Light Emitting Diodes

I took my first step into basic robotics today - turning on and off lights. It is a pretty cool step as this concept is the foundation of embedded technology.

What´s that, you ask? Here is an interesting wiki description of the Internet of Things. 

So, anyway, I used the basic circuit technology that I learned last week, added the basic coding with some modifications and came up with two different examples of controling the lights. Now imagine each light represents a motor function on a robot... very exciting.

This is also how people do those crazy christmas light shows like this.

I did have a minor glitch, however. As you watch the video you will notice that the 4th light doesn´t light up. I made all of the obvious adjustments like changing the LED, changing the wire, changing the circuit and checking the code. None of that has worked yet and I hope there isn´t a hardware error on the 5th pin of my Arduino microcontroller... I will report back on that.

So here is my light show...

Here is the code I used for the second progression in the video above:

/*

Blinking LED Lights

*/

void setup () {

pinMode (2, OUTPUT);

pinMode (3, OUTPUT);

pinMode (4, OUTPUT);

pinMode (5, OUTPUT);

pinMode (6, OUTPUT);

pinMode (7, OUTPUT);

pinMode (8, OUTPUT);

pinMode (9, OUTPUT);

}

void loop() {

digitalWrite(2, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(2, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(3, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(3, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(4, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(4, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(5, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(5, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(6, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(6, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(7, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(7, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(8, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(8, LOW);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(9, HIGH);

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(9, LOW);

delay(1000);

}