In the previous update, it was my first time ever using a circuit board or even making anything with hardware, period. Since then (about a week ago), I’ve made some significant progress. Now, I’m not ready to construct my radio telescope (that’s still really far away), but I have slowly gained some basic knowledge about how circuits work. Every single mini-project I make is only possible with tutorials, but watching them helps me learn about the fundamentals. After I’m comfortable with wiring, inputs, outputs, etc., only then will I try to make my first original project.
My main focus this week was learning how to use motors because I’ll need to be able to have the radio dish on the telescope move through code. So recently, I’ve built a simple motor that turns on and off with the push of a button. By no means is it complicated, but it helped me understand how inputs and outputs work. I tried to use a battery to power it, but the motor wouldn’t run unless the circuit board was plugged into the computer. But funny enough, if I unplugged the battery, the circuit board wouldn’t run either, so that’s something I’ll need to figure out.
After my first test was successful, I wanted to make it more complicated to see if I was up for the challenge. It was a lot harder and took a lot more time, but it ended up being even cooler. The functionality was more or less the same, but there were two new features: you are now able to change the speed of rotation with a knob and change the direction of motion with a second button next to the on/off switch.
Now, this was the first build where I actually failed on my first attempt. It wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t able to figure out why the knob wasn’t working. On top of that, the motor’s spin didn’t sound too good—it was buzzing really loudly. It turned out that I just had some of the wires in the wrong sockets, which, if I hadn’t noticed right away, could have destroyed many of my parts. But in the end, I fixed it, and it began to work properly.
I plan to post an update like this every week or two so I can show you guys and track my progress. I’m going to keep tinkering with some of the electronics that came in my starter pack so I can learn how to use different inputs and outputs. This is crucial for my radio telescope because I’ll have to take the input I get from a satellite signal meter (which measures the amount of radio waves the satellite dish receives) and use that data to plot how many radio waves are on each spot in the sky, creating a radio image. But we’ll get there soon enough.