For me this was the missing piece to the platform, being able to do some kind of real-time debugging of values during execution. The Serial. library that comes with the Arduino allows you to interact with it while it’s running, which is great. Besides some of the Serial.print(ln) functions that I showed in quite a bit of the Lab 10 code, this lab work was really focused on getting input through the Serial interface. The code for this exercise is below…. Continue reading “Part 11 – Using the Serial Port”
Part 10 – Micro-controllers, input and output
Part 10 is where we learn to connect the hardware as both inputs and outputs using the code in the micro-controllers. This is the beginning of how to build bigger devices. The first part of Lab 10 is a primer on how to write some simple code to blink and LED connected to the Arduino. The Arduino setup looked like this….
Continue reading “Part 10 – Micro-controllers, input and output”
Part 11b – Code.org Start Wars Game
Here is the Star Wars game. You win by getting all rebel pilots, lose by getting all storm troopers but when you lose you get a 10,000 point bonus. I call this game Millenniums Win. Continue reading “Part 11b – Code.org Start Wars Game”
Part 7–Introduction to Micro-controllers
Part 7 was our first try at connecting our hardware circuit with the software based Arduino controller. The lab began with a short explanation of the Arduino and then moved right into building the first controller. The lab itself was pretty simple as all we were required to do is wire up an LED to the Arduino. I took it a little further and decided to control a few LED’s.
Part 9 – Driving Motors and Other Output Devices
Part 9 allowed us to take what we learned in the previous labs and extend the simple on/off of the motor and direction to leveraging the how to work with different loads as well as analog outputs..
| Next we measure the voltage and current being produced by the circuit. |
| Part 9 complete! |
Part 8 – Bi-directional Motor Control
Part 8 had us using a relay, the transistor and resistor to control a simple motor in two directions. Here is what it looked like when it was working.
Part 6 – Transistor Switching
In part 6 we learned about the device that helped users in the computer age, the transistor.
Part 5 – Switches and Relays
Part 5 built on what we started in part 4 adding control of the output using switches and relays. We started the lab by putting a simple switch into our LED configuration. Then we moved on to a more complicated 3 way switch setup, funny considering I had just installed 6 of these in my hope. It was awesome to understand how they worked.
Part 4 – Schematics, Ohm’s Law and Potentiometers
Part 4 is where we started to get into more complicated circuits. The first part of the lab laid out some of the notation used to communicate these circuits. First, we tested the circuit we built from part 3 with a different wiring, which didn’t work. Next we moved on to testing LED brightness using different resistors. Which one was brightest, the with the least resistance of course, the 100ohm.
Continue reading “Part 4 – Schematics, Ohm’s Law and Potentiometers”
Part 3 – Using a Multimeter
| Part 3 started with the basics of using a multimeter. This lab included usage that related to the project that we were doing including resistance, continuity and voltage measurements. The lab started by setting the multimeter to the continuity selection and then testing the continuity of the board we were using in part 1.
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Part 2 – Introduction to using a breadboard
To start with part 2 goes through an explanation of the breadboard, resistors and LED’s. We then are asked to go and collect the components we learned about as you can see below. A 1k ohm resistor, an LED and our power supply and breadboard. Continue reading “Part 2 – Introduction to using a breadboard”
Part 1 – Intro to Soldering and Building Power Supply
| This is the first post for my Mt. Sac class Electronics 10 Mechatronics. In this lab we got to play a bit with some of the basics of electronics.
The lab is divided into two sections, learning how to solder (which I’ve done a lot of in the past, even though you can’t tell from the quality I exhibit below), and then applying that soldering technique to building the power supply I will use for the remainder of the class. |
Continue reading “Part 1 – Intro to Soldering and Building Power Supply”