"What are you going to do with your college education?"
On 2014-03-24 I mentioned a professor who influenced my future as a programmer professionally and as a hobbyist programmer. There is another professor who similarly influenced my life but I have a different love for this man. He was not a particularly good teacher but I do have to give him credit for asking a question I will never forget. "What are you going to do with your college education?"
When my class was asked this question we gave the obvious response of "Get a good job." We weren't wrong but we weren't committed either. Most of us figured we would land a good job and make money and save for retirement and find a spouse. I won't bore you with the details but when it came down to it, what I wanted was to invent. I chose my path in electronics because I wanted to make things. Since I was a kid that was what I wanted even though I didn't realize it consciously.
A couple weeks into that class (from which I got a poor grade) I started carrying a notebook dedicated to writing down my inventions and ideas. My notebook held everything from mental puzzles I made for myself, story ideas, essay topics, and project ideas, some of which became reality. Sadly, the perpetual motion machine never panned out.
The first notebook filled up so I started a new one. I kept filling them and buying new ones so I always had something to write on. The picture below is of my notebooks just before I moved in June of 2013. The bottom row was the project journals which are the precursor to this blog. The other 24 notebooks are mostly filled with ideas and inventions. 24.
Notebooks
This doesn't include the notebooks I've written since then or the trove of notes in my Evernote account.
While I still resent that professor for being a cranky old man I wouldn't give up that blotch on my transcript for anything.
Enough background
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The servos were
all brought together to test with the program.
They seem to behave in the expected manner but run quickly. The debugging switch will need to be inverted
in the program since the machine runs unregulated. Debugging will benefit greatly by having the
serial communication active. Print
programs at each step of the process would also be helpful.
Current arrangement
The servos had
sufficient power from the 5VDC supply.
To do:
Replace wooden
stand with longer version + mount to pie tin
Physically
install Arduino + shield
Test + Debug
Revise
documentation
Journal page
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