Last week was my first experience in the CU FabLab, a community run maker-space at the UofI campus. Let me tell you, I wish I had found this resource years earlier. The entire environment was set up to foster creativity. If I had explored this area earlier in my college career, I would have hopefully been able to create some impressive works by this time. But, as a latecomer, I hope to use this resource to its fullest.

Programming for Beginners

I have a little experience with programming; my family are all engineers and so I have been exposed to it for a large portion of my life. However, I have never experienced an environment with such instant gratification as programming with and for arduinos. These little computers’ sensors can be manipulated and read to perform simple tasks. I was able to code the beginning functions such as blink and learn how breadboards work. However, I was most proud of the program I created.

I was able to code a proximity sensor to read how far away an object was. Then, I made a small LED light blink quicker if the object was closer. It was a small little back up light detector for making sure you don’t hit any other cars!

I know it isn’t practical, but it still felt like I accomplished something.