote, an LCD, shift registers, seven-segment displays, a DC motor, a relay and a stepper. Twenty-four lessons, about fourteen hours.
The 33-lesson course follows the tutorial of the Elegoo Uno R3 Most Complete Starter Kit. It has everything in the 24-lesson course, in that kit’s order, plus a membrane keypad, an LED matrix, the GY-521 accelerometer, a PIR motion sensor, a water level sensor, a real-time clock, a sound sensor, an RFID reader and a stepper on a rotary encoder. Thirty-three lessons, about twenty hours.
The two Elegoo courses share their lessons wherever the kits share a project, and your progress belongs to the lesson. Finish the servo on one course and it is finished on the other.
How each lesson works
Every lesson is four steps. First, find the parts from your kit on the canvas and follow each wire back to the board, so you know what goes where before you touch a jumper. Second, press Run and watch it work. Third, make it respond: hold the button, drag the sensor’s slider, press a key on the remote. Fourth, build it on your bench, with the one or two things that tend to go wrong on real hardware and something to try next.
The middle two steps are checked by the simulator, not by you. Press Check and Mokxi looks at what the circuit actually did: whether the LED lit, whether the servo reached 90 degrees, whether the serial monitor printed the reading. You can only pass by making it happen.
The sketch for every project is in the editor beside the circuit, with comments that explain the why as well as the what. Change a number and run it again. Nothing you do can break a part, and Undo is always there.
Built from the parts in the box
Each project uses the parts its kit ships, wired the way the kit’s lesson wires them wherever that works: the SG90 servo on pin 9, the HC-SR04 on two pins, the LCD1602 on six, the 28BYJ-48 on its ULN2003 board, the 74HC595 on three. The sketches are Mokxi’s own, written to be read, and they use the same libraries your kit’s code does, such as Servo, LiquidCrystal, DHT, IRremote, Stepper and RTClib, so what you learn here carries straight over.
Where the simulator and your bench differ, the lesson says so. A few examples. The book’s knock lock listens with the piezo as a microphone; the simulator’s piezo only plays sound, so that circuit uses a vibration sensor in its place, with the same rhythm code. The color-mixing lamp’s gels are replaced by a light slider on each sensor. The MOSFET in the motor pinwheel is the IRF540N, a close cousin of the IRF520 the book uses. And the project that sends a knob’s reading to a Processing sketch checks the board’s half, because the Processing half runs on your computer.
Some kit lessons are about the computer rather than the circuit, such as installing the Arduino IDE. Mokxi needs no install, so those become a lesson on the serial monitor, which is the part of setup you will use every day.
Before you buy a kit
A starter kit is a good first purchase, and it is easier to choose one once you have built a few of its projects. Work through the first chapter of a course here and you will know whether you like wiring circuits, writing code, or both, and which kit’s projects you want to build for real.
The courses also help if a part in your kit is missing, dead, or still in the mail: do that lesson here and carry on, then come back to the bench when the part arrives.
For teachers and clubs
Classes often share a handful of kits between many students. With the companion, everyone can build every project in the browser, and the kits go to whoever is ready to wire one up. Each lesson opens from a link with no sign-in, and each step is checked automatically, so you can see who has passed what.
Create a free account to save your progress across devices and to keep your own versions of every project.
Questions
Do I need to own a kit?
No. Every project runs in the simulator, so you can do every lesson without any hardware. If you do have a kit, the lessons tell you how to build each project on your bench too.
Is this made by Arduino or Elegoo?
No. Mokxi is independent. The courses follow the projects in those kits, in the same order, so kit owners can use them side by side, but the lessons, circuits and sketches are Mokxi’s own.
My kit is a different brand. Will this still help?
Very likely. Most Uno starter kits ship much the same parts and teach much the same projects. Pick the course whose list looks most like your manual, or jump straight to the lessons for the parts you have.
Does the code run on a real Arduino?
Yes. The sketches are ordinary Arduino sketches using the usual libraries. Copy one into the Arduino IDE, upload it to your Uno, and wire the circuit as the canvas shows.
Is it free?
Yes. Every lesson in all three courses is free, with no account needed to start. A free account saves your progress.
Keep going
Build this for real
Open the editor, change a value and watch the number move with it. Nothing to install, and no account needed.