user31385: I am an ABSOLUTE beginner at Arduino and my first project I've proposed to my teacher is as follows: an Mq-2 smoke sensor will sense smoke and if the level of smoke reaches a certain value (only because I want the smoke to accumulate for aesthetics purposes) then a video file in whatever directory opens and plays. It seemed plausible at first, but as I search for pertinent info., I am faced with content and hobbyists whose instructions and "knowledge" are way out of my depth. Can anyone help me with this? If anyone knows a good website/tutorial videos/documents/books that a beginner like me should take to improve his programming and physical computing(?) skills, please let me know! 

user-1: What I'm thinking is that you could make a conditional statement. Below is a little a bit of pseudo code on how to possibly open said video from an SD card because there's no way Arduino would be able to store a video on it's own, let alone play good quality videos:
int dangerLevel = 500 (or however the shield reads the smoke level)

int smokeDetectorPin = A0

setup:

smokeDetected = analogRead(smokeDetectorPin)

loop:

if smokeDetected >= dangerLevel:

open video from SD card directory or computer.


So in order to get a "video" from the SD card, you should check this website. Like I mentioned before, this is really primitive and it's probably not what you're looking for.
I found something very interest about the Arduino that I never knew you could do before and using composite display from a TV. Interesting and you can find that info here.
And lastly, to get a video from your computer or laptop, there's really no easy way. However, I did find two solutions that might be able to do this. First of all, and this may sound ironic since we're on an Arduino Stackexchange, you could use a Raspberry Pi (and this is the easily solution I can think of) though I believe your instructor prefers if you use the Arduino instead. Second, and this took me forever to find on the internet, you could use a third party software called "Gobetwino" and you can check out what that does here. I saw on YouTube video of a quick little demonstration of what it does. When the button is pressed, the video is played. That's conditional and you can do the same thing but for the smoke detector.

31385: <p>I am an ABSOLUTE beginner at Arduino and my first project I've proposed to my teacher is as follows: an Mq-2 smoke sensor will sense smoke and if the level of smoke reaches a certain value (only because I want the smoke to accumulate for aesthetics purposes) then a video file in whatever directory opens and plays. It seemed plausible at first, but as I search for pertinent info., I am faced with content and hobbyists whose instructions and "knowledge" are way out of my depth. Can anyone help me with this? If anyone knows a good website/tutorial videos/documents/books that a beginner like me should take to improve his programming and physical computing(?) skills, please let me know! </p>
 -1: <p>What I'm thinking is that you could make a conditional statement. Below is a little a bit of pseudo code on how to possibly open said video from an SD card because there's no way Arduino would be able to store a video on it's own, let alone play good quality videos:</p>

<pre><code>int dangerLevel = 500 (or however the shield reads the smoke level)

int smokeDetectorPin = A0

setup:

smokeDetected = analogRead(smokeDetectorPin)

loop:

if smokeDetected &gt;= dangerLevel:

open video from SD card directory or computer.
</code></pre>

<p><br><br>
So in order to get a "video" from the SD card, you should check this <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Streaming-video-from-SD-card-to-Nokia-LCD-with-Ard/step6/Playback-program-sketch-for-the-Arduino/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">website</a>. Like I mentioned before, this is really primitive and it's probably not what you're looking for.</p>

<p>I found something very interest about the Arduino that I never knew you could do before and using composite display from a TV. Interesting and you can find that info <a href="http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/TVout" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>

<p>And lastly, to get a video from your computer or laptop, there's really no easy way. However, I did find two solutions that might be able to do this. First of all, and this may sound ironic since we're on an Arduino Stackexchange, you could use a Raspberry Pi (and this is the easily solution I can think of) though I believe your instructor prefers if you use the Arduino instead. Second, and this took me forever to find on the internet, you could use a third party software called "Gobetwino" and you can check out what that does <a href="http://www.mikmo.dk/gobetwino.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. I saw on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHCnCrifyyY" rel="nofollow noreferrer">YouTube video</a> of a quick little demonstration of what it does. When the button is pressed, the video is played. That's conditional and you can do the same thing but for the smoke detector.</p>
