Circuit Playground Express

Feb 10 - 14

Arduino Express Lab

As a person of many words but very sleep deprived, I've decided to use the power of hyperboles and visual metaphors to make an expressive work of art to demonstrate how the class went as we started the lab to use Arduino.

The lab went great at the end! A fellow classmate was able to troubleshoot what was wrong with the Arduino application and we were all able to continue the lab. I just thought this was funny.

Anyways moving on to part 7. Because I didn't get enough time this week to do anything, I wasn't able to document everything as in depth as the last part.

1. Make the built-in red LED turn on when there's less light and off when there's more.

First, I copied the code from part 6 and read it over to see where it is where the code tells the board when to light up or not. Once I found the function, I switched the parameters from both loops. HIGH for when the light was low and LOW for when the light was high.

2. Instead of the built-in red LED, make one NeoPixel turn red with there's less light and turn off when there's more.

This was the part that took me the longest to figure out. The reason was because I knew I had to mix code from part 4 and 6 but didn't know how. Apart from the part that understanding the directions took me a while. So, while I let my brain process what I needed to do, I read over the code for all the parts to see any patterns or differences. In the end, I just had to use the logic of part 1 and the variable of for the neopixel and then use the neopixel instead of the built-in LED red light. Once I got that down, I compiled and uploaded the code.

3. Instead of turning red when there's less light, make the NeoPixel turn purple (or some other color of your choice). You may want to refer to this handy RGB color picker.

This was my favorite part since I love changing the colors of the light. It was easier once I understood the logic about a function and its parameters after a semester of CS150, otherwise I would have been very lost. I went to the color picker and wrote the numbers in the right places in the parameters to get a purple light to shine.

4. Make ALL the NeoPixels turn on when it's dark and off when it's light.

Curly brackets aren't my friend because they left me for a whole hour in an endless chase. This part required loops which I copied from part 4, however every time I tried to compile it would say I did an error to the if..else loop. Since I haven't have much experience with curly brackets, I was so lost. After an hour, I tried to add another pair of brackets surrounding the for loop in the if statement and it finally worked! I think this is the part where I had to plan-evaluate-do process the most out of all of them.

When I first started the lab, I felt like it was inside a certain extent of my comfort zone since I’ve worked with Arduino before. However, all that flew out the window once nothing I did to troubleshoot could work to get the program running. Thankfully, my classmates and teachers helped me figure things out.

Moving through the lab was easier and harder with each step. On one hand, I was getting more familiarized with Arduino and its code, on the other the expectations grew in difficulty. It took me a while to get to the homework because of lack of time and because I wasn’t really confident in my abilities to do everything myself without tripping. This of course, made my brain not expect to have the most fun once it was time to leave. However, once I started working on it in my room I switched the mindset into believing that I could successfully finish the homework eventually which helped. And I did!

The difference between comfort levels in the classroom I think had a lot to do with people who have neve seen code in their lives or CS majors or experienced coders. However, in the end, programming a circuit board is not something a majority or people do, so it was a starting point for a lot of people. Coming out of the classroom, my intuition leads me to believe that the students will not feel as uncomfortable next time we have to work on circuit boards.