Late last year Sparkfun introduced the ‘mbed Starter Kit’ and it's finally back in stock! This kit was pulled together in conjunction with Georgia Tech who use if for several classes and is designed to be an introduction to microcontroller based electronics! The kit includes the LPC1768 platform and all the components necessary to complete 10 tutorials created by SparkFun. Best of all, no soldering is required!

The tutorials cover embedded concepts such as:

• LEDs (what good microcontroller project doesn't?)
• Pulse-width modulation (PWM)
• Interrupt-driven events
• LCD graphics
• Communication protocols (I2C, SPI, and UART)
• Sensors (accelerometer and temperature)
• Connecting to the Internet (IoT)
• USB (device and host)
• Logging data to an SD card
• Playing sounds

Note: A keyboard and an Ethernet-based Internet connection are needed for two of the tutorials.

The kit can be purchased from Sparkfun and is a great introduction to mbed. Many of the concepts from the tutorials can be integrated into your own microcontroller projects.