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During the KIdWind 2020-2021 Solar Challenge, as our five middle school participants designed and built their projects, they learned about circuitry (make wiring diagrams), how solar panels work (particulary the importance of solar panel placement), accessory loads, power storage and much more! This year, we would like participants to think about integrating microcontrollers (small computers) into solar devices to make things happen in their solar devices.
On August 25, 2021, four of last year's solar challenge participants completed a four-hour workshop to learn about the function of microcontrollers, in particular, Arduinos! What is an Arduino? It is a microcontroller that can read inputs (such as a pushbutton or light sensor) and turn it into outputs (such as lighting a bulb, sound a buzzer, activate a motor). The participants learned that the Arduino programming language is used to write a set of instructions (called Sketches) that tell the Arduino (a microcontroller) what to do.
Makersmiths member, Ralph Pugh, led the workshop using Stem Lingo Arduino kits. The kit was created by Aisha Brown, an aerospace engineer and friend of Ralph's family. She donated four Stem Lingo kits to Makersmiths for the organization to use in workshops. Here are some examples from the Aug. 25 workshop!
Students first learned to read the code that was written by a programmer to make the reaction time activity. Katie is following the set up directions (bottom left image) to set up her bread board (it connects components into a circuit). The participants practiced the activity to get their best reaction time scores before challenging one another (upper left image shows Soren and Katie). Who had the best reaction time? Caleb did- he plays ping pong a lot and that requires great reaction ability!
Stem Lingo Arduino Kit- This set up is for the Reaction Skill activity
Caleb setting up his reaction time activity.
The second activity involved setting up the Theremin Music Player activity. First the participants read the code to understand what should happen if they set up their components correctly and sent the code (set of instructions) to their Arduino. This is Connor making the connections to the Arduino and components such as the Ultrasonic distance sensor.
Ultrasonic Distance Sensor
The sensor is used to capture the distance of the wave of a hand from the Ultradistance sensor. The hand distance corresponds to a certain pitch of the note that is produced. The sound is made louder by a small amplifier.
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