Data Sheet

Uploading a sketch to the A-Star using the Arduino IDE.

8. If you uploaded the Blink sketch, then the A-Star’s yellow LED should be blinking once every two seconds.

However, we ship the A-Stars with that same example already programmed onto it, so you might not be

convinced that anything has changed. Try changing the delay values in the sketch to something else and

uploading again to see if you can change the speed of the LED.

The A-Star 32U4 boards are similar enough to the Arduino Leonardo that you do not actually have to

install the add-on. If you want to, you can just select the “Arduino Leonardo” board in the Arduino

IDE. Note that if you upload a sketch to the A-Star this way, your computer will then recognize it as a

Leonardo (for example, its entry in the Windows Device Manager will display “Arduino Leonardo”).

After you succeed in programming the A-Star from the Arduino IDE, there are many resources you can use to learn

• The Arduino IDE has many examples [http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage] that can run on A-Stars.

• The Arduino website has a Language Reference [http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage], a wiki called the The

Arduino Playground [http://playground.arduino.cc/], and other resources.

• The A-Star 32U4 boards are similar to the Arduino Leonardo [http://www.pololu.com/product/2192] and Arduino

Micro [http://www.pololu.com/product/2188], so you can search the Internet for relevant projects that use one of those

boards.

• Section 11 lists many more resources.

6. Getting started Page 35 of 47