Looking Back

One of the benefits of not posting as much as I should or want to, means that reviewing those posts is pretty easy. Most of what I write I find to be fairly cringy- maybe anyone who stumbled here does too. No one comments after all, but that's alright. This blog is mostly for me and I enjoyed taking a stroll through memory lane, seeing early posts about my son (who is growing like a weed!), my attempt at game reviews (not a professional one of those) and now heading into renewed interests in arduino.

I can't decide if I want people to come here, especially those I'm friends with or work with. I've never been truly confident in my writing abilities. I've never really felt comfortable with anything I produce to share it, personality flaw.

Moving forward, it's nice to document things. I have a bullet journal (slight obsession) and the gaming is still strong (how the hell did I forget that I should review Zelda: Breath of the Wild??), the day job keeps me more than busy but I need more. I need my son to see that his mother is more than just a mother. I know for a long time, it won't matter. He won't care. But when he grows, I would like him to look back and know that I did anything and everything for him but that I was still me.

I find myself struggling with a family challenge the last few days, it's sent me on more of an emotional rollercoaster than I was prepared to deal with. In these times of challenge, I've enjoyed telling my parents (my dad in particular) how I hear their voices in some of what I say to my son. Not all of their parenting rubs off (for sure, I think improvement is always good) but little things, especially since he seems to be a little carbon copy of me. I see him struggle in areas that I struggled (shyness, interaction with peers), I see him excel in areas I excel (curiosity, imagination), I see him excel in whole new areas (kicking a ball, riding his tricycle). It's comforting to me that I can try to help him, my parents tried but I can define new ways based on my childhood that may help.

Learning to Code: RGB LED

Next in my Learning to Code series, taking on the RGB LED. First off is a healthy lesson from Adafruit Blog but not for the whole thing! I want to use the Adafruit blog to get my wires set up properly.

The biggest challenge was understanding which pins on the RGB LED belonged to which color. After some helpful diagrams were presented, I learned that I had set my Red to PWM 11, Green to PWM 10, and Blue to PWM 9.

My goal in this challenge is to code as much from scratch as possible, see the outcome and then use the established code for help. But one of my pitfalls so far has been coding from scratch. I feel fairly competent reading code (or at least have a general understanding) but mastery of any language requires doing.

With my breadboard set up for one RGB LED (270 ohm resistors leading out of each pin and the ground attached to the longest wire), time to start coding.

So, then this happened. And failed. I seemed to have been doing ok, I defined all my PWMs, set-up each pin for outputs and tried programing in basic colors. Off to visit the blog at this point to determine what I did incorrectly.

[code]
// RGB LED code- @thatgamingmom with credit to Adafruit https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-arduino-lesson-3-rgb-leds/overview

int Rpin = 11; //Define PWM for red pin
int Gpin = 10; //Define PWM for green pin
int Bpin = 9; //Define PWM for blue pin


void setup() {
  pinMode (Rpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for red pin
  pinMode (Gpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for green pin
  pinMode (Bpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for blue pin
}

void loop() {
  setColor(255, 0, 0); //red
  delay(1000);
  setColor (0, 255, 0); //green
  delay(1000);
  setColor(0, 0, 255); //blue
  delay(1000);
}

void setColor(I didn't define anything here!!) {
  analogWrite(Rpin, red);
  analogWrite(Gpin, green);
  analogWrite(Bpin, blue);
}
[/code]

Made the fix to void setColor and it's still checking my code and telling me that I'm the worst! Ok. Save my file, import sketch written by adafruit to see if it yells at me.

Ok, so my code sucks, got it. But the light isn't working so I guess it wouldn't have mattered... back to the wiring... which I did wrong, then maybe did right but it still didn't work.

My very patient friend reminded me how breadboards work (thank-you!!) but the end result is my LED still doesn't work.

Then I sent some pictures over to VPF (very patient friend) and while he figured out what the fuck is going on with my life- I drank some.

This will need to be a part II, from what we can figure out, this should work and I stole the code, so I don't think it's my shitty code.

Learning to Code

Now for a different kind of post, one on truly learning new skills. I attended Arduino Day 2017 in a nearby makerspace. The day was particularly invigorating mentally for me, as it was not only my first time participating in any sort of coding oriented day in a live community setting but was also the first time I stepped into a makerspace.

The space was gorgeous and they had more 3D printers than I knew existed! There's one that 3D prints paper structures... paper! Anyways, part of the cost of the class for Arduino Day 2017 covered an Arduino Uno, some resistors, jumper cables, servo and a wealth of knowledge that I'm still trying to understand and learn.

For a while now I've screwed around with codeacademy, done the "Hello, World!" sort of early coding at least 6 times, but I never know what comes next. What do I do next?

If you ask friends of mine, you'll find that I'm prone to aiming to overachieve which leads to some failure. Sometimes I get frustrated but overcome (see my retropie set-up) and other times I fizzle out. This behavior is a bit of a personality flaw, seeing as how it was present in my yearly review at work as well.

Regardless, Arduino Day 2017 was great as it kickstarted that thirst for new skills and knowledge. Although electronics is such a different mindset for me, I really have to focus- my dad seems to think that had I just "kept up with it all" it wouldn't be such a challenge now, maybe he's right...

Despite the fact that I tend to overreach, I'm very excited about furthering my abilities. I'd love to document this process as well, so there may be more of those ramblings here.