Week's 1-2 Summary
So, as I am a little bit late in creating this blog, I will just copy and paste the notes I took for the journal over the past two weeks:
Week 1:
I was very excited to get started with the lab, even though I have absolutely zero experience with physical computing, and as it turned out, the lab took me quite a while.
The first two parts of the lab actually turned out to be the most challenging for me. It seemed as though everything was infinately more complicated in 3d then on the page. This was largely due to the fact that I had resovled to attempt to learn from skematics only, seeing as how I wouldn't always have pictures to copy from.
While this proved to be very helpful on the last three excersises, the first two required a lot of trial and error. Even after I got some parts to work, I had to go back and try to understand why.
The most difficult parts for me was understanding how to read the 'flow' of the circuit on the breadboard, picking the right resistors, and confusing which elements needed grounding. However, by the end of the second excersise, I had begun to feel pretty comfortable with the elements involved. I also learned how exciting and amusing it can be to make an LED light up.
Week 2:
My biggest lesson from this week was in patience. Most of the excersise I had gotten through fairly quickly, though figuring which port was the right one took me a while, espically since there was only one USB port, and I had to try all the options a few different times before the program successfully downloaded. But oh, how satisfying.
But somehow, I had created some sort of randomizing switch instead of a realible one. The red and yellow LED's would switch, both be on, both be off, and would change at their own behest, regardless of what the button was doing.
I checked the code as best I could, re-sautered the wires, checked every connection, and found no reason. Jiggling certain wires seemed to increase the frequency of change, but try as I might, I could not isolate the problem.
Finally, (with some help) I realized that I had omitted the 10k ohm resistor. Since neither of the LED's seemed to be burning out, I had mistakely assumed that the resistence was correct.
So my lesson for the week is to always check resistence and make sure all your current is getting used in the right places.
Week 1:
I was very excited to get started with the lab, even though I have absolutely zero experience with physical computing, and as it turned out, the lab took me quite a while.
The first two parts of the lab actually turned out to be the most challenging for me. It seemed as though everything was infinately more complicated in 3d then on the page. This was largely due to the fact that I had resovled to attempt to learn from skematics only, seeing as how I wouldn't always have pictures to copy from.
While this proved to be very helpful on the last three excersises, the first two required a lot of trial and error. Even after I got some parts to work, I had to go back and try to understand why.
The most difficult parts for me was understanding how to read the 'flow' of the circuit on the breadboard, picking the right resistors, and confusing which elements needed grounding. However, by the end of the second excersise, I had begun to feel pretty comfortable with the elements involved. I also learned how exciting and amusing it can be to make an LED light up.
Week 2:
My biggest lesson from this week was in patience. Most of the excersise I had gotten through fairly quickly, though figuring which port was the right one took me a while, espically since there was only one USB port, and I had to try all the options a few different times before the program successfully downloaded. But oh, how satisfying.
But somehow, I had created some sort of randomizing switch instead of a realible one. The red and yellow LED's would switch, both be on, both be off, and would change at their own behest, regardless of what the button was doing.
I checked the code as best I could, re-sautered the wires, checked every connection, and found no reason. Jiggling certain wires seemed to increase the frequency of change, but try as I might, I could not isolate the problem.
Finally, (with some help) I realized that I had omitted the 10k ohm resistor. Since neither of the LED's seemed to be burning out, I had mistakely assumed that the resistence was correct.
So my lesson for the week is to always check resistence and make sure all your current is getting used in the right places.
posted by Ben at Monday, September 18, 2006
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