Electronics
Overview
The goal of this project was to make a setup of lights and/or music on an Arduino Redboard. For my project, me and my partner coded our Redboard to play the Tetris theme song, while at the same time flashing different sets of lights.
The Redboard program took some experimenting and studying to understand the basics. There were many different commands that could be used in the coding, and some were very difficult to understand. Since me and my partner had taken coding classes previously to this lesson, we already knew some of the basics. To help out the rest of the class, me and my partner presented some of the basics of coding to them (such as how to customize LED lights turning on and off, and how to get music to play from a buzzerpin).
Making our Tetris song and lightshow took a lot of trial and error. Originally, we could only get the song and lights to play in separate sketches (meaning we couldn't get them to work in the same set of code, so we couldn't get them to play simultaneously). But after a friend made a discovery using if/else statements, we were able to get them to play at the same time.
Here, you can see our Redboard working:
The Redboard program took some experimenting and studying to understand the basics. There were many different commands that could be used in the coding, and some were very difficult to understand. Since me and my partner had taken coding classes previously to this lesson, we already knew some of the basics. To help out the rest of the class, me and my partner presented some of the basics of coding to them (such as how to customize LED lights turning on and off, and how to get music to play from a buzzerpin).
Making our Tetris song and lightshow took a lot of trial and error. Originally, we could only get the song and lights to play in separate sketches (meaning we couldn't get them to work in the same set of code, so we couldn't get them to play simultaneously). But after a friend made a discovery using if/else statements, we were able to get them to play at the same time.
Here, you can see our Redboard working:
(I'm sorry I recorded vertically)
If you care to see our code behind this, go ahead and download this:
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Personal Reflection
This project was my personal favorite project we've done all year. We learned a lot about coding and it was very fun to experiment with different things.
I think this project could have been better if we had focused more on understanding the code. Since there are limitless opportunities with coding, if we had all spent more time to understand the code, then we could have made much cooler projects.
The peak of this project for me would be teaching the class. I felt like what me and my partner were doing was helping a lot of people, and I felt proud whenever anyone figured something out.
The pit of this project for me would probably be all of the electricity packets we did prior to the Redboards. It was very misguided and not well taught, which just led to frustration. However, the Redboard portion of this project was very well explained by the SparkFun books we were given.
I think this project could have been better if we had focused more on understanding the code. Since there are limitless opportunities with coding, if we had all spent more time to understand the code, then we could have made much cooler projects.
The peak of this project for me would be teaching the class. I felt like what me and my partner were doing was helping a lot of people, and I felt proud whenever anyone figured something out.
The pit of this project for me would probably be all of the electricity packets we did prior to the Redboards. It was very misguided and not well taught, which just led to frustration. However, the Redboard portion of this project was very well explained by the SparkFun books we were given.
Terms
- Circuit: A complete loop made of a conductive material from one side of a power source to the other.
- Parallel Circuits: The current has multiple routes it can take.
- Series Circuits: The current goes through multiple resistors in a row.
- Resistance: Obstacle to current that weakens, reduces, and slows down current.
- Current: Flow of electricity from positive to negative.
- Voltage: Push or pull or electricity across a resistor.
- Power: Brightness of a bulb.