30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius

I had a lot of time on my hands this holiday season and decided to get an arduino kit (I have solar panels I want to aim for max efficiency during the day, on a VW van.) A lot of intro titles seemed interesting but Simon Monk's 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius grabbed my attention. Good title!

Sadly, this is no guide to building shark-mountable lasers. There are however a lot of simple, short projects that help you understand building with an arduino controller. Monk uses very clear pictures and schematics to show what needs doing. His text is precise and understandable. The steps are easy to follow and the thing you should learn from an exercise is blatantly obvious. Most importantly these projects are fun! I'm not just making an LED blink or a speaker chirp when I work with this book. Projects like the temperature monitor and computer controlled fan are giving me the foundation I need to aim my solar panels. The results and functions are easy to apply to the types of things I want to do with an arduino.

Lasers would have been nice.

30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius by Simon Monk

• [Beryllium9]

  Real evil genius doesn’t come from a book – it comes from the heart.

  The cold, black heart.

  Muahahahah.

  • [Malic]

     …in a box. Packed in salt.

• [drukqs]

  Just practice your timing and your builds, make sure your macro is solid, and you can be like the pros on Evil G… oh wait, never mind.

• [sisyphus321]

  From the table of contents:

  “Project 25 Servo-Controlled Laser”

  Ok, so mounting the device on a shark isn’t covered. But c’mon, does he have to spell *everything* out?

  • [Halloween_Jack]

     See, that’s where you realize that it really is for evil geniuses, not evil paint-by-numbers, IKEA instructions types.

• [showme]

  The “for the Evil Genius” is actually a series of books, like the “for Dummies” books:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_kk_1?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aevil+genius+series&keywords=evil+genius+series&ie=UTF8&qid=1357243102

• [Simon Monk]

  Thanks for mentioning my book and glad you like it. 

  There is a bit more evil, in my book ’15 Dangerously Mad projects for the Evil Genius’. I wanted to call it ‘Dangerous Projects for the Evil Genius’ but my publisher toned down the title. But you will find a trebuchet and coil gun design there. Muhhhaa. Simon Monk

  • [Halloween_Jack]

     I like the cut of your jib, mister!

• [David Carroll]

  Just bought the book Simon.  We had a Christmas decorating contest at work, and thanks to a Arduino, our team won a free lunch!
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw43xbYPM0w