Second Day of Class

The second day of class was interesting. Some of us got to show off our arduino homework assignments (many of which I felt were much better than mine!) then we learned about heliotropic properties and systems, which was quite interesting. We also got to play around with our arduino systems to build different circuits that could, with use of a LDR, detect light and it's intensity, run a manually controlled motor, and could run a servo. Using these new circuits and arduino programs (which were prewriten) we were divided up into new groups and assigned a project that would be heliotropic; meaning it would find and follow light. I liked everyone in my new group, however, we had a bit of a communication problem. No one was really on the same page when we started building our final project because we didn't spend much time on the planning phase due to only having an hour or so to complete the whole project. We also had group members cutting each other off either to say something wouldn't work, to ask a question before the person was done talking, or to try to explain something before a group member was done asking a question. Our final class project worked to an extent (better than the other groups if I am remembering correctly) but it was not what all of us had in mind and still did not work well. We had tried to design it (indirectly) like a sun dial, that when the light was focus on a specific LDR in one of three quadrants, the servo would spin and arrow to point to where the light was at. It was a good idea and was different from what the other groups did but wasn't great. Once our assignment got extended to finish the project but the next class, we decided that at our first meeting we would all try to get on the same page for how we really wanted our project to work and to look and go from there.