What is Arduino?
Arduino is a basic electronics kit that helps people get a feel for the concept of electronics and IT through the use of many different creations, each one having a different function than the last. It may also help people who are new to the concept of true coding get a feel for what it is like to actually create a script and have it fulfill a function. Arduino kits like the ones that we have used are close to the 100$ price range making them fairly priced but not incredibly inexpensive, and for the cost you get 14 projects with all of the parts necessary and an instruction booklet. You would need a computer and the Arduino coding software downloaded so that you are able to fulfill the coding portion of each project. Arduino is very fun and rather easy to follow, making it useful for people who haven't experienced coding or working with electronics before.
Series Circuit
So the first project with Arduino was a simple series circuit. It consisted of 3 wires, 1 capacitor, 2 buttons and 1 LED light. When set up properly, you should be able to press both buttons and have the LED light up. It works in a way that you must have both buttons pressed down simultaneously in order to light up.
Parallel Circuit
The second project that we were tasked with was just about the same as the last project, as in that this project is supposed to function the same as the last project. The difference between both of these projects is that the breadboard was set up differently than the series circuit. This build consisted of 4 wires instead of 3. Other than the addition of 1 extra wire, mostly nothing has changed. If you hold down both buttons the LED will light up.
Spaceship Interface
Love-O-Meter
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Color Mixing Lamp
Mood Cue
Light Theremin
Project 06, "the light Theremin" consists of 4 wires, 1 LED, 1 capacitor, and 1 sound emitter module. How this project works is that when the LED detects light, the tone of the sound emitter module gets more high pitched. If you take away the light however, the tone of the sound emitter will get more low pitched. In my honest opinion this one was one of my favorites to make. The sound is very bizarre, but yet fun.
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Keyboard Instrument
Project 07, "the keyboard instrument" consists of 7 wires, 4 capacitors, 4 buttons, and 1 sound emitter module. This project is pretty similar to the last one, except instead of having the sound constantly being emitted and the tone being changed based on light, this one works based on the button that is pressed. Each button will emit a different tone just as a normal keyboard would work. I still think that the sound on this one is kind-of weird but fun.
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Digital Hourglass
Project 07 "the digital hourglass" consists of 9 wires, 7 capacitors, 6 LEDs, and 1 motion-detector switch. How this project works is that when the bread board is upside-down, or when the switch detects that it is upside-down, the LEDs will begin to light up in sequence. In my opinion the LEDs could have been lit up a bit faster because it was pretty slow, but other than that I liked it.
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Motorized Pinwheel
Project 08, "the motorized pinwheel" consists of 1 9V battery, 1 button, 7 wires, 1 motor, and 1 capacitor. How this project works is that when the button is held, the motor will begin to spin really fast. I liked this project the most out of all of them because I had a lot of fun with the pinwheel part. What I did was I put a laser-cut part on the gear of the motor, then inserted a CD into the paper pinwheel, and I had to tape down the flaps of the pinwheel in order for the CD to stay on properly and not fly off. I enjoyed this one the most because I was surprised at just how fast the motor spun with the pinwheel on it!
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Summary
To sum up all that I have learned from this unit, I would like to begin by saying that this was a very neat opportunity to learn about working with electronics. First, I learned a lot of coding. I'm not a huge computer/IT person, considering I'm more into mechanical types of machines, but this was a really neat experience to learn more about coding than just doing some dinky pre-fabricated coding on a kid's website like "scratch." I also enjoyed learning more with electronics, like setting up the breadboard correctly and finding out what each individual part was used for in each project. I would say that the Arduino unit actually got me a little more interested in trying more IT types of things with coding, like maybe trying JavaScript or taking a course on Khan Academy. To sum it all up, Arduino was a very fun unit that gave me a lot of hands-on experience with electronics, coding, and creating fun little devices that perform some tiny but still very fascinating tasks.