Month: January 2012

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2nd Arduino Project

I completed my second Arduino project with the help of the wonderful tutorial series by Jeremy Blum. It was so much fun! I ordered a few things from SparkFun and now I feel like I have a pretty good setup for future projects. In this tutorial, we set up a little circuit with a push button. I learned all about debouncing a switch (I liked the explanation given here), a concept that was totally new to me. I got to apply some programming knowledge to play around with inputs, outputs, LED brightness and such. A good time was had by all! Actually, I was the only one home and the dog didn’t seem particularly impressed. He gave me a quizzical look and then went back to sleep.

School is humming along quite nicely. Again, this semester is not going to be a cake-walk but I love what I’m learning. My professors are a hoot. Truly, they keep me on my toes. Every class expects preparation and participation. Speaking of preparation, I’ve probably played around with the Arduino enough for today. Time to get back to the books!

Sully (the chocolate lab) insists. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This picture is him seven years ago. This obviously has nothing to do with engineering. It’s just cute.

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The Weekend

The first week of school is finished. I’ve been to all of my classes except one monday-only class and my physics lab. So far I really love all my classes. I have a particularly passionate group of professors. Every single one of them has emphasized lifetime learning, good study habits, the importance of outside learning and such. One professor went on a tangent about Grace Hopper, one of my personal heroes. Another professor gave us a homework question that Richard Feynman answered in Six Easy Pieces, and I’ve read everything by Feynman about ten times. It’s great to see that my outside reading is so relevant to my classes this semester.

I took a little bit of my downtime this weekend to play around with my last little kit. My soldering skills are still pretty terrible but they can only go up from here. I do have a question for any of the female engineers who might read this blog. What do you do to keep your hair out of your workstation? I used bobby pins on my fly-a-ways on my ponytail and STILL managed to singe a stray hair. I have done this every single time I’ve tried to solder so far. I’m going to set myself on fire at this rate.

I decided to put the workstation on the back burner for now. I’m using a scrap piece of wood as my work surface and taking over the dining room table temporarily. I bought a plastic toolbox to store my growing set of tools and stuff and so I can just tuck away my electronics stuff when I’m not using it. Packing up the stuff semi-regularly isn’t ideal but an entire workbench doesn’t seem like a perfect solution for the moment either. The dining room table was always my study place so my husband doesn’t miss it that much anyway. The picture above is my temporary workstation.

Time to go learn two’s complement & flip-flops.

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Binary and Logic

It’s amazing how some things just “click” and others take quite a bit of explanation before they really take hold. I had to read three different explanations of how to go from decimals to binary before I actually understood it. The first two explanations just didn’t vibe with my learning style or something. Who knows, they might have just been really bad explanations. I’m still trying to find that perfect explanation of logic and switches. I’ve consulted a number of books and online sources and I feel like I’m getting closer to understanding it but I’m not 100% there.

Today is my first day of school. Electrical engineering semester # 2 ! One of the most exciting things about today has been that I recognize all sorts of people in the engineering building. Last semester I came in not knowing anyone, and now I have friends and acquaintances that I recognize and can chat with. That fact alone makes this semester more fun.

So far it looks like my programming class will be fairly basic, but it’s going to be teaching C. I did Java last semester and it seemed pretty useful. We’ll see how I feel about C. I know that my digital systems class is going to be tough. All of my reading on computer history will be helpful for the first lecture or two. Then we dive into binary, hexadecimals, ASCII and boolean logic. I also found out today that we don’t have formal lab reports in my electromagnetism lab! My physics lab last semester took up quite a bit of time so I’m thrilled that the labs will really just take the devoted class time.

I ordered some parts for Jeremy Blum’s Arduino Tutorial # 2 as well as some more things to stock the lab at sparkfun.com. I JUST found out through a Google search of sparkfun that a bunch of their kits are available at Micro Center, which is just down the road from school!! I’m totally spoiled to have a Micro Center, Fry’s and a great local place called Tanner  Electronics within a short drive of my house. I know that many people don’t have these stores readily available. Mouser‘s warehouse is also local, I wish I could just go pick up an order but it doesn’t work that way.

So, my lovely readers, that’s all I have for now. Many more back-to-school updates coming.

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My first Arduino program!

Well. I did it. ANOTHER blinking light!! I’m a genius. Okay, all kidding aside, it was pretty fun to write my first Arduino program. I could change the program’s timing of the light being on (high) or off (low) and the onboard LED would blink appropriately. That thing is bright too, I can barely see after staring at it!

To get started, I watched Jeremy Blum’s first Arduino tutorial and followed along. I hope to get though a couple more before school kicks into high gear.

I know this is pretty boring stuff for all you professionals out there, but it’s all pretty amazing to a newbie! I can’t wait to see what else I can do!!

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Clean ALL the things!

I have been taking my winter break to do those annoying cleaning tasks that I never seem to get around to during the semester. I went through bathroom cabinets and threw out expired things and old makeup. I washed my makeup brushes. I went through the file cabinet and shredded things that were no longer necessary. My husband and I went through old “childhood” boxes and threw out things that we weren’t sentimental about anymore. I scrubbed the microwave. We bathed the dog. I donated old books to the library and made a big pile of things for Goodwill. I can’t even begin to tell you how good this feels.

On the digital side, I deleted old databases off of my server. I deleted stupid emails, and I got off pointless mailing lists. I backed up all sorts of things and I’m trying to organize my music (monumental task!!). I’m still trying to figure out a workbench so I have somewhere to put my new electronics toys. I must admit that my toys are pretty limited right now but I bought a few essentials like a breadboard, jumper wires, good flush wire cutters, a tip cleaner that actually works and of course an Arduino to add to what I had before.

After cleaning out all sorts of things, I’m still working on where to put the workbench. We have a super crummy Target desk that I’ve had forever that our iMac is hanging out on. It’s totally inefficient, complete with sliding out keyboard drawer and I’d love to get rid of it. I’m still waiting for the perfect bench to come along on craigslist for for nothing, but that probably isn’t going to happen. I could probably build something but it wouldn’t be pretty. My best option might be something from Ikea. Ugh, we’ll see.

Well, this post rambled quite a bit; however, it’s what I’ve been up to. School starts next week and things should get really interesting as I’m actually learning about electrical engineering this semester. I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous. I anticipate long, long hours in the engineering reading room. Yay?