ELEGOO Mega R3 Project The Most Complete Ultimate Starter Kit Barebone PCs Compatible with Arduino IDE w/TUTORIAL, MEGA R3 Controller Board, LCD 1602, Servo, Stepper Moto
ELEGOO Industries – Ingenious and fun DIY electronics and Robot kits
74HC595 Shift Register and LEDs
74HC595 is a Serial to Parallel Converter which has eight outputs (perfect) and three inputs that you use to feed data into it a bit at a time. This chip makes it a little slower to drive the LEDs (you can only change the LEDs about 500,000 times a second instead of 8,000,000 a second) but it’s still really fast, way faster than humans can detect, so it’s worth it! 74HC595 shift register is a type of chip that holds what can be thought of as eight memory locations, each of which can either be a 1 or a 0. To set each of these values on or off, we feed in the data using the ‘Data’ and ‘Clock’ pins of the chip.
LCD1602 Display module
LCD1602 module is a display that has an LED backlight and can display two rows with up to 16 characters on each row. You can see the rectangles for each character on the display and the pixels that make up each character. The display is just white on blue and is intended for showing text. Lining up the display with the top of the breadboard helps to identify its pins without too much counting, especially if the breadboard has its rows numbered with row 1 as the top row of the board. Do not forget, the long yellow lead that links the slider of the pot to pin 3 of the display. The ‘pot’ is used to control the contrast of the display.
DC Motors and L293D Transistor
In this project you will learn how to control a small DC motor using an R3 controller board and a L293D transistor, which is a very useful chip. It can actually control two motors independently. We are just using half the chip in this lesson, most of the pins on the right hand side of the chip are for controlling a second motor. L293D is quadruple high-current half-H drivers and designed to provide bidirectional drive currents of up to 1 A at voltages from 4.5 V to 36 V. The L293D is also designed to provide bidirectional drive currents of up to 600-mA at voltages from 4.5 V to 36 V and drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, dc and bipolar stepping motors, as well as other high-current/high-voltage loads in positive-supply applications.
| Weight: | 975 g |
| Dimensions: | 34.8 x 21.34 x 4.57 cm; 975.22 Grams |
| Brand: | ELEGOO |
| Model: | UK-EL-KIT-008 |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | ELEGOO |
Right, I’m 30, over 11 years ago, I’ve finished my electronic technician college, and life went in a much different way.
Now, not long ago, I’ve got that old spark in me, I want to go back 🙂 and I tell you, this kit, it’s not just electronics, not just programming, it’s a lot of joy, fun, brain twists, it is amazing. The stuff you can create, from not soo much useful projects to projects you want to hang on a wall and call all your friends to see (just check your local guidance regarding covid restrictions 😉 )
I would recommend it to tech your kids, it is safe and easy enough, tech yourself, to people who want to start playing with electronics, people who want to learn to program but also see its effect, not just plain code.
It sort of feels like once it arrived on my doorstep, something has changed in me (it’s a bit emotional always been regreding that I went away from my trade, hahaha) so it maybe not as much lifechanging for you, but it sparked a massive joy in me, which I forgot for a long time. Thank you Arduino, and especially ELEGOO cause the kits you make are available and are available at low entry cost for everyone.
Good selection of components allowing many electronic circuits to be created. Follow for Paul MacWorter demonstrations on YouTube for good instructive projects using the Elegoo kit.
Great value for money
hours of fun as you learn
a must for students and hobbyists
A comprehensive kit to get you started experimenting with the Arduino platform. The whole kit is excellent quality with the exception of some inconsistency in the ‘grab’ of the breadboard contacts and slightly flimsy jumper cables. This doesn’t detract from the usability of the Arduino though.
It’s great fun learning how electronics and programming work and there are more than enough options to give you some ideas for project and prototyping builds.
One criticism would be that the code examples that are designed to be loaded in, would be better to learn from if you had to type them out yourself with some direction. The included pdf sometimes falls a little short in diving directions to alter or modify the code of each build for getting varying results.
If you have any interest in getting started with Arduino, definitely get a kit like his.
As a programmer with an interest in electronics, I found this exciting to use. Very easy to program which makes it great for beginners. Includes a vast variety of components. There are an infinite number of projects you can make with this.
I wish they supplied a USB rather than a CD but not a problem as everything can be found online.
Good range of experiments, tried most but find that codes supplied need checking before running.
Example codes are “poor”, connectors and blocks are poor quality.
This was bought as part of my grandson’s Christmas and he was really pleased with it.
Love it. Great introduction to electronics and firmware. Have a ball as a project. Makes you feel smart. Haha
The step-by-step document is very informative and easy to follow. Everything in the box is well packaged and I really enjoyed going through the tasks. Also, they email back the next day which is really helpful.
300 later and spending hours on the internet and YouTube I have made many little projects: weather station, voice activated light and fan, moving platform etc. Massive online open-source examples.
Addictive.
Just be aware that coding, especially c++, is required. Luckily I am familiar. Python also can be used.
If you purchase the Ultimate starter kit, dont worry too much about getting the 37 Sensor Kit that is a recommended purchase alongside.. You will end up with a fair few duplicate modules. Its best to explore the starter kit and then expand from there. Once youve finished your first few circuits, there is no doubt youll have your own designs in mind and can then purchase just what you need.
TL:DR – Hobbyist or student, must have.. Exceptional quality at a great price. Would buy again in a heartbeat!
This is the perfect kit if you are starting off in Arduino boards like me. Prior to buying this I’d never even heard of them. I needed it to be the heart of a project to make a mini Boeing 737 control panel. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the capabilities but I must tell you, if you are thinking of getting into Arduino projects, this is the perfect kit.
Initially was looking at simpler kits, then the more focused ones (‘built a turtle robot’), but settled on this as it seemed more open-ended and after a couple of hours with it, think I made the right purchase.
All comes in a nice box and is just packed with every possible sensor and output device you could think of. If there’s something specific you want to build, you’ll have to buy more bits – but this strikes me as a great way to learn what all the bits can do.
Tutorials seem pretty good (maybe older versions weren’t, based on some comments). They provide clear instructions to build a board up and sketch/code to run on it, along with a decent explanation of what the code’s doing and new concepts introduced – so you can then have a fiddle with it.
Only real complaint so far is that the main breadboard is a bit of a *#&er to use (compared to the smaller one, also included) as bit tricky to insert components (the resistors) with longer more flexible legs. Seems to work if you trim the legs a bit and put a 90-degree bend in the wire.
Suited for beginners and those who have had a soldering iron license for decades. Electronics has become so much easier with the plethora of sensors and pre-made circuits built for low-cost microcontroller boards and this kit makes it easy to get a basic understanding of each type of sensor and the associated libraries for Arduino very quickly. Complex devices such as displays can be easily mastered. The instructions were insufficient for some of the experiments as they lacked explanation. The power adaptor supplied was used to power a low-cost oscilloscope and proved to be cheap and nasty introducing a lot of noise and didn’t live up to its 1A rating as it went pop and died after powering a load of less than 200mA. The rest of the componentry looks to be of sufficient quality.
The Arduino board and its extension were faulty I sent an email to the customer services and they did get back to me straight away and after some communication and email exchange, they sent me a replacement (an Arduino board, an extension and a battery).
I received and tested the Robot Car with the new board, extension and battery. It is now working. I am so grateful and would like to thank the team for the great support and customer services I received.
Wish them all a great success in the business
I am a newbie, but so far I feel it’s perfect since my installation to it in two computers, one of them is running windows & the other is running Ubuntu server. In this short time I managed to execute a blink program involving two LEDs & now proceeding to execute a sketch where I can use a pushbutton . It accompanying CD is quite good to help the learning process.
Comes with a number of different components you could use for building circuits. Sturdy design and nice colour.
I have learnt so much from this but if you have no experience with C++ programming I recommend tuning in to TOPTECHBOY.COM and take lessons from Paul McWhorter who is BRILLIANT.
I’ve ordered many replacement parts as I keep making projects lol.
Fantastic purchase honestly!!!
I bought this kit to keep me occupied during lockdown, and it has certainly done that. The kit contains loads of components and these are stored in a sturdy plastic case. The tutorials are easy to follow, even for beginners, and there are some interesting projects to build.
Having had the kit for a couple of days I have now started to learn Arduino coding with the help of Youtube videos. This massively expands what can be done with the kit.
I bought this as a Christmas gift for my 11 year old son.
As I had no prior knowledge of electronics I was a little apprehensive on purchase, but thankfully the steps provided in the manual are easy to follow and we are having a lot of fun with this set.
The amount & variety of components included for the price is absolutely amazing. The kit covers such a wide range of displays & sensors and even includes RFID.
Presentation is fantastic and everything comes in a sturdy box that’s easy to pack away when not in use.
My other son who is 8 years old also really enjoys this kit and will sit by himself making circuits from the manual.
I have to give this set 5 stars because of the enjoyment my children are having and the knowledge they are gaining as they use it.
This is an excellent, well presented, thought out and made set. The box it comes in with nice dividers tops it off. It gives you wide ranging smorgasbord of 33 tutorial driven (PDF) experiments which build up your experience and knowledge of Arduino, from absolutely no knowledge. You can download the tutorial from the download section of their website if you wish to read through it before ordering. Elegoo have produced an excellent quality Mega ultimate starter kit. I would say it is probably 3-5 days worth of project activity, depending on how much you stop to tinker/experiment and really understand. The ultrasonic range finding sensor board was particularly impressive as was the tilt switch, accelerometer (needs more research), IR remote control, various LED displays (including tri-colour LED), DC motor, servo and stepper motors. I found the PDF tutorial to be more than alright and much better put together than I was expecting. If you feel the need there are many excellent tutorial videos online that people have created, working through these starter projects. Sure the English wobbles in the odd place but it is perfectly understandable. Some of the early tutorials explain the coding in detail, as well as the breadboard wiring and circuit diagram. A small improvement would of been to see the detailed coding explanation for all the tutorials and not just key ones. Don’t let this minor feedback put you off, the knowledge you gain as you work through each of them stands you in good stead. In some of the later tutorials I noticed a few of the wiring PIN numbers were different in the code to the tutorial. It’s not a big thing and it almost felt intentional, like a test to see that you had understood things from earlier! So if your circuit doesn’t work on a few (3?) of the projects double check the pin numbers in use. Also the stepper motor wiring is incorrectly shown and made the motor run in the opposite direction to that intended – easily fixed though. Elegoo customer service are fantastic. I found my membrane keyboard had a row of keys which didn’t work. I emailed their support with a couple of pictures. Within 24hrs they replied, were apologetic and had asked if a replacement from China (15-20 days) was acceptable – which it was. I also fed back the few mistakes that I found in the tutorial. This level of customer service from multiple staff really is the icing on this Ardunio project cake! I think this kit would be great for teenagers and adults (allegedly me!) alike. You won’t regret buying it. I’ve now branched out into buying and using a larger stepper motor and a dedicated A4988 stepper driver board. Have fun!
Has an absolute amazing level of equipment and parts that you can use to create alsorts of projects
This is my second Elegoo kit, couldn’t resist when it was on offer before Xmas. These kits are fist class, they come in nice storage boxes with all the parts and instructions you need to get started in electronics or even tinker when you are more familiar with building your own projects. I wish they had kit like this when I was younger, the possibilities of what you can build and achieve are almost limitless.
A great intro to arduino and electronics. Beware, this stuff is addictive!
My child is using this as a companion to his level 3 NVQ in electrical engineering and it’s exactly what he is using in Tech. It is helping him immensely as he can take his (own) project home and work on it. It has been working flawlessly allowing him to create various projects.
Good instructions with lots of components to keep budding engineers engrossed in maker projects for hours.
quite a good set of things in here for the beginner to get to grips with, have begun to trust the quality from Elegoo but would be nice to have better included instructions. price is reasonable
The parts are all very well packaged, with a decent box, and the accompanying CD provides clear instructions. I had a little trouble getting the USB driver for the Mega 2560 to work. This was solved by downloading the ZIP file from the Arduino website onto the PC (comments on the internet say this may give a cleaner installation)
I look forward to diving into the projects and coming up with some original ideas soon.
I must admit that being one of the cheaper Arduino clones I was a bit unsure what to expect. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the result. I ordered this together with the 37 in 1 sensor pack (it has a few duplicate sensors with this one, but it was still worth the multi-buy offer), and they arrived very well packaged and protected.
The box is good quality and all the components seem to be good quality. I only tried the Arduino Mega itself, the bread board and a few of the components so far, but everything worked fine. Some of the more sensitive components, like the Arduino and some of the sensors were sealed in plastic bags. I used the latest Arduino IDE and after selecting the right board and Com 4 port it worked immediately. There were no compatibility issues or difficulties.
It took slightly longer than expected to ship and arrive, but I ordered it close to the Christmas period, so can’t really expect much better.
Overall the unboxing experience was very good and I am enjoying playing around with the different components. Looking forward to do some nice experiments and projects.
Looks great, I can’t wait to find the time to play!
Good quality kit.
The most complete kit.
Perfect for beginners.
Haven’t used yet but have examined some of the parts. All look excellent so it’s a from me!
Bought as a present, so can’t leave honest review. Arrived as promised, well packaged.
Get quite a lot of variety of components to play with
My teenage nephew likes this kit and is going through the lessons one at a time. He already has some ideas for future projects and is looking forward to expanding his collection of items.
It’s a very complete set which gives you a lot of stuff to play with if you want to start using the Arduino.
I’ve really enjoyed playing with this set and learning arduino.
The set does come with instructions however there are 100s of videos and tutorials online anyway so I would recommend following them.
The components are of good quality and within 10 minutes you can have you first basic project up and running.
This is a great starter kit for beginners I wish I had started with this years ago. Good product with many project possibilities.
The hardware included in the kit is all you need to get started with Arduino. I have since bought a lot of extras to build other projects. I installed two breadboards and the Arduino onto a piece of wood to make handling the items easier as shown in the photo.
There was a small manufacturing problem with the LED Matrix display but after troubleshooting I found the pin was bent and wasn’t seated into the board. I just removed the display, straightened the pin and re-inserted it, which resolved the problem. I completed all the lessons in a couple of evenings and everything worked spot on.
At the time of purchase, this “ELEGOO Mega 2560 Project The Most Complete Ultimate Starter Kit” is about 8 more expensive than the “ELEGOO UNO R3 Project The Most Complete Ultimate Starter Kit” and both have the exact same components but the Mega 2560 board has a better CPU, more on-board pins and more memory.
Personally I’m pleased I went for this kit and would recommend it for anyone starting out.
Just a note for beginners, you can try out your own designs both hardware and coding in a free emulator that Autodesk do called Tinkercad. This emulator is great and allows you to run your designs virtually to see if they will work or fail. Search for “Tinkercad Arduino” on YouTube if you want to see tutorials on how it works.
Happy Project Building!
There are lots of different videos online showing beginners like my son how to use the set. The huge list of parts means that there are lots of different projects he can do. It’s teaching him basic electronics as well as programming. His friends at school talk about what game they’re playing on their phones…. he talks about an alarm system he made with ultrasonic detectors and buzzers to warn him if his little sister is approaching his room. He built that after only having had a kit for a couple of weeks.
Despite all that, he still hasn’t even scratched the surface of what this set can do yet. Even when he eventually runs out of projects, there are other smaller sets we can add that will open up even more possibilities.
We couldn’t decide at first if we should buy this type of set or a Raspberry pi. Luckily for us, my wife works with several engineers and they all recommended this set. The processor on the motherboard is not quite as capable as that of the Raspberry pi, but it is far better for beginners.
I really like this kit. It’s my first time learning about arduino and it really helps begginers understand how arduino works
Fabulous no holds barred introduction to Arduino. Has everything you need to experiment with many aspects of control and measurement etc. Very nicely presented and very well explained. Leaves you to work out how to do more and adapt this very interesting device to your needs.
The Arduino is a revelation. You can breadboard a circuit, connect it to the Arduino board, compile your code, upload it to the Arduino and have a running prototype in under an hour.
This kit has everything that you need: for a fossil, like me, it took very little time to get the system running. Younger folk will find it a breeze. The tutorials seem to teach the fundamentals of electronics and programming in a sensible, incremental manner. There are enough components in the kit to build hundreds of different devices without once reaching for the RS catalogue or a soldering iron. Everything that I’ve tried works and seems to have been assembled well.
The Government really should require every household to have one of these kits. I can think of dozens of projects that I’ve thought about but never actually done because they were too complicated. With one of these sets it would be easy to find and debug a working solution.
Just hit the “buy” button and get on with it. If you read the documentation carefully, you will be fine.
I am very happy with this purchase. I think this is a good way to learn electronics. There are a large amount of components to experiment with and it all comes packaged in a neat box.
Great starter kit for Ardurino for beginners.. The price is good and the quality is top but I wish they included a USB key instead of a DVD since my computer does not have and the future DVD drive no longer exists
This product is great for beginners and I also find it very helpfull at my level of engineering and is great value for money
The instructions are to wire are really easy to follow with pictures for both the Arduino mega and uno, you load up the file and off it goes.
Each module is well made, though do not have the identity number on them which would have been a nice touch.
The PDF guide is very good all 233 pages of it. it explains the sketch a bit about the module and is a leaning exercise. I used this I conjunction with a C++ programming book and have muddled my way through to writing my own sketches and building upon this kit. The kit also came with data sheets on the specialised parts like the stepper motor etc.
I had also brought the 37 project kit which contains a lot of the same modules (my mistake) I should have just purchased the Mega kit.
If you want to start C++ programming with electronics this kit is great!
Such a good way to get started using an arduino. I found the instructions to be useful and I love how many sensors and components they give you to get started. Only gripe is that sometimes the components don’t fit well in the container provided and it would have been nice if they included seperate bags for the different resistors and they could often get mixed up.
It loses a star for the instructions on the CD being out of date. It mentions a convoluted driver installation procedure (telling you not to let Windows 10 automatically install the driver) however I found this unnecessary. Windows 10 did correctly choose the correct driver and doing things the “long way” just got me to the same position, but it took longer. The tutorials also walk you through coding examples, but when you load the code from the folder you find it’s actually been updated since the tutorial was written and it works slightly (or in some cases significantly) differently to how it was explained. Still, you are able to learn what you’re trying to learn so it’s not a disaster, and there are plenty of alternative ways to learn if you don’t like the included tutorials: Books, websites, YouTube videos, you name it!
The box is also too small to happily get all the components back in it without feeling like you’re squashing things. If it had been just a little taller that problem would’ve gone away, but I felt the need to transfer everything to a bigger storage compartment box and I will use the original Mega box to store other things.
Beware that the included instructions really don’t give you a clue about how easy it is to damage your Mega. They walk you through installing circuits, and if you just put one wire in the wrong hole your board is toast, but they don’t mention it. It’s the same with any micro-controller though, they are delicate electrically and if you mess up you will burn them out. Turn it off while making up circuits on the breadboard and check and double check before you apply power! If you make a mistake don’t feel too bad about it, you won’t be the first.
The box it comes in is rather good actually, and packed full of goodies! If you add up the cost of everything, it would certainly come to more than what the kit costs. It’s nice to see that the modules and components are very good quality, and they haven’t just gone with the cheapest.
I was hesitant to buy a board that wasn’t made by Arduino, but this is extremely well made. I had no issues whatsoever connecting to my laptop and for the Arduino IDE to recognise the board.
For my first project, I actually used a GPS module that wasn’t included in the kit, but I wired it to the board and used the 16×2 LCD display to show my location. It performed just fine with no issues.
I wasn’t going to bother with the CD, but after browsing the projects I couldn’t resist! In my opinion, it is perfectly fine for beginners with very clear instructions, and shows you where the code and libraries are and how to use them.
I was curious to try the RFID module and literally had it running in less than 10 minutes. Next was the 8×8 LED display, with the code having a nice scrolling demo display. All instructions were easy to follow and diagrams very clear.
As a starting point, you cannot do better for the price. It’s a good stepping stone and I would absolutely encourage playing around with the code. After that, there are millions of pages full of resources to tinker with.
There are no real negatives. I suppose if you’re not computer literate it may take a little longer to grasp, but not out of reach. The included wires aren’t the best, but they do the job just fine and you can obviously use whatever wires you’re used to.
One of the best and most interesting things I think I’ve ever bought! Well done Elegoo. You have a brilliant quality product here.
Nice starter kit for MEGA card. Good price, similar local price only included the MEGA card.
Elegoo MEGA is very high quality and the things included has very good quality.
The plastic box for all things included is also very good quality and practical.
As I’m a seasoned programmer, this was a great toys to play around with especially to actually learn how it work and to play around with several projects at once to see how it work. Elegoo support is invalulable and is always available to help
Well equipped kit with all you need to introduce yourself into Arduino projects.
very good kit, it almost has all the useful things for a beginner . good job Elegoo
It is a high-quality board with adequate tutorials for beginners which is really awesome and makes me easy to start.
Also u can add any additional modules as u like such as WiFi or Bluetooth.
One of the most completed kits to start learning arduino.well explained pdf documents with coding..Great ki
The first thing to say is that the kit is extremely well packaged and the specification is very comprehensive. There is everything here that you will need to become proficient in both arduino programming and the underlying hardware theory. The manual and projects are well set up and easy to follow. I can imagine that the kit could form the basis of term or two of lessons in a school.
The only reason I have dropped a star in my rating is the due to a fault on the breadboard power supply.
if you search amazon for a breadboard supply you will see many that are identical to the one supplied here but with different brand names. If you read the reviews of all those supplies you will find a significant number that complain of high voltage on the 5 volt rail. In all those cases, unregulated input voltage is being passed straight out to the 5 volt rail. That was the case with the one I had supplied in the kit. The 3.3 volt output works correctly.
Elegoo have a circuit diagram of the power supply on their website. Looking at that, the only way to get input voltage on the 5 volt line and still get regulated 3.3 volts on the 3.3 line is if the 5 volt regulator is short circuited, either internally or through a board fault.
Don’t let my complaint about the supply put you off buying this kit. It is still a well presented, comprehensive kit which will teach you a lot about arduino programming and hardware interfacing. However, please check both outputs of the supply before connecting to anything. I managed to blow six 74HC series logic chips when the supply put 11 volts on to chips rated at 6 volts maximum.
Pretty good set, has loads of kit and it’s all well documented. Got up and running with the Arduino quickly using this set.
A lot of kit for your money, this will provide me many hours of fun and learning
It’s a shame kits like this weren’t available when I was a student visiting Tandy and Maplins at weekends, when a single component use to cost as much as these kits. Might have meant a slight change in career, but never to late to learn, especially now that things have advanced so much.
Okay, but they forgot to put 2 LED’s in my kit.
Absolutely smashing kit ! Anyone who wants to learn little bit about how hardware communicates with computer and ultimately build your own projects – -> This is for you. Money well spent.
Good delivery. Very nice products. all the parts worked fine.
So much fun in one box! The components are good and the instructions are comprehensive
One item arrived faulty (DHT 11- temperature and humidity gauge). This was immediately replaced (X2) by the supplier Elegoo. Excellent customer service.
Has a lot of sensors and parts to play with, well packed and the lessons are a must.
I was looking for a kit that would enable me to start learning electronics and computer coding.
Being inexperienced with both the subjects it was a joy to realise how simple it is to follow the lessons and start doing simple projects almost instantly.
Couldn’t have asked for more.
But SERIOUSLY… you try and put this amount of hardware and sensors together in a package and I can promise you it will cost you about 5 times this price…
As an experienced MCU (PIC) and Arduino developer I cannot believe the quality of this package… just the RFID modules on SparkFun will come close to the price of this total package…
I am not a starter by many means but bought one of these as a good source of mounted modules to quickly develop from…
Seriously just buy it… starter, intermediate or experienced, it is a huge time-save
Terrific value for money, this starter kit contains everything and more for anyone wishing to get familiar with Arduino. Good tutorial, starting with very simple applications and working up, which gives a very good insight into coding by example. The box it comes in is a useful compartmented plastic container to store all the components.Obviously a lot of thought has gone into this quality kit, highly recommended.
It comes with an Arduino programming environment which is a little out of date but it can be updated easily from the Arduino web site.
The only complaint I have is one of the mains power pins on the UK power supply came out when I removed the plug from the socket. This left the pins stuck in the socket.
A nice set for those interested, lots of parts and loads of online projects for you to complete. Endless entertainment. very happy.
It is a great kit. It’s worth to find the elegoo homepage and download the latest documentation and codes for the kit.
Fantastic set great quality loads of projects for beginners and more advanced.
Great tutorials on you tube I would definitely recommend this set everything in a handy storage case
So much for the price will be buying another set soon for my grandsons birthday.
Great kit for starters and experienced. All you need, I’m a fan!
I picked this up in a lightning deal but even without the discount it represents extremely good value! This kit comes supplied in a nice plastic organiser and includes a huge array of components that should keep any Arduino fan busy! It comes with the 8 bit Mega 2560 (identical in function to the Arduino Mega 2560) so you get 54 digital I/O pins (15 can act as PWM output), 16 analog inputs, 16MHz clock, 4 hardware serial ports and plenty of flash memory for your sketches. The kit includes a whole array of sensors, displays, motors, indicators plus a breadboard, a breadboard power supply (including a plug in mains PSU), capacitors, resistors, transistors and more. The kit comes with a CD rom that contains tutorials and examples, you can also visit the Elegoo website and download these. Whilst the quality of the components provided are excellent (the displays for example include driver chips to save on wiring and minimise the number of I/O pins needed), I am dropping a star as I feel the tutorials could do with some improvement, especially for beginners. Many of the examples contain insufficient detail to wire up the circuits, and some are clearly incorrect. For example the temperature sensor project refers to a semiconductor temperature sensor yet the kit is supplied with a thermistor, requiring a completely different calculation in the code to work correctly. If you are prepared to research the examples or use your own, the kit offers a great introduction into using the Arduino with a variety of sensors and hardware. Presentation of the kit is excellent as is the customer support – I contacted Elegoo as my power supply was dead on arrival, they kindly mailed a replacement from China. I think if the tutorials could be improved and perhaps a printed version also included, this kit would be perfect.
Great value, quick delivery – Fantastic service all round! thoroughly recommend these guys.
Someone who programmed in past will have no problem to use it… fresh beginners will need a bit more research on internet, but should have no problem to start with it as well…
The arduino mega usb chip is not original and requires instalation of extra drivers, but all is attached on cd and well covered in manual…
Great assortment of bits and pieces to play with at a very reasonable price.
I downloaded the tutorials from their website and found them to be quick and easy to follow. My only minor criticism would be that there is not enough explanation of what is going on with the coding in the example sketches – however I guess this product is more about the hardware, which is excellent. Highly recommended.
Just finished my first (very simple ) project. Looks like this kit will keep me going for a long time – seems very comprehensive
Fantastic product. Very professionally packaged and put together. You wont be disappointed!
The bad news is, the included tutorials start off good, then become ‘okay’ and by the time you’re halfway through they’re basically trash. It starts very simple (literally making a single LED flash) and this is explained in detail: Why you need a resistor, what every line of the code does and how you can edit it to change the rate of the blink, etc. Then a good explanation of how PWM works and how you can use it to alter the brightness.
But by the time you’re less than halfway through the ‘lessons’, they basically become worthless. A lot of them just give you a wiring diagram and tell you what code to use from the CD to make it work. Sure, you can get the 7 segment display to flash letters….but a lot of the code isn’t even annotated to say what it’s doing, so you’re not learning anything.
Having said that the arduino.cc website has a ton of good tutorials, and there are a lot of books and info on the web, so don’t let that stop you. Just don’t expect to go through the included tutorials and come out the other side with a good understanding of how the things you’ve made work.
As a Computer Scientist & Engineer doing teaching and research in robotics and embedded systems I’m used to using Arduino Uno’s for teaching and development work, but I found in a few recent projects, that the trust Arduino Uno’s were struggling with memory, digital I/O and a lack of serial ports, so looked at the alternatives including the MEGA 2560 R3, see below.
Arduino Uno R3 Mega 2560 R3
Digital I/O Pins 14 54
Analogue Inputs 6 16
PWM 6 15
Serial Ports 1 4
On Board Memory 32KB Flash 256KB Flash
EEPROM 1kB 4kB
SRAM 2kB 8kB
As can be seen for projects requiring more digital inputs and PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) used by servos for example, the MEGA is a significant boost in use.
So I looked around for a kit that would allow me to get started with some development work and this one from ELEGOO seemed like a bold statement kit, i.e. the Most Complete Starter Kit, well how can I resist that.
Unwrapping the Kit
Upon receiving the kit, I was pleasantly surprised with the extra packaging placed around the box stamped with an ELEGOO label, and promptly opened it to find a very slick looking kit as shown in Figure 1.
The box was bigger than I was expecting and actually quite heavy, yet I still wondered how they could claim to have the most complete Starter Kit in a box of this size, so proceeded to open the box to find out.
Inside I could see a familiar feel to ELEGOO kit,
* CD Rom
* Thank you card with direct contact details, such a relief with things bought over the internet.
* A key to the component inside in the ld, and a plethora of components for doing some development work with.
* All packaged carefully, as though care had been put into the kits presentation.
* Rummaging around the box I located the MEGA tucked away carefully in the front of the box, in a very wise anti-static bag. The bags are useful as the human body and plastic can cause significant electrical discharge to components in the several thousand volts range that can cause unseen damage in microelectronic components like development boards.
Build Quality
Well build quality is a significant issue for me when buying kit, as I like to build things that can be demoed for at least a year or two. Having set up a range of small demo projects in robotics and embedded systems and seen them prematurely fail or break, I was keen to see what the quality of the main board in this kit was like.
As can be seen from the screen shots in Figure 3 the board has been well made, features all the components I would expect to see, and has some very useful information silk screen printed onto the PCB including the Comm’s pins for Serial I/O and the PWM for servo control.
Pins on the opposite side are labelled very clearly, and the pin headers are also printed with information on the outside which is handy when a shield is attached.
Getting Started with the KIT
I decided to build a 3 small projects to test the board,
* LCD Display
* A temperature sensor
* A Maze
* An RFID Reader
Using the kit in the box.
LCD Display
I wired up the 1602A LCD included with a 10K pot (included) and resistor for the LCD back light (100ohm) just in case.
No problems there. A very vibrant display which was easy to read. LCD panel was pre-wired ready for use, and felt robust being inserted and removed.
Temperature Sensor
For the next test I decided to use the DHT11 Humidity & Temperature sensor as strangely I haven’t actually used one before, I generally use just LM35 temperature Sensor.
For this one, have to confess that the DHT11 could do with labelling up of the VCC and GND as differing images on the internet have these pins in different locations, depending how the board has been wired.
I started with the code on the Elegoo CD included, copied the library file for the DHT11 into my Arduino Library folder, then modified the sample code to work with the LCD as shown.
As can be seen from the image, the pin closest to the “S” on the DHT11 board I connected to a digital input. The second to VCC +5V and the 3rd to 0V gnd.
All worked as expected, even got my fan heater close to it to have a look at what would happen, and the temperature went up while humidity dropped, which is what I was expecting.
MAZE
Next I decided to create a simple maze on the MAX7219 8 x 8 matrix
As can be seen in Figure 6, pretty straightforward to wire up,
I wired VCC to +5V (Arduino)
GND to 0V (Arduino)
DIN to pin 12 (Arduino)
CS to pin 11 (Arduino)
CLK to Pin 10 (Arduino)
Worked as expected which is always good. What can I say I like display technologies?
RFID READER
I decided to try the RC522 RFID card reader/writer with the mega, and to see if I could detect the tag Remember with the Arduino Mega slight changes need to occur with the Elegoo code included, or in fact any code, so heed this table that’s included
UNO MEGA
RST 9 46
SDA/SS 10 53
MOSI 11 51
MISO 12 50
SCK 13 52
And change these of course
#define RST_PIN 9 // Configurable, see typical pin layout above
#define SS_PIN 10 // Configurable, see typical pin layout above
Or it won’t work.
ANYWAY worked a treat and read the card included and detected the tag type and data on it.
Anyway Figure 7 shows my progress with the code included.
Closing Comments
Though the kit does cost considerably more than the UNO starter kit, consideration has to be taken into account of the significant number of additional components that are included with this kit such as the RFID BOARD, MAX 7219 LED MATRIX, POWER Supply, HC-SR04 ultrasonic unit, Joystick, plus so many I struggle to list, all soldered ready for use, which is a blessing as many items bought separately are not pre-soldered and so unusable out of the box. I would have to say at this point that this kit truly does seem to be a very comprehensive kit for use with an ARDUINO MEGA 2560 (that is also included). In fairness I struggled to think of a project I normally create for teaching, that I couldn’t make with this kit alone. Lovely stuff Elegoo.
As a test I tried an arduino UNO board from a friend, which got instantly picked up by my computers and I could program the UNO board within seconds.
I concluded that this board is faulty. Therefore I cannot use the board, and as a consequence the entire kit is useless. Also since I took more than a month to test the thing now I cannot even send it back. This is not the fault of the seller though, I should have asked for my money back instantly instead of trying to make it work.
By the way, the package contents and the build quality seem otherwise okay, I guess I got unlucky with a faulty piece.
UPDATE: as seen in the comments below, the support team has just sent me a new complete kit free of charge based on my feedback here. That is some excellent customer service, I’ll try the replacement kit out as soon as it arrives.
UPDATE2: just tried out the replacement board and it works just as advertised. Apparently the first arduino I got was indeed a rare, faulty piece, but now I have a free, functioning replacement, and since they sent me a complete kit, now I have two of all the kit components. Yay!
No real problems with the kit but it would have been nice for a complete novice had the makers put just a little more thought into what is included. A real bargain though
Fantastic set complete with everything you need. Great for the kids, both big and small.
Thank you so much! Great price, prefect condition of each several components, fantastic guides! Arrived earlier than expected!
The manual comes on a CD with plenty of small projects to get you started, but there are thousands more on the web. I downloaded the coding software directly from Arduino’s website to ensure i got the latest version. It connected and recognised the board without any problems and I had the first program, transferred to the board and up and running with no issues.
The only (very) minor criticism I have is that the resistors are the four band/blue background ones, with I find difficult to determine the colours of the bands on – but that might just be my eyesight. However, Elegoo have helpfully written on the resistors strips which resistance they are, so i didn’t need to determine if they were brown or orange bands anyway.
Over all, for the price and all the bits you get with it (i have only touched the surface), i can’t recommend this kit more highly. Awesome job, Elegoo!
LE: The seller contacted me and more than willing to make things right. Great company, can honestly recommend them.
This is probably the best value for money kit (compared to the official starter kit from Arduino). Documentation on the CD is in Chinglish, but look at the source code provided, lots of information. I highly reccomend
Really extended starter kit with an extensive manual to get you started with all the components.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IUZK3JO/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0