Physical Computing has been feeling foreign/abstract still so I decided to dedicate Thurs – Sunday to reviewing concepts and labs as much as possible.
I read the first couple chapters of “Physical Computing” by Dan O’Sullivan and Tom Igoe, which was super helpful in making the material less abstract. I was also able to borrow Make: Electronics, Making Things Move and Fashioning Technology from the New School, ’twas super easy.
It was helpful in last class to team up with Fletcher and use the flex sensor to create sound from a speaker, as I otherwise didn’t know how to attach the sensor to my breadboard, and check the range.
Wish I had taken a video of our tone output lab!
Luckily, was able to get the Servo Motor Lab to work. I used a flex sensor to control the servo motor. Here is video of the Servo Motor Lab, the motor turns when the flex sensor is bent:
I then worked on the Transistor – High Current Loads lab. Unfortunately, I got some of the wiring wrong on the board and I initially couldn’t get it to work. I can see why keeping wires tidy is helpful as far as getting things setup correctly.
Questions:
I still don’t entirely understand the purpose of the transistor!
Maybe this is a silly question, but what is the order for hooking up this lab when you are using a battery to power the motor and running a sketch on the computer? Does the order matter?
I got the first half of the Transistor lab to work (see below video) but didn’t seem like my potentiometer was changing the speed. I checked the range and plugged that in to my sketch, but didn’t notice a difference.
Great that you spent some time with the material. Did you end up getting the transistor lab working? Did you end up plugging in the transistor on pin 9 instead of pin 8? The behavior you were experiencing could be justified by that. Let me know during office hours if I can help you get caught up to speed. B_