Electricity and Robotics
For this project, we made a computer program for an arduino board to create a "robot art show". My partner and I made a code that caused buttons to each make a different sound when they are pressed, kind of like a piano. To lead up to this, we did experiments involving circuits and breadboards, moved on to pre-coded arduino programs, and finally started working on our own code.
Concepts
Circuit: A loop of conductive materials with resistance that runs from the positive to the negative side of a power source. In this project, we needed to make sure we had a complete circuit, otherwise it wouldn't function.
Resistance: How much an object slows the current in a circuit. It is measured in ohms. Resistance is important because without it, the battery will short-circuit.
Current: The "flow" of electricity through a circuit. It is measured in amps. In our experiments, we found that more current makes lightbulbs brighter, while less current makes them dimmer.
Voltage: The difference in electrical potential energy between two points in a circuit. A battery has a certain amount of volts, and it gets split between the parallel branches of a circuit.
Reflection:
Several things went very well during this project. First, my partner and I worked very well together. We have very similar ideas and personalities, so we got things done with very few disagreements. This helped with time as well as how much we enjoyed the project. Another thing that went extremely well was our presentation to the class. The circuit functioned, and we had no problems with our circuit diagram or code. However, there were more things that went wrong. My partner and I had limited knowledge about circuits and coding, so there was a lot of time spent trying to debug code we had tried to write without even knowing how to debug it. We also had trouble trying to figure out what to do for our project. We came up with several cool ideas, but they were either too hard to do or were already being done by another group. There was also a problem with our LCD screen. We wanted to make it say "play a song", but it wasn't displaying words for some reason. We checked our code and re-assembled the circuit, and it was all correct, but the screen still wouldn't display words. We couldn't remove it because it was in our circuit diagram and we didn't have time to redo it. However, we could adjust the brightness of the screen using the potentiometer, so we changed the brightness in time to the notes we were playing to make a "light show".
Below is a picture of our arduino experiments, a video of our creation, a picture of our circuit diagram, and a document that contains our code.
Concepts
Circuit: A loop of conductive materials with resistance that runs from the positive to the negative side of a power source. In this project, we needed to make sure we had a complete circuit, otherwise it wouldn't function.
Resistance: How much an object slows the current in a circuit. It is measured in ohms. Resistance is important because without it, the battery will short-circuit.
Current: The "flow" of electricity through a circuit. It is measured in amps. In our experiments, we found that more current makes lightbulbs brighter, while less current makes them dimmer.
Voltage: The difference in electrical potential energy between two points in a circuit. A battery has a certain amount of volts, and it gets split between the parallel branches of a circuit.
Reflection:
Several things went very well during this project. First, my partner and I worked very well together. We have very similar ideas and personalities, so we got things done with very few disagreements. This helped with time as well as how much we enjoyed the project. Another thing that went extremely well was our presentation to the class. The circuit functioned, and we had no problems with our circuit diagram or code. However, there were more things that went wrong. My partner and I had limited knowledge about circuits and coding, so there was a lot of time spent trying to debug code we had tried to write without even knowing how to debug it. We also had trouble trying to figure out what to do for our project. We came up with several cool ideas, but they were either too hard to do or were already being done by another group. There was also a problem with our LCD screen. We wanted to make it say "play a song", but it wasn't displaying words for some reason. We checked our code and re-assembled the circuit, and it was all correct, but the screen still wouldn't display words. We couldn't remove it because it was in our circuit diagram and we didn't have time to redo it. However, we could adjust the brightness of the screen using the potentiometer, so we changed the brightness in time to the notes we were playing to make a "light show".
Below is a picture of our arduino experiments, a video of our creation, a picture of our circuit diagram, and a document that contains our code.