This is a two day workshop starting Saturday 14th and finishing Sunday 15th March. The workshop will be facilitated by Ed Devane and Kristian Skelly. No previous experience is required apart from basic computer literacy. Participants are required to bring their own laptop for the workshop. Each participant will be supplied with required electronics. The price of the course is €100 with the option to pay an extra €45 during the workshop if you would like to keep the electronics after the course.
DAY 1:
Morning session 10am-1pm:
Intro to Arduino, relationship between IDE and hardware, examples of Arduino projects, intro to programming. Participants will be familiarised with the following code components:
Variables: ints, floats, booleans etc.
Functions: set-up and loop for the most part.
Conditional logic: if/else statements, for loops
Read / Write: digitalRead, analogRead, how this relates to voltages at IO pins
PWM: analogWrite
Serial communication: write to serial monitor, read serial from computer
Libraries: how to download, import and use libraries
Lunch 1-2pm
Afternoon session 2-5pm:
Electronics: going through each component and sensor in detail.
Blink sketch with breadboarded LED, button, and different uses of resistors (series, pullup, pulldown, voltage divider). Discussion on fragility of Arduino, logic levels, using transistors and relays to drive bigger loads, protecting input pins, various ways of powering Arduinos.
Mechanisms: Levers, gears, pulleys, linkages - mechanical parts that can be attached to motors and solenoids to create movement.
DAY 2:
Morning Session 10am-1pm:
Building on the previous day’s work, group will be split into teams and given exercises that require combining code examples and circuits, creativity and teamwork.
Lunch 1-2pm
Afternoon Session 2-5pm or 6pm
Teams or individuals will make a robot that responds to movement or light or other sensory input. Teams with be supplied with components such as gears cut from Kraftliner or MDF, wheels, string etc.