morseLED

Inspiration

I thought, "What does this thing do, and what can I do with it?"

What it does

Accepts alphabetical user input and blinks the Arduino's LED in the appropriate morse code.

How I built it

I didn't physically build or put anything on the board for this project, but everything was written in Arduino's built-in IDE.

Challenges I ran into

I've actually never written with C or C++ proper as I mainly have experience writing with Python, but the language used in the Arduino's IDE is really similar to Java which I have some experience with. The main issue I had was figuring out what syntax worked and what didn't, and how that integrated with the sketch's overall form; it was mostly weird learning how sketches for Arduino don't have main methods, but run a setup method and a loop method.

I also couldn't think of a great use-case for this, which is definitely not a top-down design the way any good project should be, but let's just say it's for communicating with someone who's locked away by an evil villain in a dark lair.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm glad I finally got some hands-on experience writing for a small piece of hardware, and I'm mostly proud that I wrote something entirely from scratch out of the tools I had available.

What I learned

I definitely learned a fair bit about naming conventions in languages slightly lower-level than what I'm used to and why they're written the way they are. It honestly helps me appreciate the power in languages like Python or Swift and what goes into constructing them as we know them.

What's next for morseLED

Hopefully a new Avengers movie someday

Built With

• arduino