Finally on a Mission

Until recently I have simply been working on small projects that would help me get acquainted with Arduino, however, I didn't have a purpose outside of that for doing these projects. All of these projects I've done from debouncing to learning how potentiometers work have been very interesting and have truly taught me a lot about the world of electronics works. After a talk that Mr. Shappell gave to the entire class I realized how much a lot of what he said applied to me. He talked about how important it is for us to have a mission that we are attempting to achieve and that we need to get out of the cycle of experiential learning and begin to move in a certain direction. This lead me to choosing my final product and a mission that would maintain me interested in working with Arduino.

Electing an actual final product took me a bit of time because I needed to find a product that would not only interest me but would also be feasible with the time and resources that I had available. I ended up looking at multiple different websites like hackster.io and makezine.com. There were so many product to choose from that it felt like a daunting task to just choose one. I ended up wanting to do either an autonomous Arduino gardener, an Arduino telegraph, or an electronic piano keyboard. I had to choose one that was actually possible with  the tools I had and skills that wouldn't be too far fetched to learn with the amount of time that I had. Another issue that I landed on was trying to find a project that wouldn't have all of the instructions laid out on the internet for me to simply follow and easily create a project. However, Mr. Shappell had told me that I wouldn't have to worry about that because I could learn just as much from trying to assemble a project with instructions online as trying to create my project from scratch. He had also told me how sometimes despite you following the instructions carefully sometimes you land on problems that aren't addressed by the instructions, which forces you to make your own adaptation of the project in order to achieve it. An example he gave was how he was doing an Arduino project himself and ended up having to adapt his LCD schematic because he was using a different model from the one that the instructions was using. This lead me to choosing the electronic piano keyboard. Since it incorporated buttons and potentiometers, which I have dealt with previously, and it also included other electronics like a buzzer/speaker, which I have never dealt with. LCD are another piece of electronic that I have yet to learn about, and I was attracted to learning how one operated and how it would work with my project.

Mr. Shappell had suggested that instead of using buttons, which is what the instruction had said, that I should use micro switches since they would better fit the piano style keyboard that I would want to for my project. This lead to me having to go online and learn how to use micro switches. Microswitches work more or less like buttons so I had an idea of how they worked but the way that they are built is very different from buttons, so I will need to adapt the microswitches to connect with the breadboard and the Arduino. I did so by connecting alligator clips to the microswitch and from the alligator clip to wires.

Throughout these weeks I've continued to grow with my researching skills as they were essential in finding the right projects for me to focus on. Another important learner outcome I had experience with was communication because I was able to listen to what Mr. Shappell had told us and think about how it applied to my situation and then I needed to discuss with Mr. Shappell what would be the best way of tackling this missing mission from my work. We were able to talk about whether or not my project would be good for me to follow through with and what would be necessary for me to have in order to complete the project. Now that I know what my mission is I finally have a long term goal to focus on. Now my next couple of steps will be to get a handle of the micro switches and how I will fit them into my final product as well as getting an understanding of how LCDs work so that I can use it in my final product.