Revolutionizing Classrooms: The Future of Education Technology

This week in ETEC-568 Makerspace class, the professor challenged us to make a light sensor and servo motor circuit with Arduino. For the project we were also asked to work with Generative AI Chat Bot and have it create a code, maybe step by step guide on how to wire my circuit. It helped me design, build, and code the circuit. For someone like me who’s still learning coding and circuits, this was a perfect opportunity to explore the basics while creating something practical and fun. The task was to design a circuit that simulates the functionality of automated blinds: If it’s bright outside, the blinds should close to keep the room cool. If it’s dark, the blinds should open , letting us enjoy the night view. This was a circuit with a light sensor that reads brightness and a servo motor to act as blinds. This was a hands-on, challenging project. I managed to wire up the parts with the help of ChatGPT. I had to verify that each connection was double-checked several times to ensure it w...

This week was Challenge Week for our ETEC-568 class, and I was determined to make the most of it. The goal for this week was to start with an initial circuit and transform it into something unique. With Christmas right around the corner, I couldn’t resist bringing some holiday cheer to this weeks' project. I started with a simple buzzer circuit from the kit’s guide. It played "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"—a great starting point but not quite what I had in mind for this festive challenge. I thought, "Why not make it more Christmas-themed?" After I brainstormed for a while, I decided to see if I could get the buzzer to play "Jingle Bells." Now getting the buzzer to play "Jingle Bells" was a tricky. I had to translate the song’s notes into code, which was completely new to me. I spent a lot of time going back and forth between my Arduino sketch and online tutorials. After some trial and error (and a lot of wrong notes!), I finally got it to so...

This week in class, the assignment was to build a rolling dice circuit in Arduino, and boy, it was challenging. Honestly, this pushed my patience, creativity, and problem-solving skills to new limits, but it was worth it—one of the most satisfying circuits I’ve ever created. The wires and LEDs required for the rolling dice circuit were so numerous that the breadboard looked like a chaotic maze. Wiring everything correctly was no easy task. The real tedium came from double-checking every wire, especially when the circuit initially didn’t work. One particularly tricky part was the push button. I learned the hard way that it needs to be firmly seated on the board, or the entire circuit might fail. This small detail required some fiddling but turned out to be an important lesson on how precision can make all the difference in electronics. While the physical setup wasn’t overwhelmingly complex, it did demand patience to ensure everything was wired correctly. Once the hardware was completed,...

This week in class, the exciting challenge was to utilize two or more circuits and merge them into something completely different. For such a project, one needed to learn how to modify pre existing circuit designs and combine them in some new way. I decided to incorporate circuits 2, 3, and 4 into one coherent circuit that also includes an LED sequence controlled by a potentiometer and an RGB LED. This circuit was possible only because I followed the guide quite closely in the Viltros kit instruction book, explaining which wire needed to connect with which pin and through which everything would get the right voltage. Still, I had to adjust it too, moving some of the pieces onto other parts of the breadboard so that no area would end up crowded and would fit all the connections that needed to be made. Every time I moved any one component, I double-checked that the wiring was still correct; also to make sure power flowed accordingly with both the LEDs and potentiometer. After positioning...

When I first started with Arduino, the Blinking LED project was my introduction, and it was definitely a steep learning curve. Now that I’ve moved on to Circuit 2, using a potentiometer to control LED brightness, I was excited to see how everything I learned would start to come together. This project gave me the chance to explore analog input and gain a better understanding of how sensors and resistors can interact to affect circuit behavior. Let me take you through the project, the challenges I encountered, and my experience with an additional extension challenge that made me push my coding and circuit skills further. Since this was my second circuit in this Arduino series, I was more familiar with the basics of breadboarding, wiring, and interpreting the code. It was exciting to see that, with Circuit 2, setting everything up was smoother. Unlike my first attempt, where I was nervous about every connection, this time I felt a little bit more comfortable navigating the wiring and code...