Blum Video Tutorials, Wiki, Trying To Learn

Tonight's work on microcontrollers involved too many things for me to get very far on actually making the Arduino perform tricks.

Because of not having enough hours in a day and trying to juggle too many balls at once, I wasn't able to watch all of the first three Jeremy Blum 'Intro To Arduino' video tutorials and do all the exercises in them before the May 15 meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group. I finally got back to working on the videos and exercises for a short time tonight. However, not too much progress was made in the short time I had available. Once again, too many irons in the fire...

Tonight I was working on the first exercise in the #2 video, which involves hooking up the Arduino and
a switch to a breadboard, writing and uploading a program to the Arduino, then using the switch to make the light blink. If all I was doing was connecting hardware, writing simple programs, then running the programs, I probably could have done all of the #2 video tonight.

However, in addition to 'connect hardware / write program / run program', I was trying to understand more about the hardware (e.g. reading some background info about LEDs). I was also trying to understand the code I was writing (e.g. making sure I knew where to use parentheses and where to use braces), creating new pages for the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group wiki, adding and revising content for the wiki pages, trying to figure out what to write for today's blog post, and trying to figure out how to use the multi-meter to replicate what Jeremy was doing on the video with his multi-meter. He didn't explain how to use the meter (you need to know how or figure it out on your own), so I had to read up on using a multi-meter.

To make significant progress on videos #2 and #3, I need to set aside a three or four hour block, probably on Friday night or Saturday. Hoping to get both videos done this weekend.

Stay tuned for more progress reports on my journey through the Blum video tutorials.

In a future post, I'll also discuss the details of the video tutorials and the electronic hardware needed for learning the basics of using microcontrollers with the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

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