Transistor Lab and Motor

Here is some documentation of the Transistor lab.

I had to do it twice.  My first try was at the end of a long day and it did not work.  However after talking to some friends, some hard thinking, and a good night’s rest, I realized the mistake I made.

 

It may be hard to see but I accidentally soldered my voltage adapter in a confusing way.  The Black wire is the power and the Red wire is the ground. :(

Not the worst mistake but if there is a way to re-solder this I think I would like to do that.

Once I realized this mistake, I wired the transistor and motor as the lab instructed.  And while trying to document I felt like the motor spin would not be visible so i added a twist-tie.

More limitations:  I did not think ahead of time to give the motor some longer wires.  So the twist tie acted like a weed-wacker against my hand.  The quick fix was to add a piece of paper.

For me this paper was a beautiful accident.  It started making me think about persistance of vision and animation. Maybe I can use this technique (or some variation of it) in a future project.

Kit Potentiometer does not require a resistor!

this week i revisited the analog sensor lab and (finally!) connected the potentiometer and FSR to trigger my LEDS.  At first the FSR Was working fine.  But the potentiometer was acting like a switch. No gradual illumination, just on and off.  After much pin switching and recoding, i realized i had a resistor connected to the potentiometer and this was causing the problem.  Now it works!