Interactive Devices: Lab 2 Individual Post - Introduction to electrical tools & Arduino

In this lab we were introduced to several tools we might use to develop or test our projects. Our group was supplied with a new laptop, an Arduino starting kit and some hardware testing machines.
We started by setting up the Arduino board and install its SDK on the notebook. Subsequently we started implementing some example Arduino projects in order to understand how to program and connect all the wires and various components together.

Our first example program instructed us how to build a circuit on the supplied breadboard in order to light 3 LEDs. The behaviour of the program we implemented was to light each LED once in order and then start again, infinitely.
By adding a Push Down Switch control flow could also be modified; when the switch was pushed the lights would stop and when it wasn't pushed control flow was as usual.

In the second example the manual introduced us to a temperature sensor which could give us some information on the voltage and temperature of the circuit as the temperature changed.

During this lab I also took some time to familiarise myself with hardware such as the Leap Motion and the Oculus Rift so that I could understand better their behaviour and see if we could incorporate their functionality in our project.