So this is week 1 and we are doing our first project to introduce us to Arduino IDE using the Arduino Uno I purchased with my starter kit. As a starter project, after we download our programs we are to assemble our first circuit. Placing the Arduino board and beadboard together we are to add wires, an LED, and a resistor and after writing the program the light will blink on and off. It sounds simple, but so many things can go wrong. 

In the shared YouTube video, I share the code I wrote from the example provided and the resulting blinking circuit that was created. I did have a problem with designating a serial port. It wasn’t in my drop-down menu. The circuit still worked, but I am still scratching my head to figure out why. I combined the video showing what was happening (pardon the sneeze) with the coding and images of the working circuit. 

In the beginning, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself (I have a tendency to overthink things). So, I started with the manual that was provided and followed it step by step. I am more of a visual learner so the images were very helpful and they were great! Where it showed I should find an example of Circuit #1, it wasn’t there, so I used the one provided in class. When I verified my programming, it was great, but when I ran it the port error (the one seen in the video) came up. I reran it to make sure that was the issue, but I could not find what happened. The circuit still worked and I am not really sure why? That part is confusing. I am still playing with it to see what I need to do to fix it. 

I guess the takeaway is sometimes you can get it wrong and still be right? I rechecked all my circuitry and there were no errors there. The programming was correct, but the port error should have not allowed the command to go through, so why did it? Do electronics like art have “Happy Accidents”? When you do something unintentionally and it comes out better than you thought it would. If that is the case then, I am happy! I think I still need to figure out why it happened. Some things just bother me and this does. I want to know why it worked and where the port designation is. That just means more playing, seriously this is better than Legos!