Electronics and programming
This project was a little weird. Initially we had two goals, to finish a course from CodeCademy in Python programming and to finish a bunch of electronic experiments. Later on, we got deadlines for each item and most people got them all done. Then, when we had both items mastered we were to combine them to create a robot and program a robot to do what we want during our concert from the Build a Band project.
Electronics
Prior to having done this, I had hardly any experience with electronics. The only experience I had was a field trip in second grade where we lit light bulbs with batteries. So this was completely new to me and it was quite a challenge. The first electronic things we did were as a class. We were taking batteries, light bulbs, and wires to do different things. I learned about things being in series and in parallel. If the circuit goes through two or more things on the same line, they are in series. When there is a junction and it splits into two or more strings that connect back up later, then anything like a light bulb in those strings are in parallel. We had to make more and more complicated circuits as we went along. Then we got a little more complicated, and used bread boards, which is a board with wires that go in certain directions in different parts of it to easily make circuits. We had some experiments that we had to do with those to get started. Later on, we had a packet of about 6 or 7 different experiments we had to set up on bread boards. Each one taught you a different component and what it does, like a potentiometer or a capacitor. Our group struggled through all of these experiments, as they were the last ones we had to do and therefore the hardest. The last one we had to do was to make an LED light blink. This may sound simple, but setting it up was very, very complicated. It was so hard for us that we had to have outside help in order to finish it. Although I was frustrated and confused most of the time, I had fun and I learned a lot from it.
The LED light experiment looked something like this:
Python
Python is probably the easiest programming language of all of the languages to learn. That being said, programming isn't a very easy thing to learn for most people. I have had some previous knowledge of Python from a different course that I took with Scott Fischer. When I was learning from the other course, I had a lot of trouble with coding. It would take me much longer than it should of for most things, so I dropped the course and that was that. I did learn some of the basics from that course, so it made the beginning of the course we took in class easier. The first things that you learn are setting up variables, printing things, and things like strings. Variables are simply key words with some data to it and strings are a set of words or symbols inside of quotation marks. You simply put print in front of what you want to print. You learn some extra little things that you can do after that and then you learn functions. These are used to change something like a variable, but only inside of that function. Then you learn fancy things that you can do with functions and using multiple functions. After some practice with that came the hardest part of the whole course. There were 11 different practice problems you had to do with little help and no instructions. They would just tell you to write a function where it returns prime numbers only. That may sound simple enough, but looping through multiple functions and writing everything just write was beyond frustrating. Then you learn about lists an dictionaries to hold different information, and how to change them with things like for loops, which are like functions for lists. After that are things like while functions, which tell the code that while something is true, to do something. Finally, we finished it off with classes and inputs and outputs. All of this was painstakingly difficult and it took me longer than it really should have to finish it. Sadly, there is no way for me to show examples of what I did, since once I finished the course you can't go back in it.
physics concepts
Circuit: A complete loop of conductive material with a power source
Series Circuit: When two resistors are in the same line
Parallel Circuit: When two resistors split from the same line to separate lines
Current: The amount of flow of electricity through a circuit; splits when in parallel; Measured in Amps
Voltage: The power that electricity gives off; splits when in series; Measured in Volts
Resistors: Poor conductors that reduce voltage (ex: light bulbs); Measured in Ohms
If the resistors are in series, just add them to find their total resistance
If the resistors are in parallel, put each resistor's measurement in the denominator ( 1/R) and then add them
Resistor Code:
All resistors have a middle part with 4 colors that tell what its resistance is
First band: 1st digit
Second band: 2nd digit
Third band: The number of zero's in the amount of resistance
Fourth band: Tolerance level
0 Black
1 Brown
2 Red
3 Orange
4 Yellow
5 Green
6 Blue
7 Violet
8 Gray
9 White
0.1 (+/- 5%) Gold
0.01 (+/- 10%) Silver
Series Circuit: When two resistors are in the same line
Parallel Circuit: When two resistors split from the same line to separate lines
Current: The amount of flow of electricity through a circuit; splits when in parallel; Measured in Amps
Voltage: The power that electricity gives off; splits when in series; Measured in Volts
Resistors: Poor conductors that reduce voltage (ex: light bulbs); Measured in Ohms
If the resistors are in series, just add them to find their total resistance
If the resistors are in parallel, put each resistor's measurement in the denominator ( 1/R) and then add them
Resistor Code:
All resistors have a middle part with 4 colors that tell what its resistance is
First band: 1st digit
Second band: 2nd digit
Third band: The number of zero's in the amount of resistance
Fourth band: Tolerance level
0 Black
1 Brown
2 Red
3 Orange
4 Yellow
5 Green
6 Blue
7 Violet
8 Gray
9 White
0.1 (+/- 5%) Gold
0.01 (+/- 10%) Silver
reflection
The electronics was a fun new experience to have. Although it was very hard sometimes, it was still enjoyable. I didn't expect electricity to be so complex with so many different components. I think it's really amazing all the cool things you can make with a lot of knowledge about electricity, like building really cool robots.
I really enjoyed Python this time around. It was a lot more fun since it was a bit easier with my prior knowledge on programming. I think programming is a really good skill to have and the same can be said with electricity. In the future I am hoping to actually get some sort of job in computer programming or designing, so this little project gave me some insight on what it would be like.
In these two projects I really learned to be patient. A lot of times in both projects I would get stuck, and I would get frustrated and it would just take longer. I learned I also need to stay positive. In Python it would always seem like I wrote just what they wanted and I would get really mad when I found out that I didn't put a period or something silly. I think sometimes I would get bored and get off task, so I need to work on that. I also need to be more helpful. Other people would ask for help and I wouldn't help them because I was more concerned about my own work.
I really enjoyed Python this time around. It was a lot more fun since it was a bit easier with my prior knowledge on programming. I think programming is a really good skill to have and the same can be said with electricity. In the future I am hoping to actually get some sort of job in computer programming or designing, so this little project gave me some insight on what it would be like.
In these two projects I really learned to be patient. A lot of times in both projects I would get stuck, and I would get frustrated and it would just take longer. I learned I also need to stay positive. In Python it would always seem like I wrote just what they wanted and I would get really mad when I found out that I didn't put a period or something silly. I think sometimes I would get bored and get off task, so I need to work on that. I also need to be more helpful. Other people would ask for help and I wouldn't help them because I was more concerned about my own work.