I Spent 24 Hours Learning Arduino

[00:00] Recently, I've become obsessed with

[00:01] tech. Just this year, I created multiple

[00:04] websites, APIs, and even a mobile app

[00:06] all whilst being a high school student.

[00:07] But, what I haven't done yet is create

[00:09] real-life tangible electronics. Well,

[00:11] that changes today. I ordered a small

[00:14] amount of parts from Amazon, and by a

[00:16] small amount, I mean a module kit, some

[00:19] breadboards, which are basically just

[00:20] naked circuit boards, microcontrollers,

[00:22] sensors. Oh, yeah, it has two layers.

[00:25] Wires, even more wires, and an entire

[00:28] cupboard full of parts like LEDs,

[00:30] buttons, resistors, and more. And of

[00:32] course, you can't forget my MacBook Air.

[00:34] I'll be using this machine to do all the

[00:36] programming. Well, enough talk. Today, I

[00:38] have to build out two different working

[00:40] Arduino projects to prove that I

[00:41] understand electronics. For this first

[00:43] project, I want to build out a sequence

[00:44] memory game exactly like the one on

[00:46] Human Benchmark. Basically, an algorithm

[00:48] will create a random sequence that gets

[00:50] longer as you recall more of the pattern

[00:51] correctly.

[00:55] But, the bad news was I could barely get

[00:57] a singular LED to light up.

[01:01] The good thing is that now I know

[01:02] exactly how circuits work. So, I got to

[01:04] work trying to wire buttons, but I

[01:06] immediately regretted that a few seconds

[01:08] later.

[01:10] As you can see now that it's been

[01:11] another hour, I finally got all the

[01:13] wiring right and began coding the

[01:14] sequence memory logic. Arduino uses C++,

[01:17] which is a coding language I'm familiar

[01:18] with, so this part should be easy,

[01:20] right?

[01:22] Okay, I guess this was much harder than

[01:24] I thought. A few more blog articles

[01:26] later and many attempts of debugging, I

[01:28] finally got the sequence memory game to

[01:29] work, and I even added a buzzer for some

[01:31] sound effects.

[01:46] Okay, it's the second day, and now that

[01:47] project one is out of the way, that took

[01:49] way too long. I'm going to proceed with

[01:51] the second project, which is going to be

[01:52] a joystick LED controller. This time,

[01:55] I'm going to ditch the large

[01:56] microcontroller and use this teeny tiny

[01:57] one called the Arduino Nano, which

[01:59] shouldn't be an issue considering that I

[02:01] now know exactly how circuits work.

[02:03] Nevermind, I literally did the first

[02:05] step wrong. The joystick was a bit more

[02:07] complicated with five different wires,

[02:08] so I hopped on YouTube to find a

[02:10] tutorial. Luckily, this time I did a bit

[02:11] more thinking before actually doing, so

[02:13] I was able to bang out this project in

[02:15] less than 1 hour.

[02:24] I'll be honest, it's a bit less cool

[02:25] than my first project, but definitely

[02:27] teaches some important stuff about

[02:28] wiring and coding. Now, it's finally

[02:30] time. I want to address the question, is

[02:32] it worth learning electronics such as

[02:33] Arduino? Well, for me, probably not.

[02:35] This is because as someone who has

[02:37] experience in software, a lot of people,

[02:39] including me, think that software and

[02:40] hardware are basically interchangeable.

[02:42] Just because I can code and deploy a

[02:44] full stack website doesn't mean that I

[02:45] can light up an LED as you saw in this

[02:47] video. I see that hardware and software

[02:49] are two pretty different sub niches of

[02:51] tech, so it's probably better choosing

[02:53] one or the other. But, for fun, yeah,

[02:55] why not? Arduino is amazing.