On the first week back after mid semester break I was given my final assignment for the semester – a practical project in which I must build some kind of circuit. I was also given the outline of the types of lessons which would proceed this week, being studies on different laws of physics such as Ohm’s Law which describes the behaviour of electricity within circuits. As practice for my practical, I was assigned to build an Arduino that plays sound with two major components:
- A potentiometer to control the pitch of the piezo buzzer
- A Button to change octaves (possibly two to switch both up and down octaves)
I started constructing this circuit that lesson, however ran into an issue when my computer wasn’t detecting any Arduino ports. After testing it on someone else’s computer, and then testing someone else’s Arduino, I found that for some reason my Arduino had stopped working, and that I needed a new one. After receiving a new one, I continued construction, and the wiring for this contraption was relatively simple, although after such a break I did need to look back at previous work to remind myself how to wire these parts. This was the first time I worked with buzzers in a while, so I did have some struggle trying to work the code out. The final component if this system is an ultrasonic detector, which would make this system similar to that of a theremin. This part is going to be the most challenging so far, but is also what I am most excited for, as I have not yet worked with ultrasonics, and will have to learn how to both wire and code them.