Part 11 – Using the Serial Port

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 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.

20170117_121822 Continue reading “Part 7–Introduction to Micro-controllers”

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.

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Continue reading “Part 4 – Schematics, Ohm’s Law and Potentiometers”

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”