A new Arduino beginner from the South of France

Hi everybody,

I just started to play with Arduino boards a couple of days ago as I had two little projects which I believed could be done with this hardware/software.

I did some programming something like 38 years ago 😀 not much but I have some basic knowledge and I found the IDE v2 software easy to use and the programming language sort of easy to learn.  For one of my projects I found everything I needed in the default libraries plus some others which I easily installed... Most of it was developed and tested within a day. I am impressed with the amount of libraries which are available. I have ordered some parts from China to complete it. So waiting mode for first project....

For the second project, I had to search the Internet to find out how to use the Interrupts to wake up the Arduino (Uno or Nano) from deep sleep. I found Bill's web site with tutorials which are great and it helped me a lot.

I still have some issues with the implementation of deep sleep along with pin change interrupts with a matrix keypad.... here is why I asked to be part of this forum. To find some help, and why not contribute too in the future...

On the paper it is simple, I wrote the code to do everything but I must reduce power consumption of the circuit to next to nothing... I have a safe which has been secured in a concrete wall 22 years ago, so nearly impossible to replace. The safe normally opens after the correct password gets entered on a small keypad. Recently the little electronic circuit went bust and the safe is completely unsupported by the manufacturer. I told myself that it should not be difficult to implement with an Arduino. I wrote some code which does exactly what I want but the Arduino Nano is too power hungry for the small battery I wished to use, I  would like it to last for years like it was with the original circuit.

I believe these won't be my only projects, I am a big fan of electric trains and I will be able to create some nice animations using the Arduino HW and SW...

About me, I am 58 years old, retired, former engineer specialized in credit scoring but I never was afraid to learn new things. I have been happily married for 28 years and I have two sons 22 and 25 I am proud of. One just completed his studies and he is a dentist now. The second one already has a master in asset management and is about to start another one.

I have been for probably 48 years mad about electric trains, when I was a kid I built a huge layout in HO, which I sold to fulfill another growing passion for RC cars. I still practice RC cars and I still love it, I also fly RC helicopters, RC gliders, I had some nice and complex layouts in N scale and I am about to start a new layout, still in N scale. It will be a large "coffee table" about 2.5m x 1.10m. For it, I would like to have lots of trains to move around the layout without human intervention, or as little as possible. I would like to add some animations like cars moving along on roads, automatic railroad crossings, funicular, and everything possible.... a fancy "spaghetti layout" 🙂

See you soon...

Charles