Physical Computing - Week 1 (24-09-03)

Lab Activities

Starting off nice and easy by setting up the breadboard to power up an LED with an Arduino.

Once the LED was set, I introduced a switch the the breadboard and then duplicated the configurations to spruce it up.
Each LED had its own switch and resister. If the two LEDs and switches are wired in series, is the second resister necessary?

After playing with different colored LEDs and discussions with residents during P comp Lab, we discovered that the LEDs have different resistance levels, which are red < yellow < green < blue.
While we are not certain, my guess is that it has to do with the color wavelengths. The color red has longer wavelengths and require less energy to transmit, therefore the red LEDs have less resistance?

Another exercise that I enjoyed doing was setting up the potentiometer. It was during this exercise that I realized that the battery that I was working with was running low, which was why a lot of my previous exercises were not successful...

Switch Exercises

With the same configuration as the single blue LED, I swapped out the blue switch for two wires to serve as my custom switch connection points and did a quick test to make sure that it worked. 

Here is the world's quietest clap lighting up an LED. The connection is a little inconsistent as it requires a substantial amount of pressure to make the connection and close the circuit.  

I ended up not being completely satisfied with this switch so I created another one. Think about the game "Operations" but in reverse! You want to follow the conductive path to turn on the LED.

I used the same wiring schematic as the "quietest clap" switch shown above and just connected one of the wires for the switch to a labyrinth pattern I found in the junk shelf, and the other wire to a bic pen to serve as the "drawing" tool.

The primary conductive elements for the switch are the copper tape on the pattern and the exposed wires that stick out from the pen.

One thing I did notice after the breadboard was rewired and stored into the paper box, was that the copper tape towards the end of the labyrinth would not engage the LED. I wonder if the copper tape has a substantial enough amount of resistance to cause this? Or if there was something wrong with my wiring?