This weekend the boy purchased his first Arduino kit.
Which. Is. Awesome.
He’s read the “Getting Started” book, and carefully unpacked and sorted all the bits and pieces.
I made tea. I have read nothing.
The boy was kind enough to let me get all up in his breadboard as he did the first tutorials. There were lightbulbs and wires and… oh man. I could go on, but you really had to be there.
Tutorial 1 involved blinking a light on and off. It was everything I thought it could be.
Photo Attrib: Ed Halley (ed@halley.cc)
The next task was hookin’ up a button to control the light, writing the code to make the bulb hold the state. i.e. Press button, light goes on (and stays on), press button again, light goes off (and stays off).
Le simple. But of course stupid circuits are all stupid and are like “wait, am I on or off? Now? Is off now? When is now?” (<-circuits are existential bastards) “You’re still holding the button? Is that now? How about as the button goes up? Is that on or off? I’m just going to loop between on and off until you pull your finger out and tell me MORE CLEARLY WHAT THE EFF YOU WANT ME TO DO.”
I don’t know why I put up with this sort of trashtalk from electrons.
Of course, the lovely husband’s brain is wired properly for this. Also he’s all wasteful of variables, whereas I like to be frugal (too many variables kill polar bears. FACT.) and so my code usually doesn’t work on the first try. Screw you electrons.
After the second almost-but-not-quite try, I decided that I wanted to read the book and remember how to make my brain think like a stupid trashtalking electron before I fixed my code.
Of course, I didn’t say this to the boy. I just edited my code for a while, then uploaded it to the Arduino again, and let him press the button to test it.
Him: “There it goes. Oh, no… wait. Okay, well that’s good it’s on again. No, wait. Well, it works some of the ti… what the. DID YOU JUST SET IT TO BLINK?!”*
I have learned nothing from my first Arduino foray but how to be evil in new and exciting ways.
* I had him know that I set it to blink randomly, associated with the button press. Present, practice, produce baby.