That was fun. I deconstructed an obsolete fixture, one of those overhead detectors that turn lights on at sunset. I believe I have salvaged an infrared motion detector, a photoresistor, several strange-colored 52,000Ω resistors, a variety of capacitors and a small potentiometer. I tried to photograph the resistors through a magnifying glass, another reminder I did not buy that microscope.
Let me recycle my favorite April Fool’s Day trick, for I no longer observe the event. Forgive me it I already told you this one, I have forgotten if I did. Follow closely. If the day before is a lottery draw date, get up early on April Fool’s and buy a new lottery ticket with the same exact previous winning numbers. Did you follow that? Okay, then leave that ticket on your desk where your co-workers can find it and go for coffee break, pretending to forget it. Trust me, whoever finds it is not going to check the date, just the numbers. If they come rushing into the cafeteria to get you, casually act like it is no big deal, “What’s thirty million these days anyhow?” And slowly finish your coffee, acting like you don’t believe them because you know it is April Fool’s, but compliment them on how convincing they sound. Careful, you may find out who your friends are.
So there I was, tackling a thorny programming situation till quite late. I’m investigating keyboard command of an external event, in this case more flashing lights. I have an array of five LEDs (light emitting diodes). If I press a 3 on the keyboard, I would like 3 lights to flash three times. Sounds easy? Try it. Again, I’m running into limitations of the great C code. Every time I try to look up something that works, I get that long-winded explanation of why the GoTo command is so evil.
Let me clear up the confusion. The GoTo command is not bad at all. It is only bad when it gets into the hands of the type who like the structureless C. Real programmers have no difficulty with a GoTo. The only spaghetti is in the heads of the C crowd. Besides, C has many substitutes for the GoTo, such as Break and Switch Case whose partial purpose is to impose at least some regimentation on those people.
I’ve devoted the morning to the study of robotics and come up with some interesting new material, most of it would have been handy to know when starting up. One is a drawing tool called “Fritzing”. It works on the same concept I independently developed to draw my own schematics: a chart of components that you drag and drop onto a pattern.
But hey, how is a newcomer supposed to know to even look for Fritzing? Even Arduino buries mention of it where it is most inconspicuous. I also found a feature that exports code as HTML, and I’ve been doing that the hard way. The upswing is that I thoroughly understand these processes before the first time I ever used ‘em. When I get a good camera, my blogs will become most like tutorials.
Lucky me, I had a computer callout that paid for my night out on the town. Unlucky me, my lady friend had to work late. That just meant a quiet Friday and time to polish up my video making skills. See the video included here for my most recent electronics experiment. This is a wonderful pastime, the only limit is one’s imagination. I won’t mention any names, Patsie.
Y’day Jag was over for rehearsal and we played some material to Staci on the speakerphone. I’ve had to compose a ditty to use for my videos, so that is me playing in the background. Um, I should tell you the timing is intentionally a little off, this was done by dragging each audio track slightly off the Audacity time line.
Doing these experiments in isolation would be unproductive. Intelligent people know that failure is a huge component of success. Only people like Wallace’s eastern daughter are right 100% of the time, to hear them tell. The documentation I include is, from my viewpoint, equally as important as the actual experimentation. To get the full benefit, you should look at both.
I state on the video and here that it is dismaying that there is so little intermediate level material on the Internet and most bookstores. As I like to put it, the easy ones are too easy and the hard ones are too hard. They are hard because often the author does not explain in enough detail. I at least try to explain the basics behind each experiment and publish my code.
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