Mission: Equip a Pententiometer (Sensor) to an Arduino board and test the output of voltage to the computer and the board itself. Then, attach an LED light to the Arduino board and manually adjust the brightness with the Potentiometer.
Materials: Arduino Duemilanove Circuit Board with ATMEGA 328, Potentiometer as the sensor, USB Cable and LED’s.
Steps:
1. Make sure all materials on hand are working and functioning properly. To do this, connect the USB Cable to the computer and Arduino board. Ensure that the LED light and power light are on, if so, it is working.
2. Open the Arduino software and configure your settings for your board, port and program.
Note: If you see a blinking light on the board then it usually means that a program is already running. If you wanna clear the data to input a new project you should press the reset button to wipe out all the data on the Arduino board and start fresh.
3. To start the project itself, find the particular example you will need by first going to File. Then, go to Examples and look for 03. Analog. Finally, search for the program title “AnalogInOutSignal” to start your project.
4. At this point, you should compile then upload the program to make sure it is working.
Note: For the purposes of our experiment, we had to change the output pin to 11 to be able to control the LED lights with the Potentiometer.
5. For the first phase of our experiment, we equipped a sensor to the Arduino board to test the output via the serial monitor. For this part of the project, the output should read values ranging from 0 – 1023.
6. For the second phase of our experiment, we attached LED lights and were to manually gauge its brightness with the help of the Sensor.
Outcome: The entire experiment was a success for me. For the first phase of the experiment, I was able successfully measure the output of the voltage being sent to and from the computer to the Arduino board. The only major issue I had was the wires for the Sensor because the Red wire would not go into the pin of the Arduino board unless there was a lot of force applied to the wire. It seems as though those wires were somewhat old and used very often. For the second phase of the project, I was successfully able to adjust the brightness of the LED light by way of the Potentiometer (Sensor). The only problem I had at this point was connecting the LED light to the Arduino board. Due to the status of the LED light I had, it seemed as though LED light was ready to break, which meant that half of the time I had to manually keep the LED light inside to make the project work.
