Potentiometers are very powerful components that allow a variety of cool capabilities when incorporated into a project. A potentiometer is a knob, which can be used to control all manner of different components in your project. The potentiometer is basically a variable resistor, whose resistance depends on the position of the knob. We can use a potentiometer to do things like control the volume in a speaker, or to control the brightness of an LED. If you want to follow along at home, you can order the Arduino Kit we are using HERE.
Arduino Tutorial 11: Understanding the Arduino Serial Port and Print Commands
In this lesson we will learn how to print from the Arduino. Since you are often using the arduino to make reading from sensors or other devices that interact with the environment, you need an easy way to get that information out to the user. The easiest way to do this is to send it over a serial port to the IDE Serial Monitor. There, is can be easily read and watched by the user. In this lesson we show you how to configure the serial port, and send values from the Arduino. If you want to follow along at home, you can order the Arduino Kit we are using HERE.
Arduino Tutorial 10: Understanding How To Read Analog Voltage using analogRead Command
So far in these lessons, we have just been using the Arduino output pins. If we actually want to read values from a sensor or other such components, we need to learn how to read values from the analog pins. These are pins A0 through A5. This lesson will teach you all about the analogRead command that allows you to interact with these pins. Enjoy!
In this new series of lessons, I will be using this Arduino kit.
Review of the CrowPi Raspberry Pi
In this video we unbox and review the new CrowPi Raspberry Pi. Bottom line is, this is a really well done products, and I think it is a great option for using in High School and College STEM programs. I have been impressed and intend to continue to use this platform. We unbox, boot and program it in this video.
Arduino Tutorial 9: Understanding Ohm’s Law and Simple Circuit Design
As we learn more about programming the Arduino, we become more and more excited about connecting and controlling simple circuits. In order to do this, we need to begin to understand how to design and analyze the circuits we are building. In this lesson we introduce you to Ohm’s Law and some techniques that will allow you to design and analyze simple series circuits. If you want to follow along at home, you can order the Arduino Kit we are using HERE. The nice digital voltmeter used in the lesson is available HERE.