Arduino

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are small, powerful lights that are used in many different applications. To start on this microcontroller, my partner and I worked on blinking an LED. It's as simple as turning a light on and off. It might not seem like much, but establishing this important baseline gave us a solid foundation as we worked towards more complex experiments.

This circuit involved the use of a potentiometer. A potentiometer is also known as a variable resistor. When it’s connected with 5 volts across its two outer pins, the middle pin outputs a voltage between 0 and 5, depending on the position of the knob on the potentiometer.

Instead of using a red or yellow LED for this circuit a special RGB LED was used. RGB, or red-green-blue, LEDs have three different color-emitting diodes that can be combined to create all sorts of colors.

This circuit used multiple LEDs as once, the LEDs went off in a line. By altering the code you could make the sequence of lights move faster or slower.

This was one of my favorite circuits to play around with, and it's relatively simple. Pushing the buttons (either one) allows for the LED to light up. The way this circuit works is when the button is pushed the voltage goes low.

This circuit uses a photo sensor which detects the light in an area and either becomes lighter or dimmer, the sensor will output a high voltage when it is getting a lot of light and a low voltage when it is not. This allows for the Arduino to act the way it does.

The circuit uses a temperature sensor, this particular sensor has three pins – a positive, a ground, and a signal. For every centigrade degree it reads, it outputs 10 millivolts.

This circuit uses a Servo which relies on the inputted code, by varying the pulse of voltage a servo receives, we were able to move a servo to a specific position. For example, a pulse of 1.5 milliseconds will move the servo 90 degrees.

The buzzer makes a short noise when voltage is applied to it, this can be used to make a variety of different sounds, the sound above is a little tune we made as a series of short beeps. Altering the code allows for a multitude of possibilities, you can change the beats and the notes.

This circuit requires the use of a transistor, the transistor can switch a larger amount of current than the Arduino can.

In this circuit a Relay was used, a relay is just an electrically controlled mechanical switch. Inside of the relay is an electromagnet that when provided enough energy, can cause a switch to trip.

In this circuit a Shift Register was used, this allows for the arduino to have an additional eight outputs, using only three pins on the board.