CourseWare

We are working in creating the course materials that can be used at different educational institutions. The contents will mainly be a different way of putting the Arduino Tutorials in order. As for 20070413, we will follow the next work pattern:

0) we announce on the site we launch a project to create a "generic workshop document"

1) we open a page in the playground's wiki dedicated to courseware

2) we suggest an order in which the examples could be placed

3) we link the right texts/examples and analyze what is missing/needs to be corrected

4) we propose this to the community as a "typical course" for the type of students you work with

5) we evaluate the response from people

6) we package it into a PDF and post it into the tutorial's site (official site) for people to download

The discussion about the construction of this part of the wiki is being held at this forum thread

List of Topics

Introduction

The idea behind creating a generic curriculum for teaching/learning about sensor technology, prototyping, and (more)

Powering your Arduino

Arduinos have flexible power requirements. Depending on the model it can be powered from USB, a 3.3v or 5V regulated supply, from a plug-pack or from batteries. Choosing the most appropriate Arduino model and powering option can simplify your project and reduce expense. (more)

Digital Input/Output

Digital signals are the way computers, microcontrollers, a.o. communicate with each other at a very low level. Digital signals coming into/from microcontrollers like the Arduino I/O board can only take two possible values: HIGH or LOW (more)

Analog Input

Real world is not digital, if we think e.g. about temperature, it changes within a range of values and it can not make abrupt changes in time. We measure environmental parameters like temperature or intensity of light using sensors and store the data in sequences (more)

Analog Output

• Fading LED
  • Schematic: http://www.csulb.edu/~bevans2/schematics/pwmled.jpg
• Servo control
  • Schematic: http://www.csulb.edu/~bevans2/schematics/servo.jpg
• Sensor to servo scaling
  • http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/Servo
  • http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/code/archives/arduino/000741.shtml

Serial communications

• http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/SoftwareSerial
• http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/Serial
• http://sage.medienkunst.ch/tiki-index.php?page=HowTo_Arduino-MaxMsp-Serial
• http://sage.medienkunst.ch/tiki-index.php?page=HowTo_Arduino-Processing-Serial-II

Sensors

• Sonar rangefinding (devtech SRF04 / matchbotix)
  • http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/UltrasoundSensor
  • http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/code/archives/arduino/000778.shtml
  • Schematic: http://www.csulb.edu/~bevans2/schematics/srf04.jpg
• IR rangefinding
  • http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/code/archives/arduino/000714.shtml?
  • Schematic: http://www.csulb.edu/~bevans2/schematics/gp2d12.jpg?
• QT113 capacitance touch
  • (Example?)
• Piezo film
  • (Example?)

Actuators

• types of motors: DC, stepper, servo
• using light bulbs, and other high-voltage devices: from ON-OFF to dimming
  • Motor & Relay examples in Digital Output
  • Schematic: http://www.csulb.edu/~bevans2/schematics/solenoid.jpg

Other (best to fit in somewhere throughout the above list)

• Functions
• Variables
• Conditionals
• Loops
• Delays
• a list of definitions

Not really sure how to set this up for comments and such. So I just started throwing everything in. Feel free to change the format. bwevans?

I think the best is to keep on editing here and reporting changes on the Forum, that may attract other people to collaborate in this project dojodave

I am creating separated pages for each subject, letting just an index on this main one. This will help us to keep things in order. dojodave

2011: Is anyone interested in pursuing this area? I am working on online Educational Material for Arduino, and plan to extend the form of that to include "Courseware" suitable for class use. I am teaching a workshop soon and will test some things. Please connect if you are interested in this subject. TerryKing