Lab 3 - Electronics Lab

I put together my DC power jack and I hooked up the jack and what I think is a voltage regulator to to my breadboard.





















I plugged the DC jack in to the 12volt power supply. Then I started to smell burning.

I thought, "OMG. What have I done?"

As I was looking around my circuitry, I felt heat coming from the voltage regulator, and when I touched it, it was very hot. I immediately unplugged the power supply, undid my wiring, and discovered that I melted my breadboard.
















Questions:
*Why did this happen?
*How did I do this?

Also, during this exercise, before I realized what I was happening, I was using the multimeter to try and check an LED on the board, and no reading was coming through. Why?

Still figuring it out.

Fantasy Device!

My fantasy device is a Universal Translator. It would be like a cell phone, with a screen, a keyboard, and an internal microphone.

The computer would hold all the languages in the world in its reference. If a person is going traveling, or speaking with someone who speaks a different language, the person would put on headphones and the Universal Translator would "listen" to the person, translate their words, and through headphones you could hear machine translate the conversation for you.

If the person with the Universal Translator is trying to respond in the foreign language, they would type their word or sentence into the translator, and on the screen the translation would appear. It would be like a quick and handy pocket google translation (but better).

Lab 2 - Pot and Flex. Yum.

I worked with a potentiometer. I made it work!


Then I tried to work with a stretch sensor, but I couldn't get it to work. I decided to use another sensor.














I moved on to a flex sensor.


















My sad little flex sensor and LED. I got it to work, to dim and get brighter, but I couldn't figure out how to make the light go off all the way. I am still trying to work out the coding part to bring logic to these machines. I am beginning to understand the circuitry, but making the computer talk to the circuitry I am having a hard time with. Keep on truckin,' keep on learnin.' I need several afternoons with few shots of espresso by my side while I spend some quality time with "Getting Started with Arduino."