Week 5: Electronics Design
Week 5 was the start of our not so deep dive into electronics design, in terms of using our computers for the sake of fritzing, a software that allows you to create circuits in 3 different formats and programming a microcontroller in the shape of the BBC Microbit.
We spent a little bit of time on Fritzing, which was used to make the circuits we had made the week prior. For me, this was basically a case of copying the circuit that we made on the breadboard. This was easy, and the software was very intuitive, as it was a simple case of finding the right part, and dragging/dropping wires to complete the circuit. The hardest part about the software, was when I did not know the exact name of the part I wanted when I came across this issue, I would spend a little bit of time looking, before caving in and asking my peers on the exact names of the component on the Fritzing software.
After this, we got introduced to the BBC MicroBit and the vast number of things it can do. We started off with the basics of coding, using MakeCode, which is a site that has a number of basic guides to do things with the Microbit. The first project we had involving the Microbit, was to make the Microbit show a smiley face and frowny face on its 5×5 LED screen when we press the buttons. This was one of the basic pieces of code which the MakeCode site had offered. Below is an image of the Microbit, and a link to the Smile/ Frowny face function of the Microbit in action.
To do even more with the Microbit, we had to get something called a Breakout Board. A breakout board enables the Mibrobit to have more outputs and inputs. To get the breakout board together, I was given the opportunity to revisit some of the techniques I had uncovered when I had to Sauter the pins of the breakout board. Below is an image of my sautering job for the breakout board. Something to note is that it is important to keep peach sautering pin separates so that inputs don’t get jumbled and mess up the circuit.
The next thing we needed to do with the Microbit, was to copy code that would allow our Microbit to detect the light level around it. The code was copied from what my lecturer gave me and is displayed below. Further below would be the video of the Microbit when the code is implemented.
MICROBIT BUILT IN LIGHT SENSOR VIDEO
To take what we learned this week one step further, we looked to use an external light sensor and hook it up to the Microbit via the breakout board. We needed to change the code slightly to make sure the Microbit understood what to do with the light sensor. Below is an image of how the light sensor was connected.
Some points on this is that, like how in week 4, we should always add a resistor to a LED, it works the same to these types of light sensors. The code was changed to also display more than a graph to show the light level. It was changed to show a unit to represent the light level. Below is a video of the Microbit reading the light level via the added light sensor, where i first covered the light sensor, then uncovered the sensor to get two different readings.
MICROBIT EXTERNAL LIGHT SENSOR VIDEO
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