The Infamous Wire

Soldering my own microswitches was an experience that I would never forget and that now lead to my next task, organizing them in a way that would resemble that of a piano and insuring that they don't move from that organized position. Originally I had the idea that I would put the microswitches onto a wooden platform that I would make to that the microswitches would look like they're on a miniature piano and so that the guts of the Arduino and all the wiring would be hidden. I thought this would be the best solution because it not only maintained the microswitches organized but made my project look cleaner and more professional. However, as I sat down with Mr. Shappel and spoke to him about this idea he proposed that instead, I should simply connect the microswitches with a wire that I would cut off from a coat hanger. It was much more simple and realistic than my idea because my original idea would lead me to learn how to use new tools and would require a lot of time that I did have. Mr. Shappel also convinced me that showing off the guts of the Arduino was perfectly fine and that it wouldn't hurt for people to see the true side of what running my project.

After I brought my coat hanger from home to school Mr. Shappel and I broke off the length of wire that I needed to connect all of the microswitches, and since the wire was too thin for the holes in the microswitch to fit in so that they wouldn't move we decided that we should put some tape on the wire so that it would make the wire thick enough so that the micrositches could fit through but so that they wouldn't move out of where they were put. This will probably be the part of the project where I will dedicate the most amount of time to, because it was so tedious to try and find the right length of tape that would make the wire thick enough to let the microwitch slide into the wire but not let the microwitch move freely. I had to endure the process of cutting multiple different pieces of tape to try and find the right length, and when I did find the right length of tape I made this copy and paste mechanism where I simply put tape over the size that was perfect and then I would cut it so that this way I could cut the time I spent on cutting the tape. Once I got the tape onto the wire I put the microswitches on to the wire and I took small pieces of cardboard that would be hotglued inbetween the microswitches. This way there would a comfortable amount of space between each microswitch and this would lock the microswitches together.

Throughout this experience I learned how important it is to realize that the real world never works exactly the same as the theoretical world. From the beginning of doing this task I thought that it would take me roughly 30 minutes to complete everything from cutting the coat hanger to get the microswitches hotglued together. Sadly, that was not the case and instead it took me an entire period to do something that appeared so simply. Nevertheless, I continued to improve upon myself as a problem solver as well as a resielient achiever. I couldn't easily stopped at any moment becuase of how frustrating it was and changed my plans, but instead I countinued to work and eventually finished it. My problem solving skills were demonstrated through looking at the problem I had of trying to organize my microswitches and realizing that I have a limited amount of time to solve the problem so I improvised.

Thanks to Mr. Shappels amazing shack of recycable materials I found some 3.2 ohms speakers that were originally part of a stereo but that I took out so that I could use them for my project. I will no test out these speakers and try to use them in my project.