Kallen Portfolio

Arduino

The first week we learned the basics of circuit building. We made LEDs flash/ turn on and did some buttons and potentiometers. We also started Arduino. It’s a microprocessor (aka a circuit board). You connect it to a breadboard which you can plug wires, lights, buttons, etc. Then you program your Arduino.

Some circuits we made were flashing LEDs on and off, seeing how far  you turn a knob, communicating between the Arduino and the computer, and toggle buttons. It flashes the LEDs by turning them on, waiting, then turning them off. Over and over and over and over and over (etc) again. It toggles them by doing this:. When the button is pressed and a variable=0, then it turns the LED on. If the variable=1, it turns it on. int buttonState=digitalRead(9); if(buttonState==HIGH){if(var=0){do such and such}else{do such and such}

The second week was more interesting. We did some more circuits, but we also made an ultrasonic rangefinder. The sensor has a speaker and a microphone. It sends a burst of ultrasonic sound, then sees how long it takes for it to come back. It then sends it back to the Arduino, which does calculations. They’re the time /29 /2. Then it puts this on a 7 segment display. matrix.print(distance); matrix.writeDisplay();

The third week we made LEDs that flashed to whatever music was playing. This was simpler. If the volume was over one the average/3 it turned all six on. If it was over the average, it turned 3 on. This was with if/else statements. if(blank>average){ do such and such}else{ do such and such}

Programming

For the first week we mostly just learned how to do Processing and Scratch. The second week was more interesting though. We could build games and Mr. Banks helped us with them. I’m making a game called Fight for Minecraft. It’s a side scroller where you fight Minecraft monsters as a Minecraft Steve. I also made an animated “monster”.

http://tny.cz/4a786ba9

The third week we also went on a field trip. In the morning we went to the Ruben H. Fleet science center. It had a couple of different exhibits. Near the beginning, we went to an illusions exhibit. The rest of the time we just went to a couple of others.

In the afternoon we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. For the first bit we listened to them talk about some paintings. This was kind of boring. Then we went upstairs and drew a picture of someone else, without looking at the paper. Then we passed them around and other people made changes to them. They looked crazy.