Day Two

Tutorial 8:

There were only a few things that had to be plugged in and wired in order to make the speaker play. After we were done with that we went to the Arduino IDE program and inserted the code provided. This made the speaker play Twinkle Little Stars which was actually quite impressive. But that was way too easy, it took us only about 3 minutes to finish this tutorial. So we decided to challenge ourselves and code the speaker so that it would play our own song. All we did to make it play our own song was we went onto the code and changed the song notes. This wasn't very hard either, but we couldn't challenge ourselves anymore. The challenge was completed with a lot of time to spare.

Tutorial 9:

For this task we had to start from scratch on the breadboard. We took out all the wires and used new ones. The potentiometer is something new that we are using and it is a variable resistor. It has a knob that we can turn in order to change the resistance. It was all pretty basic wiring, but there were so many things that we had to plug in so it took time. It was also a bit confusing because there are so many wires at times they tangle, so we don't know which wire is which. Luckily we still had a picture right in front of us along with the instructions which was surprisingly very helpful. What this basically does is it changes the brightness of the LED by turning the knob of the potentiometer (also known as changing the resistance).

Tutorial 10:

Again we had to disassemble everything we did from the last task and start from scratch. A momentary switch is something new that we are using. This is basically a button that turns the whole breadboard on or off when it is pushed. The wiring was actually a lot easier than it was last time. But the pictures we were given were horrible. They were taken at different and unreasonable angles. So it was hard to tell which wire was where which just made things harder for us. Once everything was wired and set up the LED was supposed to light up every time the momentary switch was pushed and held. When it was not being pushed the LED should've been off. That is exactly how everything went, therefore we were successful.

Tutorial 11:

In this task nothing in the breadboard was changed which actually made things a bit more easier for us. But overall the challenge was very hard because it was all about coding. Every time we tried to code there was some type of bug that stopped the code from working. The code was supposed to modify the momentary switch. When the button was pressed once the LED would light up without us having to hold it down. When it was pressed twice the LED would turn off. It basically turned the momentary switch into an on and off button. But we had so many problems while coding, for example the switch at times would work on its own. Every 1-3 times it was pressed it would turn on, and every 4-6 times it would turn off. It kept randomizing from time to time in the code which was a huge struggle. It took us a while to figure out what was wrong but we managed to get through it. At the end the code worked and we completed the task.