Final Post: Personal Retrospective

 

WOW!!  I am not sure where to begin.  When I saw the assignments and things in week 1, I wasn’t sure what I had really gotten myself into.  And how was I going to be able to make it through this class while being a first-year classroom teacher, a mom, and a student all at the same time? Somehow, I have done it and that is exciting.  I knew very little about circuit building and absolutely nothing about the coding and programming part of a circuit.  I was worried about the code part to make the circuit work; I knew that the actual building might have challenges but that I would be able to put it together.  I love puzzles and to me, the building of the circuits was a puzzle. 

 

As I went back through my blog posts I can see I was someone who each week was able to put the circuit together faster and more accurately and have less need to move or change parts.  I can also see that I learned more about coding and what it means than I thought, even though I know I can still learn so much and that would allow me to be able to do better, more creative circuits.  I also saw that I was able to explain in more detail what was happening in the circuits, which is still surprising to me.  I learned that I started to doubt myself less and less and the weeks went on.  The build that I am most proud of is the Electronic Die one since I was able to figure out how to get the pieces in and what all the pieces I needed were, and then I was able to put a code together that would make the build show numbers 1 through 6 likes on a die. 

 

There is a lot that I learned from this class that I didn’t know before since I came in with very little knowledge of circuits and coding.  I learned how to put circuits together, why resistors are needed, more about positive and negative, about different pieces that can be added to the breadboard to help control the circuit, and I learned that the breadboard is called the breadboard.  I learned about the Arduino and its importance in the circuit.  All of these things were learned through reading and understanding the code parts and the builds, as well as tinkering with the builds and codes.  Hands-on with visuals is what helps me to really understand what it is I am supposed to be learning.  I will also say that my classmates were a huge part of my learning from them helping to explain why my circuit wasn’t working to the way they wrote their blogs.  I found reading my classmates blogs helped expand my knowledge as did reading all the discussion posts and comments.

 

What did I learn about myself?  Well, first I learned that tinkering with a build and then trying to change codes really made everything come together better.  Next, I learned or relearned that I am not a person who likes to give up on something because it doesn’t work.  But that there are times that I just need to walk away for a little while and come back to it to allow myself to process what was going on.  Most of the time when I did this, I was able to figure out my problem and things working.  Finally, learned that I need to be less stubborn and ask for help when I am struggling and that it is okay to ask for help.  As I read back through my words, I saw myself telling myself that failing is okay and that it is all a part of the makers' mindset.  I also noticed that I was telling myself to take the time to really understand things and that researching to really understand was going to help my knowledge be stronger and better.

 

My challenges in this class were not fully understanding what I was doing or what the codes meant at the beginning.  I started out just following the builds that were given to me and not trying to understand what was happening.  Once I realized I needed to do this then things started to make more sense and I was able to slowly understand what was happening.  I wouldn’t say the challenges completely changed over time but that as new coding words were brought in, I would again struggle to understand what they meant, sometimes even after researching and trying to understand them.

 

As I move forward as a maker, I look forward to tinkering with the Arduino some more and exploring coding options that I can use in my classroom.  I will also be reaching out to my campus instructional technologist to see what ideas she has for coding with the class and how I can integrate that into my classroom.  I would also like to talk to her about being some We Do Kits and use them to see if this is something that could be used as an after-school club next year.  I would also like to explore 3D printing and see how I can use that with my class to have them show me their learning.  We have 3 or 4 3D printers at my school and I would love to have my class use them if possible, this year. 

 

I would have to say that is class has reminded me what my own students feel like when they don’t understand directions or the content and I expect them to go off and work.  It has opened my eyes and made me remember it is all a learning process.  And it has reminded me that nothing is beyond my ability to understand, if there is enough research, determination, and will power to gain knowledge. 

Iron Chef - Servo with a Tilt Sensor

 

This week we were challenged to make a circuit using a motor and a sensor.  Since I hadn’t used either one in a build, I decided I needed to first build two circuits, one with a motor and one with a sensor.  I decided to do the Digital Hour Class from my Arduino Starter Kit Project Book because it had a tilt sensor, and then I decided to use SparkFun’s circuit 3A: Servo Motors.  Then I would combine the servo motor with a tilt sensor.

            The first, build I did was the Digital Hour Class.  I gathered the needed materials of 6-LEDs, 6-220 ohm resistors, 1-10kohm resistor, 1- tilt sensor, and 9 jumper wires.  I followed the diagram in my Arduino Starter Kit Project Book and made the adjustments I needed because my board is backward compared to the diagram.  After I got all the pieces into the breadboard, I set out to write the code from the website so I could hopefully understand it better.  As I was writing the code out, I got to the long interval=600000 and realized that this was the part where the code tells the Arduino how long to wait before turning on an LED.  Since the build was for an hourglass and it had 6 LEDs that meant that every 10 minutes an LED should come one until all are lit up after an hour.  I didn’t want to wait an hour so I made a note to change that to 2 minutes (120000 ms).  Now that I had the code written I typed it into the Arduino IDE and hit verify.  I got an error, it said because of a numerical # and highlighted the line.  I looked and realized that there was a 0 where there was supposed to be a closed ) bracket.  I fixed it and verified it again and all was clear, so I plugged in my Arduino and uploaded the code to it.  Then I waited for something but I knew I needed to wait 2 minutes since that was the time, I set it to turn on an LED.  I was happy to see the first LED come on and waited to see if the other 5 would come on.  They did so after 12 minutes was up, I picked up the board to tilt it so it would reset the circuit.  Well, it didn’t work, so I decided to change the time to 5 seconds so that I could troubleshoot and not have to wait 12 minutes but instead was 30 seconds.  After uploading the adjusted code to the Arduino, I waited 30 seconds and again picked up the board and nothing happened.  I was even able to take out the tilt sensor and nothing happened, the LEDs were all still on.  I got to this point and didn’t really know what to do so I was going to move on to the servo circuit.  Before I took the board apart, I decided to look at the diagram and my board and compare them.  This is when I noticed that I had my wire going from tilt to the Arduino pin 8 was in i26 but needed to be in i27, which is on the negative side of the tilt with the resistor.  Once I did this and reuploaded the code and waited 30 seconds I tilted the sensor back and the lights went off.  I let the circuit go a few more times and moved the sensor back when I decided to see if I picked it up and tilted the board that would work and it did.

Hour Glass (tilt sensor) setup

Code used

Diagram for Hourglass circuit. (The purple wires aren’t in my

circuit but I needed them to get the resistors

to be in the right spot.)(Made in Tinkercad)

Pictures of the circuit set up (2 top pictures)

Showing the circuit working (2 bottom pictures)

 

Video of my first attempt at the Hourglass circuit.

Video of Hourglass working.

            Next up was the Servo Motor build which I used the SparkFun circuit 3A.  I got the servo motor, 8 jumper wires, and a potentiometer.  I followed the diagram and set the board all up.  Again, I wrote out the code to help me understand it better.  I found it interesting that because servo is in the Arduino library you can tell the Arduino that by the first line of the code being #include <servo.h>.  Once I was done writing it, I set out to type it into the Arduino IDE, and to my surprise (not) I got an error message because I forgot to delete the void setup and void loop that automatically populates when you start a new code in the IDE.  I deleted and reverified and got no errors. This is when I plugged in my board and uploaded the code to the board.  Nothing!! So, I tried moving the wire from f4 to i4 to see if it worked better not sharing a hole with a leg of the potentiometer.  It worked but seemed to be when I moved the potentiometer and not the knob.  So, I decided to move it back to f4 and make sure the potentiometer was in the board the best it could be and remembered from our earlier build that I would just need to hold the potentiometer down some.  It then seemed to work, so not sure exactly why it didn’t work the first time but I would have to guess because the connection wasn’t great.

Servo motor setup

Picture of Servo circuit.

Servo Diagram (made in Tinkercad)

Code for Servo

Servo video

            Now comes the fun where I combine the servo with a tilt.  Since I had just finished the servo circuit, I decided to take out the potentiometer and put the tilt in that spot.  I had to remove some wires and move a few around so that they were in the right spot for the tilt sensor.  So, since the board was all ready, I had to look at the codes for both circuits and see how to combine them. After looking at the two codes I had an idea of how to combine them but decided to see if I could find a code online that was close to what I was thinking.  Well I found one in the Arduino forum and I tried it even though I wasn’t quite sure why I needed to say anything about pin13 since I had nothing plugged into it.  After getting it ready I verified and no errors, so I plugged in the board and uploaded the code to it.  But it was a no go, so I tried to comment out parts to see if the other would work.  Again, nothing made the code work.  So back to the internet I went and ended up finding a Slideshare that had Make: Basic Arduino Projects that had a build with servo and tilt sensor.  So, I looked at the code and wrote it out and it made more sense to me than the other.  Now I typed in this code and verified it and got no errors.  Plugged the board back in and uploaded the code to the board.  Once the code got to the board the servo blade moved a little bit.  So, I picked up the board and the servo moved.  Wahoo!!  This was set at moving 45 degrees, I wanted to see what happened if I changed it to 160 degrees.  I didn’t do 180 degrees because I read that it wasn’t good for the servo to do that.  It moved 160 degrees.  While watching the blade moved, I thought about a protractor and wondered if I drew 45, 90, and 160 degrees on a piece of paper and lined up the servo if I could get the blade to move that amount of degrees.  It did though I would have to adjust the servo after changing the code to have the blade lining up with the line on the paper.  This circuit could be used for a digital protractor which would be fun for students to use in class. 

Set up and materials for Servo controlled by Tilt Sensor.

Pictures of Servo controlled by the tilt sensor.

Diagram of the Servo with tilt sensor circuit. 

(Green isn’t there but needed to make the circuit work in Tinkercad).

The first code I tried but didn't work.

Second code I used and the one that worked 

for Servo controlled by a tilt sensor.

Servo with tilt with 90 degree blade movement.

Servo with tilt with 160 degree blade movement.

Servo with tilt extension video.

            This last challenge reminded me that it is important to make sure all wires and resistors are on the right side of the piece that you are trying to make work.  When I started this class I wasn’t so sure if I was going to be able to make it because the coding was like a foreign language to me.  While I have learned a lot, I still do fully understand every single part of the code, especially when it is up to me to come up with the code, but am better at understanding a code that is written for me.  The building of the circuit is fun and pretty easy for me so that helps balance the coding not being as easy. 

Simon Says - Week 5 Adventures in Making Challenge

 

This week we were challenged to pick another project from the book or in my case from the SparkFun website.  I looked through the Arduino book and at the SparkFun website and decided I liked the sound of the Simon Says projects.  Mainly because I love the game Simon Says.  Following the diagram on the website, it was pretty easy to set up, even though I changed most of the locations on the breadboard because mine was set backwards compared to the diagram but I could easily figure it out and got the board all set up.  Simon Says uses a piezo buzzer, 4 LEDs – red, blue, green, and yellow, 4 - 330-ohm resistors, 4 pushbuttons, 17 jumper wires, along with the Arduino and the breadboard.  Like I said the setup was pretty easy but I was nervous about the piezo buzzer because mine was bigger than the one shown, but I was able to get it in the same spot on the board and just had to adjust one or two of the jumper wires positions.  Then I set out to read the code and see what I understood of it and typed the code in.  I verified the code and got no errors.  So, I plugged in the Arduino and uploaded the code to the board, and I got the noise and the LEDs started blinking.  They LEDs kept blinking until I hit a push button, I was a little shocked because I had been so worried about this build since I thought it might be harder than I could handle.

          In my excitement of everything working I ended up noticing that the green LED wasn’t lighting up like the others.  So, I went back to the diagram and made sure everything was in the right spot and it looked like it was, so then I thought that maybe I needed to change something in the code since my setup was a little different than the diagram.  I found out though that the pins and didn’t change so that wasn’t the deal.  I then went back to the breadboard and looked at the wires going to the green LED and saw that my jumper wire was in i13 and it needed to be in i12 so I moved it and hoped that was the problem.  I then plugged the Arduino back in and reloaded the code and it worked.  Wahoo!!!  Then I pushed a push-button and I realized that I think the resistor for the blue LED and the cathode end of the yellow might have been in the same line or too close so I changed the cathode of the yellow LED to 21 from 19 on the breadboard and the negative.  I was hoping this would fix the problem and it did.  I was proud of myself for not getting frustrated when there were some issues.  I had fun playing with it trying to see if I could make it to the end, which was 13 in a row.  Apparently, I can’t remember that mean light sequences. HAHA!!!

          I then went to the code and found that I could adjust the number of times needed to get to the end, so I changed it to 5 so I could see what it did when I got that many in a row.  Well, it makes noise and the LEDs all start blinking again.  I also saw that the response time was set at 3000 ms (3 seconds), so I changed it to 2000 ms (2 seconds) and that was okay until I got to round 10 and I wasn’t able to move fast enough to get the push button pushed.  I then changed it to 1000 ms (1 second) and I could only get 5 rounds before I wasn’t fast enough to answer.  After playing with the time, I decided that 3 seconds was the right amount of time. 

Simon Says setup notes.

 

                        

Pictures of the circuit from different angles.

 

Tinkercad diagram I made. The purple cords aren’t on my board but I needed them to get the LEDs to connect correctly in the diagram so the code would work in Tinkercad.

 

Video of Simon Says.

          I enjoyed this build as it was one that was interactive and fun.  It is also one that I would build again and play with my children.  They both had fun playing with it and thought that it was cool that mom could make that.  This type of circuit can be seen in the Simon game, as well as other electronic games that children enjoy playing.  All the lights, colors, and music make it fun and entertaining. 

Digital Die - Week 4 Adventures in Making Challenge

 

Digital Die, not dice should be the title.  Dice is for more than one die, but if you only have one it is die.  A random piece of information I know, I guess from growing up in a very serious game family.  Anyway, on to this goal of this week, I was supposed to build a circuit and figure out the code that would allow the circuit to light up LEDs to represent numbers like are on a die.  Before I could do this build, I needed to do the basic push button build since I hadn’t done it yet and I wanted to make sure I understood how it worked and could see the code for it.  Here is a couple of pictures of this build.

Left picture: Push Button circuit.

Right picture: Showing the circuit works.

        Now that I understood the push button, I was ready to tackle the build.  I knew that each LED needed a resistor and a jumper wire leading from the positive (anode-long) side of the LED back to a PIN.  The resistors needed to be on the negative (cathode-short) side of the LED and going into a negative slot on the breadboard.  I also know that I need power to the breadboard from the 5V pin and that I need a Ground (negative) from Arduino to both sides of the breadboard since I was using both sides of the breadboard.  I got the Arduino and the breadboard all set up.  I was ready for the code part but I wanted to make sure I understood all the parts that I thought I needed and check to make sure I didn’t see anything else I needed. So, I spent a couple hours looking at the Reference page on the Arduino website.  I ended up calling it a night and would start the code the next day.  The first thing I did in my code was set up all the global codes, this included all the LEDs and telling which pin they were, the push button and its pin, then gave buttonState (so that when it was pushed the Arduino would recognize it, and last a time constraint so that the LEDs would turn off after 2 seconds.  Then, I had to set up the void setup () by making sure I had each LED marked as an OUTPUT and then the push button marked as an INPUT.  I also had to make sure that I had a randomSeed so that I would get a random number each time I pushed the button instead of getting the same number each time.  The last thing I had to do for the code was the void loop ().  I had to make sure the button was recognized as a digitalRead so that if it was high it would run a random search for a number.  I had to then do if statements for each number and use digitalWrite and give the certain pins needed to make each number 1-6 like they are on a die.  Lastly, I had to tell it that once the delay (time) was up that all LEDs needed to turn off or go LOW.   I had it all typed in and I hit verify to make sure there were no errors.  To my surprise, I didn’t get any errors.  I still am in shock that I got no errors.  I then uploaded the code to the Arduino and got nothing.  The circuit didn’t do anything.  I thought that it was probably a push button error because I was still a little confused on exactly the right way for things to go. This is when I noticed that I had the positive jumper wire from 5V (the power to the board) in the + part of the breadboard and realized that the push button needed to have the power since it was the one controlling the LEDs.  I moved the wire to c5 and moved the jumper wire leading from PIN5 to the push button to g5.  This is when I got the lights to work but it appeared that the push button wasn’t doing anything because the LEDs just were lighting up.  So, I decided to pull out the push button to see if it was doing anything, and to my surprise, it was because once I took it out the LEDs went dark.  This is when I put it back so I could keep looking at it and try to figure out what was wrong.  This is when I saw that the positive jumper wire and the jumper wire going from Arduino to the push button were on the same row but on different sides.  I vaguely remembered from my reading and research for this build something about how the legs on the push button run in a row with each other only one way.  I decided to move the push button jumper wire from g5 to g3, so it wasn’t connected to the power through the legs of the push button anymore.  Doing this allowed me to be able to push the button and control the LEDs lighting up.  I might have screamed I was so excited that I got it to work.

        As I was pushing the button and making sure each number showed up so I knew that I had it coded right, I noticed that I coded 3 to be three LEDs in a row instead of a diagonal like on a die.  So, I changed it in the code and checked it and it was right this time. 

Here is the code I used:

int Led1pin = 12;
int Led2pin = 8;
int Led3pin = 7;
int Led4pin = 11;

int Led5pin = 10;

int Led6pin = 9;

int Led7pin = 6;
int buttonpin = 5;
int buttonState;
long ran;
int time = 2000;

void setup ()
{
  pinMode (Led1pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (Led2pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (Led3pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (Led4pin, OUTPUT);

  pinMode (Led5pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (Led6pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (Led7pin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode (buttonpin, INPUT);
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
}

void loop()
{
  buttonState = digitalRead(buttonpin);
  if (buttonState == HIGH){
    ran = random(1, 7);
    if (ran == 1){
      digitalWrite (Led7pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
    }
    if (ran == 2){
      digitalWrite (Led1pin, HIGH);

        digitalWrite (Led6pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
    }
    if (ran == 3){
      digitalWrite (Led1pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led2pin, HIGH);

        digitalWrite (Led3pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
    }
    if (ran == 4){
      digitalWrite (Led1pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led3pin, HIGH);

        digitalWrite (Led4pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led6pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
    }
    if (ran == 5){
      digitalWrite (Led1pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led3pin, HIGH);

        digitalWrite (Led4pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led6pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led7pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
   }
   if (ran == 6){
      digitalWrite (Led1pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led2pin, HIGH);

        digitalWrite (Led3pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led4pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led5pin, HIGH);
      digitalWrite (Led6pin, HIGH);
      delay (time);
   }
  }
  digitalWrite (Led1pin, LOW);
  digitalWrite (Led2pin, LOW);
  digitalWrite (Led3pin, LOW);
  digitalWrite (Led4pin, LOW);

  digitalWrite (Led5pin, LOW);
  digitalWrite (Led6pin, LOW);
  digitalWrite (Led7pin, LOW);

}

The setup I used for the circuit.

My circuit that I made on Tinkercad.
Trying out something new instead of my
hand-drawn circuits.

Top left picture is the circuit just set up.  Other three are the
showing different numbers through the LEDs that are lit up.

Video of the circuit.

        The next part of the challenge was to “roll” the die 100 times and keep track of the number it showed and make a graph showing the number of times each number randomly came up.

        My final reflection for this build is that the push button was used to create randomization.  I also learned that the push button needs to have power and that the power and wire leading to a PIN on the Arduino that is linked to the push button need to not be on the same row even if they are on opposite sides of the breadboard.  This build really had me nervous and stressed after I first read about it because I wasn’t really sure where to start but thankfully Dr. B had a short video that helped calm me down and made me realize that I can do this and that it is okay to fail and fail again.  For this build, I needed to really pay close attention to details as it had more jumper wires and pieces needed that I needed to make sure everything got in the right place.  This program and circuit could be seen in gaming and is probably used in Vegas.  I think this could be a fun way to use a die or dice (if two or more are needed) to get a number for the children while playing a game or to answer a question.  Overall, I feel that this week went smoother than I thought for the build.

 

        Here is a picture of the layout of my maker space.  Now, this really caused me to spend a lot of time on it because the SketchUp program he suggested was super difficult to use, at least for me. But thanks to some useful YouTube videos I was able to create the space below.

The left wall is green to use as a green screen, the black boxes
 on the tables are 3D printers, and the storage on the bottom 
wall are open space storage that can hold small boxes with supplies.  

There are two windows on the top wall and the door on the bottom wall in the left corner.

Another view of the room.

RGB and Multiple LEDs along with a Challenge Build - Week 3 - Adventures of Making

 

This week we had two builds to do and then a challenge of combining two or more builds and making the code work.  The first build was the Driving an RGB LED and the second build was Driving Multiple LEDs. Then for the challenge, I decided I wanted to combine these two challenges and see if I could get them both to work.

         First, Driving an RGB LED was pretty easy to set up and the code made sense for the most part.  The first part of the code has the RGB go through the 8 colors that can be created with it and a delay(1000) which is 1000 milliseconds.  Then the code has the RGB step through the colors the RGB can make by using the variable “x” and having “x” count from 0 to 767.  It uses if/else statements to figure out what color is to be being displayed at that time.  Below is the code I used, a picture of the circuit, and diagrams of the circuit (one I drew and one a fritz).

Picture of my set up.

                                                      Picture of what my board looks like.

Diagrams of the circuit.

Here are pictures of the code I used.  I had to use multiple and get

creative to get it all together.

         Once I got everything set up and the code all ready, I hit upload and the RGB started going through the eight colors, except green was missing.  I didn’t realize green wasn’t showing up until the second loop through when it just went off for a time and then continued.  I looked at the board to realize that the resistor that was supposed to be from d5 to f5 was actually in d5 to f6, so I fixed it and the next cycle I got green.  Now that everything was working, I went to clean up the code and after I got it all cleaned up, I hit verify and got an error message saying that showRGB wasn’t defined.  I looked at it and realized I took the curly bracket out on accident.  I put it back in and it verified again and didn’t get an error.  Wahoo.

RGB working video.

RGB explanation video. 

         Second, Driving Multiple LEDs again was easy to set up the code made sense, though I am not sure I could have figured out how to write the code to make it do all the different things it could.  This program had the circuit turning on LEDs oneAfterAnother, oneOnATATime, pingPong, marquee, and randomLED.  I learned that you can put // in front parts of the functions that are in the void setup() and that makes it become like a comment that the Arduino doesn’t recognize so it doesn’t do anything for it.  This allows you to have different functions that you can run one at a time using the same circuit setup and not have to have a different set of code for each one.  Below is the code I used, a picture of the circuit, and the diagrams of the circuit (one I drew and one a fritz).

Code pictures

Picture of the set up for 

the Multiple LEDs.

Picture of the circuit.

Diagrams of the circuit.

         The code above is the cleaned-up code.  I started with the messy and cleaned it up. I verified the cleaned-up code and got no errors.  I then went through and checked to make sure each loop worked.  They all still worked.  Below is a video with all the different loops working.

 

Video of all the different loops together.

         Last, I moved on to the challenge for the week where I was to put 2 or 3 circuit codes into one program and make the circuit work. I was able to do this by using the two codes and circuits from this week.  I set up by board with the multiple LEDs and then added the RGB, this was the easy part.  Now I needed to combine the two codes to make both work together.  The first time I tried to combine the two codes I started with the Multiple LEDs code and then went in and added the RGB code.  When I hit verify, I got an error saying missing terminating apostrophe instead of a semicolon, so I added the semicolon instead of the apostrophe (typing too fast error) and verified again.  I still got an error saying expected ‘or’, “before ‘void’” this took me a minute to figure out because it wasn’t as clear as the other code.  So, I went back to the printed code I had and realized that I forgot a semicolon after 11 above the line, so I fixed that and tried again.  Third time trying and it works, I got no errors, thank goodness.  I do like that it highlights the area where the error is even if I don’t understand what the error is telling me, it helped me figure it out even if it took a minute.  I now uploaded it to the board and only the multiple LEDs light up and nothing happened to the RGB.  I watched some videos about combining codes to see if I could figure it out.  After about three hours I decided it was time to quit for the night and try again tomorrow afternoon.  So, I started again the next day by making sure each code still worked individually and they both did.  This helped me know that they are correct and that it was the way I was combining them that was creating the problems.  This time I started with the RGB code and added the multiple LED code to it. I verified it and got a couple of error codes about ‘{‘ not being a token.  So, I removed them and verified again and it came back all good (no errors). I then uploaded it to the board and the RGB went through its loop and then the multiple LEDs went through its oneAfterAnotherLoop.  I first thought the RGB wasn’t doing anything but after waiting longer I realized it was still going through the colors just slowly and when it got back to red, it turned off as did the multiple LEDs and the whole thing started over again.  Below is a picture of my setup, the diagram of my circuit for the challenge, the code used, and a video of all it working.

 

Challenge setup.

Challenge diagram.

Pictures of the code used for challenge.

Here is a video of the challenge build.

Challenge Video

         Overall, this week the two builds we were given to do were easy to setup up the circuits and the codes seemed to make sense but again, I am not sure I would have been able to come up with them.  The challenge part of this week also was easy for the circuit setup but the coding part was frustrating and I am still not sure why I worked the way I did it the second time but not the way I did it the first time.  The RGB can be seen in video game consoles because they need to show different colors all in the same area at once.  I also think that it is used in controllers for video games that light up different colors in one spot as the player uses it.  The Multiple LEDs circuit can be seen on a flashing marquee sign that is trying to get peoples attention but it is also used in my husbands’ keyboard for his computer as it is backlit and changes colors slowly or fast depending on what he wants it to do (normally on slow because fast gives him a headache).  He can also make it light in different patterns and ways just like I was able to get the multiple LED circuit to do.  I am hoping that I have learned enough that I will be able to complete my own build setup and code to make that build work that we supposedly have coming up next week.  Now to take a day brain break before next week's Adventures in Making and class work.