Creativity and Design Blog Post #4

Our in-class challenge this week was to assemble a complex circuit to create a "spaceship launch countdown light". The process was pretty straight forward and Chen did a great job facilitating the project. Although, this was an unfamiliar problem type for me. I have done some coding before, but never Arduino, and never coding that could control things in the real world light LED lights.

We were instructed to download the Arduino IDE before class, so that we could get rolling as soon as we got there. We un-packaged our brand new Galileo boards, breadboards, wires, capacitors and buttons.

We were given a brief explanation of the way the breadboard and capacitors worked and we were told to put everything together to make it look like the diagram below. This diagram was very helpful to me compared to the schematic diagram with the number of ohms and technical specifications. Although, I'm sure that eventually the technical schematic will make as much sense as the realistic diagram.

After a few minutes, I had recreated the circuits that were represented in the diagram, although I had spaced out the rows on the breadboard so that everything was not so cramped. I was sure to keep the same ports on the Galileo, because I had a feeling that the different numbers and symbols on there meant something.

We then used the code that was initiated by Chen, but she had intentionally left out parts for us to finish. This was a great teaching strategy because we were able to recognize the patterns and use critical thinking to learn or infer what the code was telling the board to do. Once the code was completed we uploaded it to the board and tested out the button. The goal was for the lights to illuminate sequentially when the button was pressed, acting as a countdown.

After we completed this part, the creativity really came into play. We were encouraged to try and light the LEDs in different sequences or at different levels of brightness. Below is a different sequence with a different color LED.

By allowing for this freedom, and starting with the basics and exploring other options to get the same and different results we were utilizing the knowing how to see creative strategy. This strategy was along the same lines of thought that enabled Leonardo DaVinci to explore different mechanisms. I ended up taking the Galileo board home to try different methods. I have already made the lights fade up and down, and now I need more capacitors and possibly some switches to explore even further.