Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics…
Since I’m a n00b who can’t read schematics, the breadboard view is good for me… Lady Ada uses it in some of her tutorials.
So if you’re just getting into Arduino hacking and can’t read/write schematics, give Fritzing a try… you may get something like this:
Here’s my first attempt at a breadboard illustration. This is for a sketch that reads data from the photocell, and lights up the LED if it’s too dark in the room. Oh, and if it’s too bright in the room, it makes the piezo buzz. Pretty darn simple. I’m not 100% pleased with my illustration, but it was my first time, and since I’ve built this more than once, I guess it should be considered a success.
The Fritzing site has a list of projects and the application (and web site) encourage you to share your creations (under a Creative Commons license even!)
Oh yeah, as for calling myself a n00b, I took a number of electronics classes when I was in school (which was a long, long time ago) but I’m finally getting back into this stuff, and it’s exciting. More updates to come!