User:RaRickert/ENES-100:/Learning the tools

This week I started learning the basic tools I would use for projects in the coming semester. in class, the Professor went over a few of the tools we (the class) had at our disposal. While I haven't experimented, learned or played with all of them yet I did get the opportunity to learn Some of them. The primary two being Arduino and Sketchup. Arduino, it sounded cool, and it looked like it could do a lot. So I went to the trusty internet to see what I could find. The first thing I learned, thanks to google, was I had initially spelled it wrong. I spelled it Ardweenoh, versus the actual spelling Arduino. Easy mistake, but humbling in its own way. I had no idea what I was doing. So I googled Arduino and came up with several helpful Youtube videos made by Jeremy Blum (Youtube ID name). He went over the basics for me. From the videos I got an idea of what the Arduino could do, as well as what it couldn't, and what it needed to get the job done. My first task was to get the light to blink. I entered the code he used in the video and still had absolutely no success. The light blinked alright, but only as it does when its first plugged in with no code running it. The arduino program couldn't verify my "sketch" (a.k.a. arduino code) enough to actually use it. After changing several small things here and there, I gave up and checked out the arduino.cc website. After scrounging thru their libraries I noticed something peculiar. The symbol I thought was a parenthesis was actually a brace! So I changed mine to match and voilà it works like a charm.

Though that description is somewhat detailed, it should give you some idea as to what kind of world I have found myself. After playing around with Arduino for a bit, I moved onto Sketchup. I tried making basic shapes and manipulating them in a bunch of different ways just to get a feel for what the program did overall. While I didn't learn everything about the tools I'm using this week, I did learn quite a bit. Though this won't be the last time I learn a tool of the trade. I be coming back to this again and again over the course of the semester.