Process

Surprisingly, my design process was quite linear and parallel with the tech talks we had in class. I started by understanding how arduino works with some small sketches and then moved onto using libraries to utilize the temperature sensors. The temperature sensor was quite easy to use and I was able to use the LEDs on the arduino to change color based on the current temperature, this was promising for my final project. Then I moved onto the output: LED lights. This was slightly more challenging as I worked on the output a couple days before the assigned class period due to traveling for an athletic event. I worked with TA Zhenfeng to try and get the LED output to work but after a couple hours in the lab we were unsuccessful. I was, however, able to soder for the first time so that was exciting. When I came back from my trip, I was directed towards the tutorials that were shown in class the previous week. I realized that I had plugged some of the cables into the wrong ports, so once they were correctly placed, I got the LED to start working! Now it was just a matter of delaying the interval, taking the temperatures at two different times, and finding the difference. There was of course a lot of debugging at this stage because it was the most code heavy, but with my previous programming experience, it was manageable. Then I spent the last class period tweaking the intervals where the colors would change due to the demo that would be much faster than a normal fan usage session.