✅ c10: outputs

These classes, while being far apart mainly tackled 2 correlated and interdependent components in electronics which are inputs and outputs.

In the outputs week, we mainly went over some main electronic principles, going over differences between intensity and voltage, the purpose of adding resistors, the general direction law in which electrons flow.

After that we went into some main output devices that we know of such as motors (different types), diodes, mosfets, steppers, etc…

As for the inputs week, which came 3 weeks after, we talked more about the history of microcontrollers and how they came to be and went over some major electronic devices that rely heavily on our input whether it’s pressing a button, motion, etc… In this class, we also went through Arduino as a software and how it’s open source nature made things more or less accessible by a wider range of people to practice electronics on a more individual DIY scale.

Having had a hard time making a PCB due to time constraints, I decided to implement the learning objectives of this task while referring to a previous microchallenge. For this reason, I would like to refer back to the 2nd microchallenge, done together with Kai and Ruben. In fact, one of the main important components to make the zoetrope work is the motor. This motor served to turn the disk where the figurines are plugged.

In this case, the output, which is the motor, together with the strobe light, both contribute to make the general output of the artifact which is the animation, dependent on both light and speed intervals.

During this microchallenge, the electronics design of the piece was one of the more prominent and important. The motor speed was controlled by a potentiometer, which was in this case the input source. More about this in the inputs task documentation.