From the 22nd of October to the 5th of November, I attended a weekly study group in technology, during this we were all learning how to program and operate an arduino, which is a small circuit board that can be plugged into and programmed by a computer and using a series of wires to transmit the program from my computer to the arduino to the breadboard.

October 22nd

My first lesson was about lighting LEDs by connects an LED, a resistor and wires to the arduino and the bread board, for this I learned how to turn on the LED and program for how long it would blink and how bright it would shine.

First I’d open up arduino on my computer and open option “blink” under sketch, in this I had to program what brightness I wanted the light to be and select the timing on how long it would blink for.

The second part of the induction was adding the button to the breadboard, this would then allow me to turn the light on and off

October 29th

The second induction introduced me to these mini servos (which were little fans), for this one we were told how to set up the timer for how we wanted them to move and at what speed.

For me I set mine to move half way across and reset, potentially this could be used as a timer for jobs or activities like a board game or a toothbrush timer.

November 5th

My third and final session involved using pixel lights (each light contains a microprocessor), with these we could program any colour we want into it, the basic ones were green, blue and red, to change the colors, we had to set the numbers either higher or lower, this would then mix the colours together.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I enjoyed this study group, it gave an opportunity into basic programming and technology, there were a lot of detail and names I struggled to remember, and I couldn’t fully understand the coding, but I belive I give myself a few self taught lessons in learning patterns and rules (if I want to, if it feels necessary), I should get a better understanding of everything, which could potentially open my mind and give me ideas for future ideas.

Did/will this play a part in my main subject work?

When choosing this study group, I had no intentions of adding technology to my bowl or secondary artefact, I wanted my bowl just to be simple, I chose this group just so I could learn basic programming, however I am glad I chose this one, even though it was a bit complicated to remember the scripting and the wires, it was good to step out my comfort zone and potentially I could see myself buying my own arduino kit so I can get a lot more practice and get a better understanding on the patterns and coding.