Our Motto

Thanks for everything! It has been a great summer!

Last Week of Arduino, Part 2

This weekend we went to Worlds of Fun, and that was pretty good, but we've had that much fun or better in Arduino this summer. Here's the proof:

Harms checks for data.


Witte and his infernal machine.



Spenser Barr working on the water bottle runabout.

Last Week of Arduino, Part 1

We've come down to the last week of school. Class really zipped by this year. Here are few shots of recent work:

Spenser Barr's Water Bottle Runabout."


Witte and Sanchez posing with their infernal capacitance shockers.



Lewis Seeks inspiration.



Digging in on an animation program.

More More New Work!

Getting a lot done...

Two new cadets get into the swing of things.


The dreaded 555 Metronome circuit.



Witte tears in...




Cadet Barr contemplated a "D" cell for a project he is working on.

More New Work!

The cadets are hard at work on their various tasks.

Jamie is scavenging for parts on a circuit board. She was able to salvage about twenty capacitors and diodes off of the board.


Working on an animation in the Alice language.



Harms wires his Arduino board.




These two Cadets just caught a 1 farad capacitor. You should have seen the one that got away.

Second Half Session Begins!

We are proud to begin session 2 of the Wentworth Arduino Class! We have many new students we are delighted to welcome to the class. We are looking forward to some significant builds this second session.


The class.

Arduino to LCD Output

Today, the class worked on making the Arduino boards communicate. The boards were connected to an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) output and made to print out various short messages. As you see, we had some success with this experiment.


"Wentworth!" in big letters.


Cadet Peaden contemplated a capacitor.



The class at work. that is the wiring diagram for the Arduino/LCD interface projected on the wall.


Carlos and Lewis.

See the following post (below) for the rest of today's pictures!

Arduino to LCD Output, Continued

Captain Barr Demonstrates...


Delicate work...


Carlos shows off his wiring...




The board speaks again.

Current Projects

These are the projects that the cadets are currently working on:

Call -- LM386N Amplifier
Graham -- Fundamentals of LED Timing
Haney -- Robot Box
Keane -- Radio
Lewis -- Animation
Neil -- Radio
Peaden -- Animation
Sanchez -- Level Control
Siabatto -- 555 Oscillator Circuit
Tiller -- Radio
Trejo -- Level Control


LED Timing.


Brander wires a variable resistor to a 386 amplifier circuit.


Disassembly for parts.



We are learning to use three types of meters.

Arduino and Motor Control

Cadet Avila has been working on controlling a small motor with his Ardunio board. He has made a motor pulse rather then run steadily. This kind of device regulation is important; in more advanced applications (and with more highly developed coding) it allows precision control of numerous processes in industry, cybernetics, etc. This type of programming and hardware regulation is critical in an information-based society.

Small DC motor control is a first step to these higher level programming skills.

LM386 Amplifier Chips

Several of the cadets are very interested in building amplifier circuits using the LM386 amplifier chip. We have a lot of creativity going on, and there have been some very clever designs explored.


New Cadet Keane on her first build.


Cadet Haney.

Cadet Graham and his amplifier circuit.


Cadet Siabatto working on a three-channel LED circuit.

The final circuit.

The Projects Begin!

Today, we got most of the class up and running with their Arduinos! We were working on making the board pulse light in various ways. You can see the results...everyone was busy, and we learned a lot. Also, the class was introduced to the ALICE programming language. Their reading for tonight will be "Omnilingual."

Lights On! II

Today, we expanded the projects we were working on yesterday. The Arduino boards were programmed and wired to a circuit that would flash their LED with the command from a push button switch on a circuit board.

Then they were set up to "fade" in and out.

Lights On!

Today in the second period Arduino class we connected the Arduino to the PC for the first time, plugged in an LED (light emitting diode), and made the diode flash! Cadets wrote their own programming code and the light came on! We are getting ready for big things...

Day Two

Today we worked on reading schematic diagrams. We corrected and discussed the previous day's assignments, and set expectations for lab time which will begin on Thursday. The cadets are very excited about what we are doing, and I have high expectations for their projects.



Cadets Heinz and Crump toast the day with a Coffee/Chocolate Milk/Sugar/hot sauce breakfast cocktail. Do these guys know how to live or what?

Call gets all worked up.

More raw excitement.

CoCo Puffs: breakfast of Arduino champions!

Day One – June 14, 2010

First day of class for camp lead 2010! This was an interesting day. The cadets were issued their schedules and class got right under way.

Arduino started off with a discussion of basic electrical theory, a great deal of math, and a brief discussion of the Arduino board itself. There is a lot of homework tonight, but we are looking forward to lab time later in the week when we can work with the actual components that the lectures are about.

I will be around to see your cadets tonight during homewark time to make certain that everything is going well.

The plan for this class is that the cadets will learn a great deal of practical electrical/computer data that they can apply to their own lives and use for invention and innovation.

Now, here are the real stars of our show, your cadets:

Amber and Jamie pretending the soldering iron is plugged in.

Cadet Marco Siabatto

Cadet Haney thinking about lunch.

The entire first block Class.

See you tomorrow!

Respectfully,

Captain Barr

Welcome and Hello!

I am very excited about teaching your Cadet in the Wentworth Military Academy Arduino Class! This is going to be great! We call the class "Arduino" for short, but the actual name of the course is, "Inventions/Innovations."

We will learn some electronics, get some math skills, some science, build a few gadgets, and hopefully have a great time!

Please feel free to call me or write to my school email account at any time (that information will be arriving to you via email).

We will have some pictures up here and we will keep you updated with everything we are doing.

Very respectfully,
Captain Barr