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September 16, 2005
Intro to Electronics
First week of Pcomp was definitely intense and nerve wrecking to say the least for me.
I am so thankful to Carlie, who spared 2 hours out of her busy schedule to go over the material on Friday afternoon. It really helped me in the sense that it was a good review of our Thursday's class. I was able to confirm the ideas learned in class and was able to openly ask questions on site. I strongly recommend this class to everyone. It's like our little pcomp "study group" at ITP! :) The schedule for these mini workshops can be found here
So here it goes...
One LED
The important part here is the voltage regulator. Our power supplies are 12Vs. We are sending 5Vs throughout the breadboard. There are 3 pins in the bottom part of the regulator (IGO).
It's lit!!! I'm thrilled. :)
Using a variable resistor, the photocell, this controlled the brightness of the LED. The more the photocell was exposed, the brighter the LED.
LEDs in parallel
The brightness of the LEDs are the same. Same amount of voltage going into all the LEDs, when placed parallel.
Parallel and series on one board
Todd H helped me out in the lab one day and suggested that I use capacitors before the voltage regulator to smooth out the flow of the electricity. I used the 10uf before the regulator and 1uf that goes into the power of the board. Also, on the other end of the board, I put a single LED to confirm that the board is flowing with electricity. The black things are 2 buzzers that I tested out. Thanks Todd! :)
Board lit! weeee
The switch
I am still working on this. Switch = 2 conductors that allow / stop the flow of electricity. I found this breadboard stripped in the garbage bin, so I decided to use it. (Thanks again Todd!)The bare wires from the board are in contact with the stripped board. When you swipe the metal bolt up and down, the LEDs light up accordingly. I intend to push this idea a little further for our week 002 assignment. I will look into other forms of switches as well.
In action
Posted by min at September 16, 2005 05:20 PM