Day 15: Buzz, buzz, a light activated alarm

Arduino is really where my heart is, at least that is what I intended to get good at.

One year ago, near some Christmas holiday, I suddenly caught the Arduino bug after some co-worker rattled about kick-starters, IoT (internet of things), arduino controlled medical services. I bought an arduino uno, car chasis, motor shield, and a bucket full of little tools. Suddenly felt like an would-be electronic engineer.

The dream engineer career did not go far. After a few days, I felt hopelessly defeated. I stuffed back all my tools, arduino, into the little bucket, pushed them under a table and forgot about it.

I decided to go back. Arduino just seemed to be too cool not to know a thing or two. I also love playing with LEDs, a little programming on top of it is just irresistible.

Though mine, wires, breadboards, more tools, more sensors, more arduinos. And a starter kit.

I followed the lessons from elgoo uno starter kit, gradually electronic circuits become less intimidating.

Today I followed the YouTube tutorial Buzzer with LED and LDR and made an light activated alarm.
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Day 14: A brutal work day ... nothing

Staggered into day 14. And I did nothing to meet my daily challenge.

Worked all the way till evening. Attended Yung's showcase. Came home, finished remaining work.

So that was that.
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Day 13: Firefly LED light jar

Tonight, I followed the instructions of fire fly Jar, Arduino at Instructables and made a fire fly jar of my own.

The result is the following:



I could not be happier.
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Day 12: A light house made on, hmm, Saturday

Day 12 - Monday

Monday, the first day-light-savings Monday,  hard to wake Monday, a lot of work Monday. By the time I finished my work, it was late in the evening. Not sure what to do, I went on Khan Academy and took some electronic engineering lessons, then browsed wide-eyed the projects on instructables.

However, Yung has somehow caught the maker bug and tried to make a fan. Later Annya joined in. Using the lid from plastic box, we helped them cut up two fans of three leaves (?), they hooked it up with a motor and 9v battery. Whoa, the fan swirled, nearly cut Yung's arm. They squeaked in delight.

Other than that, Emma and Annya also caught the maker bug. On Saturday night, while I made my little crappy orange bug light, they were busy building a light house. Got to show it!

The light house that Emma and Annya built


The light house that Emma and Annya built - Close up.
Decorated with shells, lit up with LED string lights.

Apply glue to the house


Paint the building blocks - popsicle sticks

Set up the house

Add roof and door hinges

Paint and build

Finish it up
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Day 11: Can I take a break?

Day 11 - Sunday

The previous week, I purchased a variety of things for DIY terrarium: DIY kit, sea shells, river stones, glass jars and pots, moss, potting soil, and so on. Yesterday, my collection of plants (13 in total)  finally made their way to my dinning table.

So Sunday the kids and I spent most of the day making terrarium. In the beginning, it was as bewildering and anxiety-inducing as working with electronics. However, terrariums seem to be infinitely more pleasant and reassuring and simpler than electronics.  After made a few blunders, Emma and I went into full drive and filled our empty glass jars with little plants. We decorated them with white rocks, marbles, even a glass chess piece ...

In the afternoon, went to a birthday part and did ice skating.

At night, I opened up my Arduino Uno starter kit tutorial from elegoo.com and continued my tutorial.

I learned about servo motors,


I was trying to hook up LCD display, however found my pentiometer went missing. So happily moved on.

I learned about ultrasonic sensors:
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Day 10: A light house and a bug light

Day 10 - Saturday.

Saturday night, I summoned up my courage to tackle the very intimidating problem of adding a light switch. The previous day I have 5 rocker light switches arrived. As a matter of fact, my house has become a steady stop of delivery men and women. My supply of electronic parts with all beautiful names such as SPDT,  IC 74HC595, three-pong rocker switches, stepper motors is steady growing and in danger of overflowing. Still every time I want to do a project, I found I have some parts missing.

 Anyway Saturday night, I was working on hooking up a rocker switch with 2 AA batteries and a LED night. Fortunately, with the help of YouTube videos, I was able to quickly nail the switch problem. 

Yay, I got the switch to work


Another impossible feat of that night was I learned that the colorful plastic tubes are your regular plastic,  they are heat-shrinkable tubes. No idea where to find or how to use a heat gun (I later found we do have a heat gun), I fished out some matches and started burning the tubes, I was delighted to find that matches seem to work just fine, my tubes shrunk to wrap my wires tightly, even though it made my yellow tube black.

A bug night light made with a ping pong and some paper clips

After messing with switches and tubes, I proceeded to go low tech again and made a bug night-light for Yung, with a switch. Turned my connections were again unstable, and the light very often needs some wiggling and proding to go on or off. 

Nevertheless.

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Day 9: A resistor tube man and a refrigerator robot

Friday, I continued my easy way with electronics. I was frustrated with my forever lacking of parts, or parts go missing, and my forever unstable connections that leave my final products (can I even call them so?) unstable.

In the meanwhile, I developed eyes for discarded toys sitting in the basement, old electronic devices are now treasures to be hunted and disassembled. Wednesday I dissected a dead mouse (the kind with wires, not the kind that poops by garbage cans); Friday I dissembled an race car.  With that, I gained 2 chips, a bunch of wheels, some gears, a motor, a remote control that can go backwards and forwards.

I decided to repurpose the wheels and the remote control for some home-made robot car, did not work.

I tried a bunch of other things, all failed ...

I decided to go very, very low bar and low tech. So I made the following: a resistor man and a refrige robot. The idea of the resistor man came from an intractable article. We piled a bunch of sea shells at his feet

A refrigerator robot made of magnets and leds. 

Resistor man soldered on an old chip

Resistor man soldered on an old chip
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