“Better is often the worst enemy of good”, they say.
Because trying to enhance your work might break it or even destroy it.

This is not the case for the new manual Elegoo is shipping with their Super Kit.

About ELEGOO

Established in March 2015, ELEGOO Inc. is a thriving technology company dedicated to open-source hardware research & development, production, and marketing. Located in Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China, we have grown to over 100+ employees with a 10,763+ square ft. factory.

Elegoo now sells products mainly across the Amazon network from the US, Canada to Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain.

As a continuous and fast-growing technology company, Elegoo keeps striving its best to offer quality products and excellent service as to meet customers’ expectation.

About Elegoo products.

Elegoo delivers technology for the prototyping makers and IoT markets. From 3D printers to robotic kits, from electronic components to development boards, their target has always been the customer satisfaction. That’s why they have become the reference point for Arduino compatible boards acknowledged by Arduino industries.

Elegoo development kits

The Arduino phenomenon has become viral, and every boy and girl interested in IoT must have some acquaintance with it. But, hey, electronics are a tough subject, and it’s not easy to learn how to start working with boards and components.

That’s why Elegoo decided to create many different development kits to help young people (and even people who grew up a bit more) manage the steep learning curve. Each kit provides a Arduino compatible board, a breadboard and components to start learning how to use and program the board. But as an added value, Elegoo also ships a manual with the kit, so that learning becomes easier and even funny for everyone.

The new manual/tutorial

The Super Kit is the most complete development kit for Arduino delivered by Elegoo. It comes with more than 300 building blocks, 20 different sensors, power supply, batteries, resistors, transistors, LEDs and the Arduuino compatible board with its breadboard to test the circuits. But as we hinted in the previous paragraph, the real difference between this kit and the competitors is in the provided manual.

It’s not a mere list of parts, nor a dumb cut-and-paste work from other manuals: it’s far more than this.

Three quarks for muster Mark

There is a reason to cite James Joyce here: Elegoo managed to make the learning curve constant, easy, direct like a stream of consciousness.

The manual is divided into three quarks err…. parts:

• Preparation
• Module Learning
• Multi-module preparation course

The Preparation section explains what the user just bought, shows the pieces, their quantity and their names, shows Arduino hardware and software, and finally guides the user towards the tedious and hard path of the installation of the software, making it simple and straightforward.

The Module Learning is… awesome. In this section Elegoo offers 25 different projects, using Arduino with each component of the Kit. Each chapter has multiple subsections: the description of the hardware used, the discussion of the circuit offered, with connection schematic and wiring diagram, and the definition of the code used in the Arduino IDE to make the project work as expected. But wait, there is more! Under the Code subsection you will find a complete programming course in C++ for the Arduino IDE: each project has been designed to deal not only with a defined electronic element, but also with a well defined element of the C++ language: we will learn of sensors and functions, we will study about stepping motors and programming loops, get acquainted with LEDs and variable types.

Each chapter of this section has a lot of good information for both hardware and software lovers.

The Multi-Module course is the definitive section for those who want not just to learn, but also to master the subject. Once you know every single bit of information contained into the kit, you should stand for the final exam, and put all your knowledge together using it like small pieces of Lego. The Multi-Module presents 9 projects that build on previous ones, extending their reach and usability. Note that they won’t just deal on turning on a LED or move a servo: they will teach you how to design (and realize!) a real project, using libraries and connecting components together, wiring them on the same board.

The best of both worlds

No, I’m not citing a song by Hannah Montana here, I refer to the Star Trek episode where Starfleet and the Borgs choose to collaborate for a better outcome. That’s exactly what happened with the Elegoo manual: a very nice instrument to learn computer programming and electronics having fun.

Nothing is perfect in this world: the manual lacks a chapter in Part 1 dealing with the installation of the Arduino IDE on Linux. I noticed it because I had issues with the recognition of the serial port during the standard installation using Linux, and found a solution only surfing through the Net. But it’s a very small glitch. On the other side, I noticed how the style and translation into English of the Elegoo  manual is definitely better than most of the competitors, a nice add from such a complete package.

I like it!