This week’s lab was much more enjoyable to do and it helped me start to really think about what kind of projects I can make through physical computing. After doing the readings, I set up my breadboard and did the first digital input lab. It didn’t work the first time because I wasn’t able to properly upload the program to the Arduino but I restarted everything and that seemed to fix it.
After doing that, I wanted to experiment with different types of sensors, so I used a force-sensor to try out the same output, and it worked! Apparently you’re not supposed to stick the force sensor into the breadboard though so that’s my bad.
I also tried out the potentiometer but ran into several issues; the first potentiometer I used wasn’t going into the breadboard properly and I still don’t really understand why it’s built that way. After using a different kind of potentiometer I was able to power the LED on and off, but not dim the brightness with the potentiometer. I used the same code that was in the lab, so I’m not sure why the dimmer didn’t work.
After messing around with the LED, I decided to switch gears to the speaker. But, every time I tried to program the speaker, it wouldn’t make any noise. I experimented with some variations and tried to do a combination of the LED and speaker, and the LED part worked well but the speaker still wouldn’t. I checked my wiring multiple times and my code and I wasn’t able to crack it.