Sorry that it took me TWO weeks to get back, but in these two weeks I started my internship in Amsterdam and I lost more time than I expected to lose, and the nights have been busier than they have been the last couple of weeks. So no time for other things, But (luckily) there is still some news.
First the prototype:
This is the prototype as I wanted to test it (you see that I wanted and apparently couldn't write 'did'?). So this is the prototype that should work when the sun goes down or up and make some nice sounds.
So first thing that I added is a 9V battery so it wouldn't need to be connected to my (awesome) laptop, since I would need it during the week. The black little box on the right is the Relay that turns the engine on.
Here is the Light sensor, which senses the light and then passes it's value on to the Arduino. (Don't worry about all the wires, they are supposed to be there and strangely enough I know what they all should do! (Actually it isn't that difficult! :) ))
And this is the motor with a small stick attached to it. Can you see the added paper? Remember that I wanted it to sound like grass reacting on the wind? It doesn't... The engine and gears make waaaaay to much sound and the paper sounds way to sharp... but anyway it works :) it makes a sound.... later improvements can be made.
"So," you might ask "You've been at it for about two weeks. What are the results?" he... uhm... something went wrong... I was fearing it but let me show you a picture of the evil doer (not really of course, I did it wrong but i'm not willing to admit it publicly. ):
The damn battery run out of power!!!!!!!!!!! even before it got dark! so... i couldn't even test the damn prototype! .....aaaaah.... welll..... lets look around will we?
I found out that my IKEA SPoka light uses a 12V transformer that uses the right plug. Only the poles are switched around so I think i will cut the wires and switch them :) And see if it will work :). So hopefully next weeek will be waaaay better :) and hopefully successful :).
In other news: My headphones died. Yes it is a very sad happening that makes you gulp... I know... it's hard. The thing what happened was that one of the cables broke. And with my new found experience in soldering things I decided I could fix it. And strangely enough I did... But after some time the left ear (the one I fixed) started to lose some volume and I though "Well that's probably my bad soldering! :D" happy as I was, as I new I just needed to re-solder it again, I opened it up and soldered it again. Listened, heard that it was still wrong and soldered it again, and still it was wrong. So maybe there was something wrong... I tried to also solder the other speaker (You never know right?) and still nothing changed. So I switched the wires of the speakers so the left speaker became the right speaker and the other way around, And still the same speaker performed badly. So I think it is broken.
But! As I remembered reading at the Sparkfun page the Piezo speaker (the one normally in the Arduino Starter kit) is a 30 Ohm speaker.... And these speakers are 32 Ohm! So, in the future, expect some experiments with sounds :D!!!
As a closing feature I also want to show a picture of my new babies! I bought a Mint plant from IKEA and they started to grow!!!!
Ah.... look at the tiny leaves..... :D their soo cute :D ...maybe a new (g)arduino experiment??
so, good afternoon and see you next week. Hopefully with a report about the prototype :)
cheers!
frank
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