This is an emulation of an English traffic light signal with crosswalk button. I’ll explain it tomorrow. For now, admire my nice clean handiwork now that I am familiar with breadboards. My typically bad photography equipment has to be excused and wouldn’t you know it, the shiny washed-out blob on the right side of this circuit is the single newest component—a tactile button you can’t see. But I’m a programmer, not a photographer. I work the angle any pictures are better than none.
Education is again becoming expensive. I abide by the old saw that if you think getting educated is expensive, consider the alternative. Today I purchased a book specifically on the Arduino, and I’m dedicating today’s blog to that subject. The electronics I’ve been learning is not the Arduino, nor did I necessarily take on these topics in the correct order, though I can explain. All I have is a smug sense that it worked for me.Let me drag a few things back into the correct sequence. First, the Arduino “brainboard” came out in 2005, so this is not something I’ve studied for any length of time. It took me a year from December 2009 to save up and buy one, and it turns out the delay was beneficial. The earlier models were relatively difficult to use. Also, the available tutorials followed the computer format where the easy stuff was too easy and the hard stuff was too hard.
I programmed the Arduino to control LEDs and this was a lucky choice. LEDs were all I could afford and it turns out are one of the few components the Arduino has the oomph to work without transistor current amplification. I soon bewailed how I was programming instead of building, which caused the last four months to focus on hands-on and other practical matters.
The whole robot subject, now that I have some experience, is fragmenting into what I’d call “mental departments”. Before, everything was an insurmountable and hazy brick wall. Now I realize I’ve programmed LEDs, but that is a form of computer output, like sending data to a printer or installing a new device. Child’s play for me. I’ve barely touched processing sensor input and done nothing practical by way of interacting with the meaningful physical environment. Zero, zilch.
Here is the point to draw a clear distinction between the Arduino and the electronics of the robot club. The club has done no work on the Arduino. You see, I’d given up on electronics several times in the past because of the gargantuan amount of theory that most courses throw at the beginner. Without the early incentive of successful Arduino coding, I could not be sure I would not throw up my hands in frustration yet once more.
Today marks the timely arrival of my first Arduino book, “Beginning Arduino”, by Michael McRoberts. It is easy to imagine my dismay how an author who first heard of the Arduino around the same time as myself did one year later publish a world class instruction manual that shows a grasp of the topic I can still only dream of. I console myself by realizing I missed the C+ programming takeover and that McRoberts talks about owning electronic kits as a child, another dream situation for me. (He must also have had at least two other valuables my family would not recognize if they came along and bit them in the ass: privacy and encouragement.)
Now armed with a little foreknowledge, I am reading the text book knowing I can accomplish anything that is in there. It is still a text full of jargon so beware! Claims that the Arduino, which uses the C language, is easy to learn are pure nonsense. Read my lips. Arduino and its accompanying software cannot be learned by everyone and if you are over 40, run the other way. The assumption in front of every C language concept to be learned is that you already know what in hell they are talking about.
The Arduino instructions are no better. Try this test on yourself. Do you even know what open software is? How about a bootloader? Ever used an IDE? These words meant nothing to me, but I learned I could make the Arduino function without cluttering my brain with definitions. I gained a sense of what I could gloss over. Even the acclaimed author just mentioned has a rough tendency to throw technical terms at you as if you were raised on the stuff, mind you, he is awful nice compared to the rest.
Going back over the material six months later is filling in the cracks. The word “open” when applied to computers means the code or the hardware can be copied and used by anyone without paying royalties to the owner. The inconsiderate punk who called this “open” should shove his mohawk up his ASCII, but we are stuck with the term. “Open” is something that applies to doors, windows and the minds of people who have them. Why couldn’t they just say, “Not copyrighted”?
A bootloader is a small program burned into a chip, such as the one on the Arduino, which allows it to communicate with a computer. And IDE is a corresponding mini-program you put on your computer to let it communicate back with the bootloader. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment, another useless and confusing term invented by the same dunces.
I have the valuable new textbook on my nightstand, I estimate it will require 200 hours of study to grasp everything. In fact, I spent some three hours learning once and for all about the bootloader just mentioned. I learned the Arduino chip, the big long one on the board, can be removed and used on a printed circuit board, presumably once it loaded with debugged code. Then, a new chip is inserted in the Arduino socket. This replacement chip must have the bootloader installed or the computer won’t recognize it. Or you must install it yourself. Or it can be copied from another chip where it is already installed. I did not know any of that.
I also learned what embedded means. That’s another word that typifies how small-minded technicians lack the imagination to invent new words for new things. Embedded means the programmed computer chip is placed into the entity being controlled. Your TV remote has embedded software. And here I thought embedded meant rocks in the ground.
That’s all for now, this was kind of my state of the study report. It has been a large six-month circular trek back to the Arduino. I estimate the time and cost so far equals one college semester. For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing why so many dumb rich kids can become doctors. You see, I can study when I feel like it, not cram like in college because the borrowed money was running out. It takes much longer to learn anything, I sure notice that, but its like daddy is paying for it now. I always wondered about the 35 year old couples at university who lived in subsidized “married student’s quarters”.
Imagine what I would have done with such opportunity. I studied several hours at the free coffee shop at Winn/Dixie on 203rd and at Barnes & Noble. Both times I was distracted by females continually hiking down their skirts as men walked past. Ladies, may I say something? If men dressed the way you women dress in public, you’d turn around and look too.
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