Week 7 thoughts

What I learned:

-No matter what you're doing you have to troubleshoot. At several different instances building my sensor I thought I had problems when it turned out I didn't have any problems at all. First, after setting up the circuit on the breadboard for my sensor to hook up to the computer I wasn't able to get the LED to light up. Switched out the LEDs to see if that was the problem, rewired everything to try to figure out what I did wrong, but nothing worked. Finally Jim suggested that I just plug it into the computer and see what happened. Turns out the circuit was set up fine, and as soon as I wrote a program the LED blink as it was supposed to.

Next I hooked everything up with the variable resistor to prepare for the connection of the thermistor. After connecting the variable resistor and changing the resistance I saw no change in the output on the computer. Kept trying and trying to figure out why it wasn't changing like it should but nothing was working. Finally decided to hook up the thermistor just to give it a shot. As soon as I had the thermistor wired the output on the computer started doing exactly what it was supposed to and I was able to begin calibrating the sensor just fine. Shows you just have to keep sticking with stuff I guess and eventually you'll figure it out.

What I'm excited about:

-Spring Break! Haha but seriously its pretty cool how fast we are moving in class, almost done with sensors already and getting ready to move on to doing some robotics. I have no idea what to expect when it comes time to build our robots, so I'm really intrigued as to how that is going to go. Pretty pumped to give it a shot!

Suggestions:

-I think everything is going pretty smoothly as of right now so I can't think of anything at the moment that I think needs to change. Just going to keep chugging along

Week 6 thoughts

What I learned:

I really like working with the sensors. Wiring circuits and working with stuff like that is not something I have ever really had any experience doing, but after being a bit slow starting off I am really getting the hang of it now and really enjoying making stuff on the breadboard. I am really picking up new skills in this class, which is one of the reasons I signed up for this class. I am glad I am expanding my knowledge and hopefully that will continue.

What got me excited:

Continuing on with the next step of the sensor project. My sensor turned out working well (wooo passed the test) so now I'm pumped to start getting the sensor to interact with the computer so that it can be programmed. This past class I built the circuit so next class I'll be all ready to go to connect it to the computer and start with that process.

Suggestions:

It didn't effect me, but I think it was frustrating for the guys who were trying to get the computer going but weren't even able to get logged in and the program opened properly. But thats all part of the process I suppose.

Week 5 thoughts

What I learned:

Its a good thing I started my second scratch project early. I had planned to do a pool game and had been working on it for most of the two weeks of class before I decided only a few days before that I wanted to completely change my project and do something different. I wasn't really happy with how the pool game was going-it seemed like I was borrowing a lot of code from other pool games published online, and quite a few other people in the class were doing pool as well. I decided to abandon that and try to make a predator prey interaction. I think the end result was pretty good, so I'm glad I was on track with my programming in order to be able to recover from hitting a roadblock like this.

What got me excited:

Working with the sensors and getting mine to work. The first day when we went in to see the sensor project I was pretty intimidated. I understood all the concepts behind what we were making and everything that was in the first two chapters of the book, but creating it myself was a completely different challenge. I couldn't really grasp how to make what was on the paper materialize on the breadboard, so I did some more reading at home that really helped give me a better idea of what I was facing. After getting over that initial intimidation I had no problem getting started, and even though I had some problems at first I was able to keep working through and eventually get it. Having that light start blinking right at the end of class was pretty rewarding.

Suggestions/What I would change:

I thought it was really cool that Dr. Thomas came down to check out our projects. I think it was a good idea and it might make sense to do this for some of the other projects if any other faculty want to see what we have worked on.

Week 4 thoughts

What got me excited:

My pool game is moving along slowly but surely. It really sounds like such a simple project, but there are so many things interacting that the coding actually is getting pretty complex. I am trying to stick to the fundamentals for now and get the foundation working before I keep building it up. Right now I think that I have all of the basic functions figured out of how to get two balls to interact with each other, the wall, the cue, etc. Now its just a matter of adding on to this so that a full set of balls can do this at once. Hopefully now that the basis is down the rest of the project shouldn't get too complicated.

What I learned:

While its nice to concentrate on one thing at a time, I think I need to remember that there is more than one thing going on at once. I was getting pretty into developing my pool project but I wish I had taken some time out of that to work with the circuits at some point in the past two weeks. At least my pool project is moving along well and hopefully I'll be able to jump right into the sensor and circuit stuff once I'm done with that. I'm going to make sure I read all of the handouts on the web so I'm ready to go right away with a good idea of what I need to do.

What I would change:

We were on our own this week being pretty independent with our work without class meetings, so I don't really have any suggestions for things that should change. I'm excited to keep plugging away with the pool project for next weeks presentation, and then to switch gears and start working with sensors.