SERIAL LAB (video at bottom!)

My pals Arduino and Breadboard

PotentiometerBread board ready for serial communicationCode for Processing and Arduino

In this lab we setup a serial connection with the Arduino and Processing.

After reinstalling my Arduino software my computer finally agreed to help me complete this lab.

It was a pretty straight forward lab. I setup my broad board according to the pictures on the Pcomp site and then used the code provided to program both Processing and Arduino.  I then tweaked the potentiometer to change the Y values on the screen. (video attached at bottom)

Code for Processing and Arduino

Serial Lab 1 from Winslow Porter on Vimeo.

RAIN SENSOR

Here you can see the rising water level causes the foam float (with a conductive surface on top) to touch a piece of metal, completing the circuit.

This is my first week’s project. It is designed to sense when rain reservoirs are full. It is a very basic switch, but I could see that this could be very helpful for communities who don’t have access to clean drinking water. Many of these devices could be placed in trees with the LED’s positioned at the base.

I found this project really interesting because it allowed me to understand how some of the most essential pieces of technology are just an on or off switch.

The code that I used was pretty minimal, but totally sufficient for the task at hand.

Please excuse the poor design of this page, for this is also my first blog post ever!