Recitation 3: Sensors (September 21, 2019) by Jackson McQueeney

Overview

For this recitation, my partner and I chose from a variety of sensors to create our own circuit. We also chose our own outputs. We decided to use a vibration sensor, which would trigger an LED to light up and a buzzer to sound once activated. 

Materials

1 Speaker
1 LED
1 Vibration Sensor
2 1 MΩ Resistors
1 10K Resistor

Circuit: Vibration Sensor

(This schematic of our circuit uses a vibration motor to represent a vibration sensor because Tinkercad does not have a vibration sensor)

Our circuit consisted of a speaker, an LED, a vibration sensor, 2 1 MΩ resistors, and a 10k resistor. The LED and vibration sensor functioned as intended after we put the circuit together, but the speaker did not function when triggered. After getting help from a professor, we found that this was a problem with the code. We had not properly coded the tones that the speaker was supposed to play, so the speaker just played a static sound instead. After this issue was resolved, the circuit worked and detected vibrations would trigger the LED to light up and the speaker to sound.

Question 1

Our assembly was not intended for a real-world application, since it was built simply to make lights and sounds when vibrations were detected.

Question 2

I think code is compared to recipes and tutorials because the computer uses code as a guide to function. Everything that a computer does is based on some instruction given directly by a code. 

Question 3

I think that computers in the modern world serve to enhance our daily lives in different ways. I consider them to be supplements to our daily lives, and because of this, they have a huge influence on what we do. Especially in the context of social media, which I think fosters more interpersonal connections than have ever been possible at any other point in our history.