Hey everyone

The Arduino Mega is an amazing microcontroller for projects that need a large amount of io or processing power and is great fun to use. In this instructable we will look at the:
Arduino Megas specs
the projects its best for
the pinout
some cool shields for it and we will also look at some awesome projects made with the Arduino Mega

Step 1: The Arduino Mega Specs

The Arduino Mega 2560
is a microcontroller board using the ATmega2560.
It has 54 digital pins (15 can be used as PWM pins)
16 analog inputs,
4 UARTs (hardware serial ports),
a 16 MHz crystal oscillator,
a USB connection,
a power jack,
an ICSP header,
and a reset button.
It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller

The Mega2560 is different from all the boards that came before because does not use the FTDI USB-to-serial driver chip. Instead, it features the ATmega16U2 (ATmega8U2 in the revision 1 and revision 2 boards) programmed as a USB-to-serial converter.

Step 2: The Type of Project Its Best For

The Arduino Mega is not the most used Arduino board out there in fact it's pretty uncommon mainly because people don't normally need a microcontroller with a ton of pins for there projects however it's still great if you do need it. the Arduino is great for projects like:
Making an 8 bit computer
Making a CNC router or 3D printer
Making a robot with many sensors
Or using to driver lots of motors
Basically anything that needs a lot of io/pins will work well with the Arduino mega

Step 3: The Pinout

The Arduino Megas pinout is as follows (warning there's a lot of pins)

-5 ground pins
-three 5v pins
-one 3.3v pin
-one reset pin
-16 analog pins
-4 UART pins
-54 digital pins
-15 can we used Pwm pins
-6 ISP programming pins
And many more

Step 4: The Cool Shields

Luckily there are lots of awesome shields for the Arduino mega. You'll find that the most sold and stocked shield is the motor controller shield making it possible for the Arduino mega to run many motors at once

The coolest and most practical shields I could find were the:
Arduino mega wifi shield (great for making your robot wireless)
The DFRobot multi pin shield which has space for 3 wireless add ons one we card and many pin and motor connectors
And last is the Arduino prototyping shield making it easy to prototype your project or just make it near with a removable shield.

Step 5: Some Cool Projects

The first project is one of my all favorite projects which is an led cub however the best I and is a 4x4x4 however this guy is rocking a 8x8x8 led cube (a lot of LEDs) he can also play snake on it, crazy.
Here's the link: https://www.instructables.com/id/Programm-Arduino-Mega-setup/

Next is an ambient RGB LED for your TV ( meaning the color on the TV will be shon by the RGB led onto the wall behind your TV, it really gives it a cool affect)
Here's the link:https://www.instructables.com/id/Ambilight-4-channels-Arduino-Mega2560/

And last but not last is I full on rover which is just awesome take a look for yourself
Here's the link: https://www.instructables.com/id/Dagu-rover-5-arduino-mega-2560-Xbee/

Thanks for reading guys and as always please leave any questions you may have and I'll try my best to get back to you