LogoChip Challenge #1

Partner: Esther Nam

For the first challenge, Esther and I completed the Getting Started with LogoChips tutorial to familiarize ourselves with this new program.

We learned how to read a schematic drawing. We learned the different symbols, such as the ground, switch, and resistor symbols. It takes a little time to get used to, but it is an effective and clear way to depict what is going on. For example, we had to read a schematic drawing in order to connect a tri-color LED with the Logo Chip. Here is the drawing below:

And by following the diagram, we came up with this:

And with using the Pico Chip program we were able to create different colors by varying the power through the three different power outputs. This was one of the things we had to do to complete the tutorial. Another thing that we did was to control a motor. To turn on the motor we had to remember that current flows from high to low. Therefore, we had to set the two outputs that the motor was connected at different settings in order for the motor to turn on. For the motor to turn off, we had to set the two outputs to low. We then created a program so that the motor would turn one way and then another way. In doing so, we set one output to high and the other to low for the motor to go one way and then switched the settings so that the motor would turn the opposite way. This is what the program looked like.
This is what it looked on the logo chip:

We had a lot of difficulties getting through the manual because Esther and I were completely new to this. We were unfamiliar with how to connect various wires, sensors, etc. into LogoChips and it took some time to figure out what was going on. The schematic drawings really helped our understanding because it clearly showed us how the current was flowing. We also came up with problem when trying to create some of these programs because we had not connected the two sides of the high and low power sources on the breadboard. We had simply forgotten to place those two wires and because of that we weren't able to run some of our programs. This one of our many attempts at debugging and it really showed us that we had to be careful when wiring and to double check all of them.

Working with the motor was one of the last steps on the tutorial, and once we were finished with the whole tutorial we had worked with various types of sensors and with different programming skills on Pico Chips: we were ready for the next challenges.