Share an Arduino Project With Students: Teach With Your Own

When teachers ask how to share an Arduino project with students, the question usually sounds like this: I want to teach with a project I built myself, so how will my students see the circuit diagram, the code and the parts list on their phones? In BlueGrays the answer is Learn > Forum > New Post. You choose Tutorial as the category, add the project photo and a circuit photo as images, paste your code and list the parts you used in the description; the post goes live without review. Then you send your students the link with the post's Share icon, and it opens the same post in their app.

This guide covers the prerequisites, how to prepare photos and code, how to fill in the New Post screen field by field, a copy-ready template for the description, publishing the post and how students find it, a 40-minute sample lesson built around the project and a checklist to run before you publish. One honest note up front: the post you share does not sit in a private class area. It is a public forum post as soon as it goes live, and we explain below what that means for you.

Why teach with your own project?

The ready-made projects in the app give most courses a solid backbone: LEDs, buttons, sensors, displays, motors. But nearly every teacher has a project of their own. The moisture alarm you fitted to the school greenhouse, a timer that works like the break bell, the light meter you use in physics, or the small robot your club has been improving for years. Teaching it every year with photocopies, a diagram drawn on the board or a code file dropped into a group chat is tiring: the diagram gets blurry, the code gets copied wrong and the parts list goes missing.

When you share the project as a Tutorial post on the forum, all of those pieces land in one place: project and circuit photos, copyable code, a parts list with quantities and the related ready-made projects you attach. Students open the same post at home, move the code to their computer and see which part they are missing. Next year you simply send the same link to the new class instead of explaining everything again. If the post needs an update, you edit it and save.

Before you start: prerequisites

Preparation: photo, circuit image, code and parts list

Writing the post takes five minutes; the real time goes into preparation. A well-prepared post answers half the questions your students would otherwise ask during the lesson. If you work through the list below in order, everything will be at hand when the New Post screen opens.

• Project photo: Shoot the project while it is running, in daylight or under a white desk lamp. Keep the background plain and show the board and the output (a lit LED, text on a display) in the same frame. Holding the phone slightly above the project at about 45 degrees makes the wires easier to follow than a straight-down shot.
• Circuit photo: The best result comes from a diagram made in a circuit drawing program. If you take a photo, shoot the breadboard from directly above so both ends of every wire are visible. Standardise wire colours: red for 5V or 3.3V, black for GND, other colours for signals. Writing the pin numbers on a slip of paper next to the board makes it far more readable.
• Code: Define pin numbers as constants at the very top (for example const int ledPin = 8;), add a short comment to each section and delete leftover test lines. If you use a library, name it in the description. Compile and upload the code in the Arduino IDE one last time and paste exactly that version in with Add code.
• Video (optional): You can't upload a video to a forum post; if you want to show the project working in a short 30 to 90 second clip, put it on YouTube and add the link to the description. Showing the circuit up close once in the video helps students compare it with their own build.
• Parts list: Note every part with its quantity, and for resistors and LEDs add the value and colour too: 220 Ω resistor × 3, red LED × 1, yellow LED × 1 and so on. You can drop this note straight into the description.

Filling in the New Post screen field by field

When preparation is done, tap the Learn tab in the bottom bar, switch to the Forum section at the top and tap New Post. Choose Tutorial as the category. The fields on the screen and our suggestions are below:

In your post, the description is the main text students read. It replaces the step-by-step walkthrough of the ready-made projects, so use a structure with headings instead of one plain paragraph. Copy the template below and fill it in for your project:

1. Purpose: What does the project do? One sentence. (When the soil dries out, the LED lights up and the buzzer gives short beeps.)
2. What you will learn: Two or three concepts. (Reading a sensor with analogRead, a threshold value, making decisions with if-else.)
3. Wiring: Which pin each part goes to, line by line. (Sensor AO → A0, LED → D8 + 220 Ω → GND, buzzer → D9.)
4. How it works: The code flow in four to six steps. (Read the sensor, print the value to the serial monitor, compare it with the threshold, control the LED and buzzer, wait one second.)
5. Try it yourself: Two or three small changes. (Raise the threshold from 500 to 600 and watch the difference; make the buzzer sound only when the soil is very dry.)
6. Safety: Short warnings. (Unplug USB before changing the circuit; dip the sensor into water only up to the marked line.)

Parts list and difficulty level

Write the parts list into the description with quantities. Keep parts of the same type clearly apart: "330R", "10K", "Blue LED", "Male-Female" and so on. If you use resistors of two different values, put each on its own line with its value and quantity so students can read from the parts list which resistor goes where. You can also attach the main parts to the post in the Related project, component or tool section (up to 5 components); if a part you need is missing from the list, you can report it through the Support section of the app.

The forum has no separate difficulty field, so state the level in the title or at the top of the description. When deciding on the level, think about the number of code lines and the complexity of the circuit together. A rough guide is in the table below. When in doubt, pick the lower level: a student who struggles with a project marked Beginner loses motivation faster than one who finds an Intermediate project easy.

Publishing: no review, but language matters

When you fill in the fields and tap Publish, the post goes live on the forum without review. It is published in the language you are using the app in at that moment and is not translated automatically; students who use the app in another language see it by picking that language, or All, in the forum's Topic language selector. If you need to fix something later, you update the post with Edit Post.

After publishing: how students find your project

Your post shows on the forum in the Tutorial category under your name. Because it is not translated automatically, students who use the app in another language need to pick your language in the forum's Topic language selector. There are three ways for students to reach your post:

• Share link: Use the Share icon at the top of the post to send the link to your class channel; when a student taps it, the same post opens in the app (if they are not signed in, they are asked to sign in first).
• Forum search: If you gave the post a distinctive title (for example "Soil Moisture Alarm (LED and Buzzer)"), typing it into the forum's search box is enough; choosing the Tutorial category narrows the list.
• Links to ready-made projects: You can also send the ready-made projects you attached with Share on the project page; students save the ones they like to Workshop > Favorites with Favorite.

There is one important detail here: reading a forum post is free, but students need Premium to see the full Premium projects you attach to it. For a class, the easiest route is an educator package: you give each student a code, and all of the 200+ projects in the app unlock. Starting the first lessons with free projects and handing out codes in the week you move to Premium projects is a sensible order too.

A 40-minute sample lesson with this project

Let's say your project is a "Soil Moisture Alarm": a soil moisture sensor on A0, a red LED on D8 and a buzzer on D9; when the soil dries out, the LED lights up and the buzzer beeps briefly. Assume you split a class of 24 into 8 groups of three. The flow below can be adapted to any project of your own:

The most valuable part of this flow is minutes 27 to 35: when students replace the threshold you wrote with numbers they measured themselves, they see that code is not fixed text but an adjustable decision mechanism. That is why you should never leave the Try it yourself part of the description empty. If you want to show the same sensor logic in a ready-made project first, the free Night Light with Ldr project teaches the same threshold idea with light; doing it the week before your own project is good preparation.

Honest limits: what is missing and what to do instead

Checklist before you publish

1. The final code compiles and works on a real circuit.
2. Pin numbers match in the code, the description and the circuit photo.
3. The project photo shows the project working, sharp and well lit.
4. Both ends of every wire are visible in the circuit photo.
5. No faces, school names or personal details appear in the photos.
6. Every part is in the parts list in the description with its quantity; resistor values are written out.
7. The description follows the six-heading template: purpose, what you learn, wiring, how it works, tasks, safety.
8. The names of the libraries you use are in the description.
9. The difficulty level in the title or description fits the circuit and code length; when in doubt, the lower level was given.
10. The post went live before the lesson where you will use it and you opened it once on your own phone to check it.

Once your project is live, it is easy to place it in a course sequence alongside the ready-made projects: the free LED Blink and Traffic Light in the first weeks, sensor projects in the middle and your own project at the end of term. If you are looking for a week-by-week skeleton, the 8-week robotics coding lesson plan is a good start, and for new ideas take a look at 30 Arduino project ideas. When you are ready to share your project, you can take the first step in the BlueGrays app under Learn > Forum > New Post.