This week we worked our way through Project 4: Color Mixing Lamp and Project 5: Mood Cue.
Project 4 dealt taught us how to use photoresistors to control the color of an RGB LED. We use three photoresistors, each one was covered with a red, green, or blue gel so that the resistor reacted only to the corresponding light waves. Then by covering the gelled resistors with our fingers we could block specific light waves and control the color of the LED. Unfortunately we did not make any videos of our work, but there is a good video on YouTube of someone else completing this project.
Next we moved on to Project 5 where we learned how to control a servo with a potentiometer. Servos are special motors that do not spin in a full circle, instead they only rotate 180 degrees, and move to a specified position until you tell them to move to another specific location. The potentiometer controls the amount of voltage that is passed through it, returning a value between 0 to 1023. Our code grabs the current position of the potentiometer and maps it to the servo scale (0 to 180) then tells the servo where to turn to. Here is Seamus demonstrating his completed project.
Before next week each student will be completing Project 6: Light Theremin on their own. A theremin is a musical instrument that makes sound as the musician moves their hand around the instrument. In this project we will use a photoresistor to measure light input, then we will convert that data into an audio signal that we will send to a piezo so we get audio feedback.