Building for Pleasure, with Epiphanies!

The first time I ever touched Arduino and circuits was in a basement off of Roncy in Toronto. The wonderful and talented Pearl Chen was giving a lesson on basic circuits for a recharging solar light. Not knowing if I would like this or not, I figured I would try. The session opened my eyes to the possibilities. I decided after that day to continue on with some additional courses through Interaccess. Again the course was great, I learned about yet more components, as well as multimeters, and led lighting...which at the time was not as ubiquitous as it is now.

Arduino seemed really cool, bu the issue I had with it, was that the learning curve seemed a touch steep for me. Electrical theory and circuits weren't my background. I was more into photography and some flash development. What struck me though was that the logic involved really wasn't all that different from the rest of my coding. I was getting stuck on a few things though.

• soldering for a newby like me was a bit intimidating
• the language was farther from actionscript, and was C, which I hadn't yet wrapped my head around
• the board setup was a bit arcane, and the reasons why things would or wouldn't push didn't always make sense to me
• lost your original file? How are you going to retrieve it from your board? To this day, I'm still not entirely sure, but to be honest I probably haven't looked hard enough yet.

What finally made things click for me happened at FITC, with Jean-Phillippe C?té. I was fortunately enough to be the emcee and get the chance to talk to him after the presentation. His work impressed me as he was using JavaScript, which was far closer to ActionScript. For those who might not know, both are based off of the same common set of rules; ecmascript.

Jean-Phillippe did an amazing presentation on using Node and Johnny-five to make a carnival game...a physical carnival game connected to a webpage served off of Node. Seeing his presentation made it click. I could use a native programming language for me to pivot into C, and build better devices.

I took what I had learned and went in new directions. My students learned how to control led lighting with JavaScript. We built Morse Code machines, and made use of a wide range of sensors. My students took it even further and built collision detection robots, chug meters, pets with wagging tails and moods...you name it, we made it.

Teaching is often a two way street, and this was no exception. In conjunction with my good friend and coolest nerd soul mate, we used those experiences and built out escape room puzzles in c. Why go back to c? Why not stay in JavaScript and Johnny-five? Don't get me wrong, those technologies are brilliant, but, there is a huge caveat in Johnny-five(but I still love it). Those boards were no longer stand alone. They had to be connected to a laptop to work. So we worked with c.

Far later than I should have, I was introduced to Adafruit. Adafruit is a wonderful, human centric, learning centric, electronics firm in New York. I drooled over their Adabox program for ages before signing up. They took the learning further for me. No longer was I confined to just arduino boards. Feather boards opened up Python as an option, which was wonderful. Python boards can be seen as a drive. They have more of everything..memory, ports, form factors, built in sensors. The gates swung wide open at that point.

I'm not just a tech geek. I'm also a father. Like any father I want to share the joy of building with my little one. Arduino and a four year old, well, that doesn't work. Python and a four year old....still doesn't work. I wanted to give my child a peek into making. I had my first foray into that world today.

What child doesn't like rainbows? What child doesn't like a nightlight? I had previously promised my child a rainbow light for their room. Like most parents of small children, especially with a raging pandemic happening, time is short. So I made a trip to a few friends at Creatron. They hooked me up with a microbit, and a ring of multi-colour leds(neo-pixels, of Adafruit fame...thank you Adafruit).

It was today that I saw all the pieces really fit together. Micro:bit worked with Microsoft MakeCode. Sure that doesn't sounds special, but it is. I plugged in my micro:bit, and it was able to work with code built on the site. The code wasn't c though....it was drag and drop with the option to code in JavaScript, then flip back and forth. Okay, so then comes the big question....how do you save it...well, it also integrated with my github account. Everything fit. Best of all, even though the code was JavaScript, the end product didn't have to remain plugged into my computer. It can run independently.

The best part came before my child's bedtime. She was excited to see her rainbow light in action, and more excited to be able to have a say in how it worked. Because of the simplicity of the interface for coding and the plethora of code hints without wild searches, I could customize in a shorter timespan than the attention span of a young child. That is powerful. I'm impressed. I can code with my kindergartener next to me, without having to get "in the zone". My little one may decide tomorrow to do more, or not look at what we made again. The speed of development and integration of tooling made this accessible in ways I could not have envisioned even 4 years ago.

I am floored by how open and easy our options as makers are today. We will still have our challenges. Those challenges seem like smaller hills now than ever before. If you are considering building your own devices, I encourage to you embrace your creativity. There has never been a better time.