What is Arduino?
Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, combined with a user community that designs and manufactures single-board micro controllers and micro controller kits for building digital devices. They allow user to use there products and create whatever they want. Because it is open source you can change and modify there products and make them your own for your own purpose. The community is helpful and has a huge amount of ideas on what to do with your Arduino. Throughout my time working on Arduino I found myself looking at the Arduino form for help and I got all my problems fixed with it.
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For one of my first projects where you learn how the coding works you make a simple game seen in some arcades or carnivals where two people hold a rod and based on the temperature of said rod the lights go up corresponding to a level of attraction. It was a fun first little test to see what I knew already from prior experience.
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The RGB light has taken the market by storm and in this project we worked with color sensors and what ever sensor (red, green or blue) has the highest light level then the RGB light would display that color.
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For this project we began to work with servos. We stated with connecting it and making sure that when we turn the nob it would turn the motor. It was a good project to learn how servos work in Arduino.
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This project was a lot of fun for me. I enjoyed making a hour glass but the Digital and Mechanical version. It was very cool to see it work but in my code I did speed up the timing so I could take a video but you could make as long as a time as you want just by changing a few numbers.
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This project was not anything special but a good introduction into the different type of motor.
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This project expands off of the last one. This project we added both a directional button and a speed dial. This was very interesting in how motors like this one work.
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This was also one of my favorite project since everyone likes the magic 8 ball. this was very fun to show to my family and just ask questions. It works surprisingly well and I have re built it and have it available for my sister to play with.
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This project was pretty simple but cool in that you can use conductive material as a button and it also works very well as long as you have half decent contact.
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This was a project that was not due but I decided to do it because I could not do some of the other ones due to missing parts. This was also very fun in working with both Arduino and Processing. I worked through it pretty well and found some issues but found a way around them that required a little more research and different lines of code.
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This project caused a little confusion but once I got the code down and build down it was just able to get the make shift button actually work and do what it was supposed. Was crazy that I could use this in a day to day life if I ever run into a button falling off the remote or anything else.
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What I learned
Now throughout the projects and everything I was walking in with a little experience. I know a little Python and I know my way around Visual Basic even though it pains me to say that. (Its not the best language) Arduino has allowed me to learn another language and allowed me to explore the process of both coding and building. It was very fun to do both since I never really have done that before. I could definitely find myself in the future buying a Arduino and supplies to make some of my own projects. I have only explored the digital side of coding with my own work space or "real estate" as I call it and Arduino has opened new doors to make new automated machines for everyday use around my house or mainly just a auto clicker for my computer games.