I heard about Arduino, seen it but never had the interest to learn it until now. Never too late to learn. Mixing Arduino with model railroading hobby is not something new. I am sure there are plenty of sites including YouTube channels and Facebook groups on this topic. I am totally new in this area of electronics: thus, shall not profess to know anything.

My intention here is to journalise my learning experience and how I can mix Arduino with my hobby and at the same time picking up new skills like simple programming, electronics including learning to solder and differentiate between different components and able to differentiate between ampere and voltage and how to calculate resistance. The last time I touched this topic was more than 35 years ago and I was a really bad student. Physics was not my favorite subject then.

Along the way, there are many people who will be my “teachers”. I list some incredible sites that I use to explore this new knowledge:

• Official Arduino site
• Paul McWhorter’s Technology Tutorials – Arduino Lessons (he has other great tutorials in his blog Top Tech Boy).
• Arduino Course for Beginners, Arduino Course for Everyone – Open-Source Electronics Platform (YouTube)
• Alan Smitth’s Introduction to Arduino: A Piece of Cake! (PDF Download)
• Steve Massikker’s Arduino Railway (also on Arduino Forum, and his YouTube channel)
• Digital Town (also his YouTube channel)
• The N-Scaler on Arduino
• Start Hardware Projekte und Tutorials für Arduino (Deutsch); auch Arduino-Anleitung

For Arduino emulator or simulator, you can use:

• Autocad TinkerCAD
• Wokwi ESP32
• Fritzing electronics made easy

Happy learning and experimenting!