Zach Christensen
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Arduino Journey

One concept per sketch, each one leaning on the sketches before it. The labs that are built have a page with the circuit running, the notebook, and what actually went wrong. The rest are what comes next.

8 of 18 built44%
Sketchbook ↗

Sessions 1 to 3

First Light

Prove the board, build the first circuit, then read the first input.

  1. P01Session 1✓ WorkingClip

    Blink

    On-board LED, 100ms on and 75ms off. Proves the board and the upload path, nothing else.

  2. P02Session 2✓ WorkingClip1 scan

    External LED

    First wired circuit, and Ohm's Law by actually using it.

  3. P03Session 3✓ WorkingClip1 scan

    Button LED

    First input. Floating pins, pull-ups, and why pressed reads LOW.

  4. P03bSession 3✓ WorkingClip

    Button Toggle

    Press on, press off. The program has to remember something now.

Sessions 4 to 5

Timing and Brightness

Stop using delay(), fake an analog voltage out of a digital pin, then hand a knob the controls.

  1. P04Session 4✓ WorkingClip2 scans

    Traffic Light

    Three LEDs on a state machine, no delay() anywhere, and a pedestrian button that actually gets heard.

  2. P04bSession 4✓ Working2 clips1 scan

    Traffic Light + WALK

    A fourth state, a pedestrian LED with its own rhythm, and typing commands into the Serial Monitor.

  3. P05Session 5✓ WorkingClip

    PWM Fade

    A pin that only does 0 V or 5 V, made to look like it does everything in between.

  4. P05bSession 5✓ WorkingClip1 scan

    Knob-Controlled Brightness

    A pot, an LED, and the first loop where something outside the board decides what happens.

Sessions 6 to 7

Better Inputs

Put a meter on the circuit and check the math, then catch inputs the loop is too slow to see.

  1. Session 6Not built yet

    Voltage Divider

    Ohm's Law on paper, then a multimeter on the real thing to find out whether the paper was right.

  2. Session 6Not built yet

    Light-Dependent Divider

    A pot and an LDR turn out to be the same circuit. Measure the current instead of assuming it.

  3. Session 7Not built yet

    Interrupt Button

    An input the loop is too slow to catch, and what volatile is actually for.

  4. Session 7Not built yet

    Quadrature Encoder

    Two channels, four edges a detent, and reading a whole port instead of one pin.

Session 8

Actuators

Making something move, and the power that takes.

  1. Session 8Not built yet

    H-Bridge Motor

    Two supply domains, a flyback path, and why a motor never touches a pin.

  2. Session 8Not built yet

    H-Bridge from the Knob

    The knob driving the motor, with a dead zone and a ramp so it is usable.

Sessions 9 to 10

Closing the Loop

A loop that runs on time, the numbers coming back out of it, and a bus with real sensors on it.

  1. Session 9Not built yet

    Fixed-Rate Loop

    A loop that runs at a rate rather than as fast as it can, and the difference between jitter and latency.

  2. Session 9Not built yet

    CSV Telemetry

    Getting numbers off the board fast enough to plot them, and the baud budget that decides how many.

  3. Session 10Not built yet

    I2C Bus

    Two wires, several devices. Scan the bus, ask a chip who it is, wake it up, then read an accelerometer.

The build it was all for

Capstone

Everything above, pointed at one thing worth keeping.

  1. Not built yet

    Capstone

    Not chosen yet. There has to be enough on this list to choose from first.