Great,
its a little overwhelming at first.... just hang in there. I'll post a video of a prop I just made for a friend of mine.

Jeff

Here is one prop I made using Arduino......

Ok....posting in a minute or two, probably three......

Https://youtu.be/L75inOoqPs0

Reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEaUVcT0H5Q in a strange way.

This also looks like it would be a neat effect to use in conjunction with an arduino.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bvWArORSc

You may want to check and see is there are any makerspaces in your area. I belong to one in my area, and took some basic Arduino classes there.

If you haven't already, take a peek at my "ultament homemade suitcase table' above. despite the name it's all about Arduino for magicians.

Adafruit have some great Arduino tutorials (they are the manufacturer for most of the US boards). I would start with an Uno for prototyping and playing with before moving over to a Pro Mini or Nano to finish if yo need something smaller. There are plenty of clones available very cheaply from eBay, but in the same way that in Magic creators are supported, I would suggest at least making your first purchase from arduino.cc or Adafruit.

I've been playing with Arduino and Raspberry pi stuff for projects unrelated to Magic, but perhaps doing something for Magic would be interesting!

There's a simple Arduino project in the current issue of Genii (June 2016).

I would suggest not using an Arduino for an actual finished item. They are great for prototyping on, but they are comparatively bulky and power hungry. Once you have the code working, it's fairly easy to replicate it all on a much smaller chip, eg the ATTINY85 or ATTINY84. And they are really cheap. You just need to learn how to burn the code onto the chip but there are lots of tutorials out there that explain it.