I’ve always been a strong believer in RTFM. With a shiny new board, there are a few things to learn before jumping in.  Like jumper settings! Wouldn’t it be sad if your board didn’t power up and you gave up on the poor thing, when all you needed to do was change a jumper that tells it which kind of power input you want?

Or what if you just plug it in, and your computer starts downloading drivers. Ooops!  That’s not the driver I wanted! These lights won’t stop blinking. Then you spend the next two days trying to find and get rid of the drivers.  Along the way, you delete the driver for your wifi dongle — the one the IT lady put on for you. Now it’s Friday, and there’s no Internet until Monday, and no way to download those drivers for your board. Not saying I did that this time, and I won’t because I’ve learned to read the ARTY reference manual!

So far, the most interesting thing that I’ve read is that if you use full power on the LEDs your eyeballs, you stand a good chance of blinding yourself.