Homework 4

due Tuesday 2/25

Part 1: Technical homework

I am again giving a CMU homework assignment to you. It builds off of something we praticed in class last Thursday, but also has some further technical complexity (it adds a button as well as more sophisticated Serial feedback). There’s a bonus section to add challenge if you’re able to complete the first part and want to go a bit further.

CMU assignment link.

If you complete that whole assignment and are wanting to work ahead: I invite you to do the next CMU homework in the sequence, Nightlights. This homework requires a switch which holds its position (rather than the momentary pushbutton that bounces back), but you can simply substitute a second momentary pushbutton for the switch and complete the assignment that way if you’d like.

Part 2: Ideation

We’re going to be building something in the next two weeks. We’ll make something that will measure something, for a scientific or knowledge-building purpose. I want to talk seriously on Tuesday about what that thing might be, and so to see some ideas for this part of the homework, I’d like you to look up some examples of scientific apparatus (really just sensors) to get an idea of the variety of things people have made using the Arduino: here’s a collection of a lot of examples from the main Arduino project site.

Deliverable: written ideas

Please come to class with three ideas for sensors or apparatus for us to make. Write these down. Each idea should include:

• A title of the sensor/apparatus
• A sentence or two description of what the sensor/apparatus will do
• A block-diagram style drawing of the inputs and outputs you’d like the device to use

We’ll discuss all of these on Tuesday. The more ideas we have to discuss, the better we can plan what we want to build!