Week 3 - Adventures in Making

     This week’s Adventures in Making was about the RGB LED and using Loops, Arrays and Analog Read/Write.  This week’s # 3 circuit was particularly challenging for me because of a reason I have not figured out yet, I could not get it to work.

 

 

  I spent entirely too much time (2 ½ days) trying to figure out why I could not get this circuit to work.  I just was not going to let this go without me solving it.  I even reconfigured my board back to circuit # 1 just to make sure my breadboard had not burned out.  Circuit # 1 worked just fine as it had before. I tried to alter the code in several different edits:

  

         I even striped out all of the comments and tried to run it, alas no joy!

 

         I even went so far as to go to a couple of the local electronics stores (Fry’s and Microcenter) trying to find replacement RGB LEDs to eliminate the possibility that I had a defective RGB LED. After spending a lengthy time at Fry's going through the LED at Fry's and getting a sales tech involved, who, after searching through them  concluded that they were online and not in the store, I proceed to go to Microcenter.  For those of you who don't know, Microcenter is another great electronics store on US 75 and Spring Valley in Richardson.  They actually have a Hobbyist section that has several electronic Maker kits.  I found the 4 pin RGB LEDs at Microcenter and bought the last two packs the store had.

        When I made it home, I tried one of the new LEDs, but still no joy.  So I finally succumb to the fact that, though I may be able to figure it out later, which I think has to be my code, I didn't have enough time right now and needed to try circuit # 4.  I had absolutely no problem configuring the Arduino with circuit # 4.  I ran the code that is in the USK without editing it in any fashion (including the all of the comments) due to lack of time and a small confidence factor because I wanted to see if it would run, after my experience with not being able to get circuit # 3 to work. 

 

   It ran as advertised :

 

I have not included my usual Microsoft Visio drawings this week due to lack of time from my frustrating experience with the Circuit # 3 failure.  I am not going to count circuit # 3 as a failure.  Just lack of time to finish troubleshooting right now.