In the first week back after semester break there is not a whole lot to wrote about since the work is just beginning, but we have started off with the things we were meant to have done a the end of the last semester, namely PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). PWM is a method of sending pulses of electricity through a circuit. We built very simple circuits to demonstrate how it works, one of them simply being an LED, and the most complicated being an LED with a potentiometer. The first circuit demonstrated how PWM works to me as it was a simple LED circuit which would fade and grow in brightness.
I remember seeing PWM on the internet as I tried my practical project last semester, however I got confused by the images and decided to not try and learn it. However, knowing now what it can do makes me think it would’ve been far more efficient to use PWM to move the servo motors of my robot dog in a repeating sequence to simulate movement rather than what I did. Next time I need to make something that requires movement to occur in pulses, PWM will be one of the first things I try.
Other than PWM, we have talked about how the unit we are currently doing is about digital and analog pins within the next few weeks, which is another important yet (hopefully) simple component to learn about. Hopefully this won’t involve extremely complex circuits as reading these pins, as well as sending data/electricity through them, is done mainly through the programming element.
Starting from this week is the NCSS grok challenge, which I am excited for as the programming typically isn’t too hard and the robotics course has definitely helped my logical thinking process when it comes to programming. The main concern I have for this challenge is the fact that I have barely coded in python this year, and although the basics is more or less the same, there is the more complicated stuff such as pulling data from text files which I could rarely remember even when I did code in python regularly. On one hand I am very out of touch with python, but on the other, I should still be able to complete these as it’s simple and I have access to google and previous Grok challenges/modules.