September 21

This week, I decided to take more time to really struggle with the lab. This is because I wanted to better understand all the components that go into making the circuit, and how they relate to one another. Last week, I followed the lab more closely, but this week, I skimmed the general idea of the lab process, but decided to do the circuit without looking at the directions as much. As of this evening, I managed to finish two of the three labs for this week doing this method, and although my progress is slower, I think I am learning a lot more, and will continue struggling through the circuits and accompanying Arduino code in this way. To me, it is both more fun and I learn more. It makes me feel like I own the circuit, and I'm learning a lot from the mistakes.

The first of the two labs I did had not taken too long, in terms of the actual circuit. I did have issues about where to plug in things into the Arduino at first, but that gave me motivation to study the Arduino inputs and outputs a bit more. I then also used the opportunity to study the Arduino code, and the logic behind why it is done the way it's done. My circuit worked pretty well eventually, and I posted the photos just above here of this finished circuit.

The second lab, with the potentiometer, took much longer. I had to understand the circuitry a lot more, and that took some time to really figure out, because these are new concepts for me. I eventually came to understand the point of the three output, vcc and gnd that go with the pot, and how they work. I plugged the circuit in a way that would allow me to change the values of the LED using the pot, and struggled at first doing so, because of debugging and other such things. Then, once that was figured out, I had an issue where my LED would not really dim properly. The values would change too quickly, rather than giving me more variation. To resolve this issue, I looked up the Arduino diagram, and also asked for help. Another peer of mine in ITP, Wasif, explained to me that I need to plug the cable into an Arduino input that can do the pulsing required to get the LED to light in the sort of way that works with a potentiometer. I had originally used A7, but it turns out that A5, among other inputs, was designed to allow the sort of pulsing that could change the LED values how I wanted.

As of the writing of this blog, I have looked over the third lab for this week, but having struggled through the other two labs, I have not had time to get into this lab yet. It is my intention to take the same approach of struggling through this third lab to understand it better, and will update this blog post accordingly once I do.