TCA Engineering

Challenge: Create a Digital Dice system. The arduino rolls a random number and then lights up the appropriate LEDs to replicate how that number appears on a dice roll. Reflection: I designed this system similar to how Dr. B showed in his video. I placed 7 LEDs that I can control to show any of the possible dice rolls. Instead of having one long video this week I wanted to break it up into a bunch of short videos. Each video shows a different step or challenge that I encountered during this build. Overall I appreciated the openness of this project. The tutorials are nice, but being given a wide open challenge really tests our skills. The first video is the longest. It does a short walkthrough of the code and the board. Part 1: Setup and code The second video depicts the first major problem that I encountered. If I held the button down too long the arduino would repeatedly roll, causing the lights to quickly flash between different states.  Part 2: Potential Problem...

My video tutorial for circuit 3. This is my first time doing a screen capture tutorial, so I would appreciate your feedback. Let me know what parts work well and what can be improved. Circuit 3:

This week pushed me to complete multiple tutorial portions. Specifically, the first new piece of equipment was the RGB led. I have used this device for previous projects, but my use was limited to a single color. At first I copied the example code for sweeping through various colors and then I tried to recreate this code from scratch to test my understanding of each part of the code. The code can be downloaded here . To be honest this was the first time that I really felt challenged by the coding portion of the arduino. The past two weeks I was able to breeze through the code as it was very similar to the robotics coding that I teach. This week took a couple of steps up, introducing for loops, void functions, and arrays all at once. I anxiously await to read how my colleagues approached this week. The first major challenge was to combine the various circuits together. The multiple leds activity reminded me of watching the New Years ball drop at Times Square. I combined the ...

During this week's lessons we experimented with the potentiometer. I started with the example code provided and then I rewrote the entire code with different names for the variables, just to check if I could follow what information was being used and where it was needed in the code. Reflection: One of the more humbling points was after I successfully rewrote the code I showed my wife. She thought it was pretty cool as she is always very supportive. I then attempted to complete one of the circuit play activities to get both devices to run through the digital ports. During this portion I wanted to dive in a little deeper and I discovered the print.read command, I documented this process in my previous post. It took me about two hours to fix and debug this activity, after which point I showed my wife again. It then dawned on me that from her perspective I had done pretty much nothing, the LED still flashed the same as before, but I knew that I had made great strides in my personal u...

During my exploratory phase of the potentiometer I wanted to see if I was able to actually see what values were being produced from the device. After doing some internet research, with a particular shoutout to this maker and his very helpful video, I was able to figure out how to make my potentiometer values display on my computer. Here is my quick rendition of how it works:

Project Description  Utilizing arduino code and LEDs to model a stoplight system. Brainstorming & Planning The first weeks arduino practice focused on controlling LEDs via the arduino. The kit that I purchased included yellow and red LEDs and as I began to play around with them I was reminded of a stoplight. Missing one color, I recalled that my kit included a multicolor LED. Upon further inspection I realized that one of its legs produced green. I hooked it up (using the green leg and common ground leg) in the same way that I had utilized the yellow and red LEDs. Making Process & Pictures Final Video Video Description The video shows my stoplight system at work. Green is lit for 5s, Yellow for 3s, Yellow flashes for 3s, and Red is lit for 5s. You will notice that the green LED is much brighter because it is a different type compared to the yellow and red LEDs. Final Code /*  Name: Travis Ray  Date: Nov 2, 2018  Course: Makerspaces ...