Welcome to the third week of EDTEC 568 - Makerspaces Build Challenge. This week's challenge is to build two projects - one controlling and RGB LED and the other switching on and off multiple LED's in various patterns. While the RGB LED project introduces control of a new electronic component in the RGB LED, the majority of the play and learning is introducing new coding functionality and using previous coding functionality in new ways that involve arrays, indices, for loops, else if logical statements, digitalWrite, and analogWrite. The multiple LED's project, at least for me, was less about building the circuits and more about adapting code written for eight LED's to the twelve LED's I had already built as an extension for Week 2. To begin, we will take a look at the RGB LED project, starting with the fairly sophisticated code, especially for the spectrum portion, I typed into Sketch on the Arduino IDE shown below.
Next, below is an image of my Arduino Uno and the breadboard with RGB LED circuit I built.
The circuit diagram for the LED RGB is below.
The following video shows the RGB LED project in action and describes the workings of the circuit and features of the Sketch code uploaded from the Arduino IDE.
Now, we will take a look at the Multiple LED's project, starting with the code I typed into Sketch on the Arduino IDE shown below.
Next, below is an image of my Arduino Uno and the breadboard with Multiple LED's circuits I built.
The circuit diagram for the LED RGB is below.
The following video shows the Multiple LED's project in action and describes the workings of the circuit and features of the Sketch code uploaded from the Arduino IDE.
This has been a very busy week at my high school; so, I did not have an opportunity to dive into the projects until the end of the week. Since I had anticipated this would be the case, I decided to take a few stolen moments here and there to play with the circuit components in various configurations to make sure I understood how they worked; I did need to take a look at the thermistor and photoresistor documentation to make sure I did not fry them by putting too much current through them. I also looked through the documentation of the relevant coding functionality to be prepared to take up the challenges. Admittedly this was a more "workman-like approach" than "play", but the actual build and experimentation was still most enjoyable. This weeks reflection is that I already feel like I have both learned new ideas and renewed some latent ideas. As is always the case of extending one's area of knowledge, the perimeter grows revealing new horizons. In other words, the more I learn and experience, the more I see additional possibilities. Of course this applies to the classroom, but I also would love to have some time to build some Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects to support my amateur radio hobby. Actually, I would love to be able to get on the air more than a few moments each week; mostly to check in to a local emergency response network, not to meet some new contacts halfway around the world. Well there is always winter break to make some progress on evolving both in the classroom and at my hobbies. For my Extension Challenge, I combined the code from last week's Potentiometer project with the code from this week's RGB LED project. The circuits I built used the RGB LED circuit but controlled the intensity of the RGB LED with inputs from a potentiometer, a thermistor, and a photoresistor to mix colors. This was somewhat challenging to troubleshoot as the electronic components did not fit tightly in the breadboard making for some intermittent contacts. The final product worked well and was fun to try to physically manipulate the thermistor and photoresistor as external environment sensors. I would add that the complexity of this circuit required some thoughtful trouble shooting practices to isolate circuits. I have included below the circuit, the code, and a video describing the working project. The basic circuit diagram for the extensionsRGB LED Extension is below.
The Sketch Code for RGB LED Extension is below.
The video for RGB LED Extension is below. Note that I built the analog input circuits on a separate breadboard for convenience, but this does neatly emphasize that the Arduino Uno mediated through the sketch code bridges the analog inputs to the PWM digital outputs.
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