Introduction: This project's purpose was to inform us about robotics and electronic coding. We learned about how circuits worked and how to calculate current, resistance, and voltage. We started off with a packet that explained these principals and had experiments for us to try. Afterwards, we moved on to the Arduino Boards which is basically a more complex circuit that plugs into a computer so you can add code and "tell" the circuit to complete a task like blink a light, display a message, or play a song. For our project in this unit, we were told to design a circuit that, in summary, did something cool. After playing around with a few ideas, my partner (Brigid O'Brien) and I made our board play Star Wars while displaying a message.
Content: (P) Power - rate at which electrical energy is transferred by a circuit { P=F(V) } (Ω) Resistance - measure of how many obstacles (for the current) are present or how much current is slowed { R=V/I } (V) Voltage - potential energy drop across a component of a circuit ( I ) Current - "flow" of electricity through a circuit { I=R/V } Ohms Law - the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the current across the two points.
Our Project: In this project, Brigid and I created a circuit that played Star Wars and displayed a message on an LCD board. To do this we had to put together a circuit that makes the LCD light up and the circuit that makes the buzzer work on the same breadboard. This meant we had to rearrange wires and fit everything onto the board, which was confusing because there were so many wires. However, we finally figured it out and were able to make it functional. Next we copy pasted the code for the LCD message and filled in the message we wanted it to display. Then we found some sheet music for Star Wars and realized it had two octaves, so we had to find the frequencies of each note and put them in the code. This was a trial and error piece of the project because we couldn't figure out the correct octave, which meant that we had to keep changing and rewriting the note sequence. Finally we were able to find the perfect notes, but it would not play. We couldn't figure out why, but it ended up being because we had written that we had 8 total notes, but we had 12, so 4 notes were unaccounted for, leaving silence instead of those notes. WE encountered lots of other errors because if one unneeded letter is there, then the board will not function. Although the project could be very frustrating, it ended up being very fun.
This is a diagram of our circuit:
Pictures:
Reflection: This project was by far the most frustrating project that we have done. Although I did learn a lot, it was very hard because one little mistake made the entire board not function. Brigid and I made a pretty good team, but we did have a few downfalls. One thing we struggled with was productivty. We tended to get off task during the project, but finished the project on time. Another thing that was difficult for us was time management because we didnt have a plan, and lots of our ideas kept failing, so the Star Wars was kind of a plan B of sorts. First we had tried various other songs, but ran into octave, temp, and tune problems. Even though these low-points were difficult, we were very good at collaboration and teamwork. We openly shared ideas, and overall worked very well together. This project, all though difficult, ended up being very cool.