Arduino...WOW

Today, I'm here to talk to you about a fascinating technology..Arduino! What is Arduino? Arduino is an open source  single-board microcontroller, descendant of the open-source Wiring platform, designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. It's amazing the uncountable things you can do with it, the limit is your imagination.
The best way to describe an Arduino is with a few examples:
Want to have a coffee pot tweet when the coffee is ready? Arduino.
Want to have plushie steaks glow? Arduino.
How about getting an alert on your phone when there’s physical mail in your mailbox? Arduino.
Want to have a Professor X Steampunk wheelchair that speaks and dispenses booze? Arduino.
Want to make a set of quiz buzzers for an event out of Staples Easy Buttons? Arduino.
Want to make a light-up arm cannon from Metroid for your son? Arduino.
Want to make your own heart rate monitor for cycling that logs to a memory card? Arduino.
Want to make a robot that draws on the ground, or rides around in the snow? Arduino.

That's great but how does this work?
The hardware part it's simply an open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR processor and on-board input/output support. As you can see in the image.

The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and the boot loader that runs on the board.

The project started in Ivrea, Italy, when a college teacher wanted to build more pratical projects that he could show to his students, to encourage them in his classes. Founders Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles named the project after Arduin of Ivrea, the main historical character of the town. "Arduino" is an Italian masculine first name, meaning "strong friend". The English version of the name is "Hardwin".

I'll just leave you with some videos of Arduino projects, google it, you will find everything you need to get your projects running.