Arduino Date: Buttons and Ultrasonic Sensors

Today’s conversation topic: buttons and ultrasonic sensors.

1st Course

With buttons, My focus was on the actual circuit. This little tiny button in the picture below is deceptively confusing. I was trying to understand where the ground, input voltage, and pin 2 needed to be in relation to the button itself.

Awkward Moments

There was a point where I just needed to take all the wired and resistors out and follow the flow of electricity. A few things that I was getting confused about where:

1. What color wire is doing what? I had to start writing out what each color was doing.
2. What is the circuit I want? I initially thought that the circuit I wanted to complete was to the ground, but I soon realized it was making a circuit from the 5V to the pin 2. The ground connections are so that nothing goes wrong electrically! (Like the away to escape an awkward conversation.)

Working through these questions allowed me to break down what I was doing and see the circuit holistically.

2nd Course

When going adding an LED light to the circuit, I had another moment of confusion around how the LED circuit would connect within my existing button circuit. Somehow I was connecting the LED lights as if it was an independent circuit, and then I found myself somehow switching the LED light function so that the light remained on until I pressed the button.

I finally took everyone off again and started from the beginning — making the connection of the button circuit and adding the LED within the same circuit.

I am quickly learning that I need to start with 1 circuit at a time.

Dessert

Now on to Ultrasonic sensors! Wiring the sonic sensor was reasonably straight forward. It was pretty awesome to see the monitor and plot maps of how the sensor detected distance when I got it to work.

This sensor prompted the thinking of time, and how movement and time are correlated.

While our class continues to practice smaller Arduino labs, I am looking at ways to create an installation that looks at time. Still, these exercises allow me to further question temporality and its connection to movement.