First step for building final

Sensor testing

DC Motor Control Using an H-Bridge

Using a transistor to control high current loads with an Arduino(TIP 120)

[Assignment] Analog output

The lab assignment for today is the analog output. My combination is: photocell and Servo motor. Din't get time to wait for the flex sensors to come in so that I used photocell as usual to power the Servo motor. The following photo is the complete breadboard connection to Arduino.

The photocell works the best to keep the motor running is when I turned off all the lights in the room. Then, I used a bright LED flashlight to light up the photocell so that the Serial number went from 0 to 967. That is how the motor keeps running for longer time, the big contrast of the light source.

[Assignment] Analog and Photocell

The 1st part of the lab assignment is to read analog input and to control the brightness of the LED light. Everything works fine, but the Serial.println doesn't print on the council!!! I didn't get this part in my coding. The photo is a demo of how the potentiometer controls the LED brightness.

The 2nd part of the lab: I used the photocell in the kit to control the LED. It is like a very very early prototype for my dream machine from the other day. So luckily, I got the photocell and LED work! The LED goes dimer when the surrounding light is darker. The following pic is that I put the breadboard and Led behind a plastic box to seem like a nicer looking prototye. 
However, it is hard to capture the LED changing when I took picture. So, I took this photo when the room is bright. I guarantee when I turned off the light and made my laptop in sleep mode, the LED doesn't turn on due to the total darkness. (Besides, I have trouble to print the analog Serial to the arduino...)

[Assignment] Arduino and Dream Machine

The following 2 photos are my lab assignment: arduino.  When the switch is not pressed (closed), the green Led is always on. 

And, when the switch is pressed (open), the green Led is off and the blue Led is on.

ps. I had hard time to look for the 10k resistor... (the resistors are all similar to me!)

The second part of the lab assignment: dream machine.

Cube is something I really like. So, I really feel like my powerful dream machine could be fitted in the 3" cube. For this machine, I want to combine typography (both English and Chinese) and physical computing technique into this cube. The following photos show my first prototype: a weather reporter via performing type. The cube itself contains light sensors (if they do exist), which tracks the amount of sunlight. When it is sunny, one side is written "sunny" as Chinese, while the other side is English. I think this is an interesting topic to study: to use type to tell the weather (or beyond) directly instead of icons.
The Chinese "sunny" character.
The other side is English. They both have the same meaning.
The corner shows where the sensors would be placed.

Continue with the breadboard...