Digital & analog input & output

This week started with reading all about microcontrollers, sensors, the Arduino programming environment, followed by three labs.

The first lab was Digital Input and Output, where we learned how to connect a digital input circuit and a digital output circuit to a microcontroller. It covered setting up the board with the Arduino on it, as well as basic coding for controlling two LEDs with a switch:

The second lab was Analog Input and it covered connecting a variable resistor to a microcontroller and reading it as an analog input.

I learned how to connect potentiometers and flex sensors to the Arduino and read their values in my pc.

The third lab was Sensor Change Detection, where I learned how to program a microcontroller to look for three common changes in sensor readings that give information about events in the physical world: state change detection on digital sensors, and threshold crossing and peak detection on analog sensors.

It was actually exciting seeing all the console prints of translated real world physical actions to numbers on my screen!