Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
make a pressure pad for your foot, or have pieces of foil taped to your knees and complete
the circuit by bringing them together.
Connect up multiple switches and LEDs and modify the code to make a game. You could have
a different score for each button, or deduct points if you press the wrong button at the wrong
time. You could build your own game like whack-a-mole.
When you become more experienced at coding, if you are really adventurous, you could create
a network version and play against a friend over the Internet.
What Will You Interface?
Computing becomes more interesting when it is connected to the world. Interfacing allows
computers to sense and manipulate the world through inputs and outputs. Most computers
sense the world by detecting a voltage on an input pin, and afect the world by allowing a cur-
rent to low through an actuator such as an LED or motor. Relays can be considered as an
equivalent to switches, whereas open-collector outputs have to be wired up in a particular way.
With a basic understanding of electricity and the right sensors and actuators you can make the
world a smarter place. As computers become more sophisticated we can build even smarter
solutions. In the future, you might build a robot that would listen for your commands. Although
that may seem complicated to program, as you have seen, computing is about breaking a chal-
lenge down into lots of simple parts, and then each little part becomes solvable.
