This was our last week being in the the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab. I participated with the Arduinos and I really enjoyed this station because it is quite widely appliable. Arduinos are a piece of hardware that excutes software code. An Arduino is a specific kind of circuit board. It attaches by USB to the computer where the code can be developed. Arduino software was developed for beginners, so this is quite common for novice makers.
I’m happy that I learned how to work with Arduinos after the soldering workshop, because the soldering workshop not allow taught the class how to put a circuit board together, but Mitch explained all the parts and pieces of the LED board and their functions. The cool thing about working with Arduinos is that you do not have to be fluent in any programming language, since a lot of the code is available online, depending on what action you want to hook the Arduino board up to.
In this session, we hooked the Arduino board up to an LED light and and tiny motor.
This type of hardware is related to my semester project, “wearable technology”, using a circuit board called Flora, specifically used for electronics that can be worn, such as in T-shirts or hats, etc. I also believe that such technology will be more prevalent with the younger generation; students may present such technology in science fairs or school projects. With all this open-source software available, this will make daily projects for the individual more accessible and easy to DIY.