On March 17th the class was full of interesting and new things. First of all I learned what is Arduino and got to play with it. “Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software.” As its definition tells you Arduino is a piece of electronic platform that can be programmed to do certain functions. 

So, I started by watching couple Arduino tutorials from the MakerLab’s website. Here is the link to the tutorials http://makerlab.illinois.edu/2014/02/24/getting-started-with-arduinos/. Then, after I watched first two of them, I started writing code. Here is how it looked like:

After the code was written I tried to test whether my system would work or not. Essentially my goal was to turn the light on. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that because of some hardware connectivity problems. I believe I was missing some part, or probably connected it incorrectly. But here is how it looked like:

For the rest of the class we had a guest speaker from a Fab Lab. Fab Lab is a community based maker lab located on campus close to Agriculture Library. He showed us different cool things that were made at Fab Lab and explained what they do there overall. I, personally, think that it’s a great place that should exist in every community. Especially it is very beneficial for children because it helps them develop and understand design as well as think more creatively. Looking forward for our sessions there after the break!