Week 1 challenge

WEEK 1  CIRCUIT 1 - - - - LED Blinking Light

When I pulled out the box that arrived for this class, my daughters reaction was priceless.  The oldest asked "are you getting ready to build something"? and my response was YES!  Needless to say they wanted to sit and watch me go through the steps.  Below you will find my sketch of the diagram that goes with this first challenge. 

Programming was the hardest part to me.  When it comes to coding, you can miss one little strike and mess up and entire program.  Below is the correct code that was used to get the light to blink. 

I waited till the very end of the week to give this task a try because of the fear it has put in me.  I wondered why this project made me so nervous, and I am guessing its just from the fear of the unknown, making mistakes, or totally failing at this class.  After reading the instructions, I felt more confident in putting the pieces together.

When you watch the video you will see me completing the challenge again.  For my nerves I must work it first to get it right then film.  With the upcoming weeks, I will try and film all the error, which get hard to do when you have to record yourself.  After getting the light to successfully blink I then went on to complete the circuit play. 

Circuit Play
I was worried that doing the play would confuse me more and mess up the success I had just felt.  When I reversed the LED around the light stopped blinking.  But, when moving the positive lead it does not effect the LED at all and the light still blinks.  When the resistor was moved from the positive side of the LED it wouldn't work, but when it was wired from the negative side to another ground pin, it stared to work again.  The last move was to move it from 13 to 12. Because of how the program is written it stopped working.  In order for it to work, the program should be changed to reflect the number change.  

Code Play

Based off of the Circuit play if we move the pins from 13 to 12 we would need to also change the program to reflect and then it functioned correctly.  Changing the delay will determine how long the LED blinks and how long it stays off.  So changing it from 1000 to 2000 would take it from 1 second to 2.  Changing it from 2000 to 3000 would change it from 2 seconds to 3 and so on.  When you add the // in front of the codes it causes an error in the programming.  The computer can't read it as a command in which we need it to function.  

Wrap Up 

In the end all in all it was not too bad and pretty easy to figure out following the book.  Having the book made it easy as well.  With the book you are able to get a visual on what the end result should look like.  A lot of the things in the Code play were easy to figure out based on what we would change it to.  If you have any idea of how programming works then you know when you change a code you should expect a change. I did not try the extension activity this week because of the intimidation that I felt when completing the regular task.  It is my goal that as we progress through the course, I will take upon the extension challenges.   I also, cannot completely say that I am ready to tackle these tasks alone, but circuit 1 has gotten me off to a good start.