They like "blinky" lights!
bill190
Posts: 769
Another programmer is "born"...
A young friend (early 20's/cell phone addicted, etc.) came over last night and I showed him my Basic Stamp. He is going to school for electronics and is just starting to get into computers and so forth, so good timing. And he has never used a multimeter and never done any programming.
So I showed him my basic stamp and wrote a couple of simple statements which made a few LED lights blink on and off...
He was INSTANTLY hooked! Totally fascinated with all this. After an hour he was modifying the program to make the lights blink one direction, then stop and blink the opposite direction.
Then I hauled out my bi-directional LED. (Power one direction and red, power the opposite direction and green.)
He was totally fascinated and twice as interested with that. I connected one pin to one output and the other pin to another output (What is a Microcontroller with built in resistors on the output pins).
Then just set one pin high and the other low for red, then opposite for green. Then both low for off or both high for off.
He had a lot of difficulty understanding what high and low was doing electrically until I pulled out my multimeter and showed him the voltages.
And he had a lot of difficulty understanding that two lows or two highs would be off. He thought it would cause a short circuit. Then I demonstrated on another prototype board that if you connected both pins of an LED to +, or both to -, then nothing would happen. Then he got it. Everything clicked.
Anyway after about 6 hours, he was doing his own subroutines! Then was exhausted and had to quit.
I showed him the Parallax store and he looked like a kid in candy land, especially when he saw the bluetooth gizmo!
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A young friend (early 20's/cell phone addicted, etc.) came over last night and I showed him my Basic Stamp. He is going to school for electronics and is just starting to get into computers and so forth, so good timing. And he has never used a multimeter and never done any programming.
So I showed him my basic stamp and wrote a couple of simple statements which made a few LED lights blink on and off...
He was INSTANTLY hooked! Totally fascinated with all this. After an hour he was modifying the program to make the lights blink one direction, then stop and blink the opposite direction.
Then I hauled out my bi-directional LED. (Power one direction and red, power the opposite direction and green.)
He was totally fascinated and twice as interested with that. I connected one pin to one output and the other pin to another output (What is a Microcontroller with built in resistors on the output pins).
Then just set one pin high and the other low for red, then opposite for green. Then both low for off or both high for off.
He had a lot of difficulty understanding what high and low was doing electrically until I pulled out my multimeter and showed him the voltages.
And he had a lot of difficulty understanding that two lows or two highs would be off. He thought it would cause a short circuit. Then I demonstrated on another prototype board that if you connected both pins of an LED to +, or both to -, then nothing would happen. Then he got it. Everything clicked.
Anyway after about 6 hours, he was doing his own subroutines! Then was exhausted and had to quit.
I showed him the Parallax store and he looked like a kid in candy land, especially when he saw the bluetooth gizmo!
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