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Love, Miss Hicks
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a blog about makerspacing 

by KaLeah Hicks

Week 4 - LED Dice

11/30/2018

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This week we were supposed to make a die. There really wasn't much in the way of instructions though. I'm not going to drag this entry out; I'll just say that I kinda made a die, but the internet helped me immensely. I'm still not sure what it's doing though. 

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Bonus: Timelapse of me drawing my makerspace

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Week 3 - RBG LED and Multiple LEDs

11/17/2018

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This week actually wasn't so bad, though you're going to disbelieve this statement when you watch my video. However, I chose, in the interest of authenticity to leave it all there. 

This week, we built Circuits #3 and #4, which in my case had to do with an RGB LED bulb for #3 and multiple LED bulbs for #4. I don't have much problem following the diagrams to set up the circuit. That's actually kind of fun, like a map. Looking at the sketch is more challenging and where I ran into difficulty this week. I had a hard time figuring out how to use the part where you call the function, but eventually, I figured that out. 

​My pictures are in my notes this week, because I took more notes and it would kind of go better in context. 
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Week 2 - Potentiometer

11/10/2018

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So this week's project is using a potentiometer to affect the rate of blinking for an LED. Basically, it's like using a dial to turn something up and down. I can appreciate that, because at least I understand why I might want to do this. Here is the initial electronic sketch. I think that's what this is. I copied it out of the book, but as I did it, it made more sense. 


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Here is what the sketch and the circuitry looked like initially.
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A couple of things about the code: in the directions it said that it set the integer for ledPin to make it easier to follow and that made sense until I added another digital pin and it didn't work anymore. So what I took from that is if you're going to add stuff, it's going to get harder to follow the code. Which is fine, but I was also fine with it looking like the one from last week, which I figured out, it could, once I used some of that to make 2 LEDs work. Aside from that, it was easy enough to follow. 
So for the next part, I added an additional digital pin, a red LED. To do that, I had to remove the integer ledPin=13 and change pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT) to pinMode(13,OUTPUT). I also added pin 12 as an output. I tried to make ledPin=12 as well as 13 but it didn't like that so I went back and looked at the blink sketch that had 2 LEDs and worked off of that. 

Then I wanted to make them blink at different rates, so I ended up changing the delay for pin 12 to 50 milliseconds instead of sensorValue. So pin 13 had a delay of the sensor value and pin 12 I played with until I came up with two different rates. 
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FYI: I used the Apple Clips App to edit the video and then uploaded it to Youtube. 
You could make it fancier, but I just wanted some words. 
As far as the code and circuit play went, I wasn't able to wrap my mind around 2 analog pins and one digital. The best I could come up with was that it was kind of like having 2 switches for the same lightbulb, one at the top of my stairs and one at the bottom. But that only made sense to me as a switch, so like using the button switch. I couldn't decide if you could do both. I wasn't really sure why you'd want two dials. I did change the digitalWrite to analogWrite and as I suspected, it broke it. So I changed it back. 

One thing I learned was to take good notes. Going back and looking at what I did last week helped me figure out how to change the code for this week. I'm not sure exactly what I learned about electricity, but I feel like I know more somehow. 
Week Two Notes
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Week One - The Remix

11/8/2018

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I didn't post these on Youtube, but this is the LED finally and then 2 LEDs. 
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Week 1

11/4/2018

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I don't think I really understand the assignment this week. I think it is supposed to make an LED bulb blink on the breadboard. I made the first circuit in the book I found and it looked like the first two pictures shown. When I press the switch, the light comes on. 

I was also able to get the built in LED to flash on the Arduino using the code. I could change the delay so that the built in LED blinked at different rates. Those are the videos. 

Unfortunately, the circuit that first in my book doesn't have any wires in port 13 and that's where things went off the rails for me. I can't move things if they aren't there. I don't have instructions that tell the LED light on the breadboard to blink.

I felt like I didn't really understand any of the play parts because I had different instructions. I can appreciate being able to play around, but I've learned that in the case of educational technology, that usually means frustration. I wish I'd have known that they wouldn't all have the same instructions instead of buying a kit with all the extra pieces. 

I don't know how to draw an electronic diagram. There are some schematic diagrams in the book I have, but they didn't make any sense to me. If there hadn't been a real picture, I wouldn't have been able to make any circuit. 

I'm hoping I understand more next week. If I were a student I would've given up, honestly. I actually just ordered another kit so that I could get the right book, because I don't have time to be lost. 
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