Reflection 4

Now I'm getting somewhere! This weekend has been very productive for me regarding this project (not so much for anything else considering I just found out an hour ago that I have a Tech Test tomorrow). I took the measurements of an everyday large wolf and proportionally made a drawing of such at half-scale, or at least somewhere around half-scale. I have already cut out and made a foam slit for the center for the torso of the wolf just to get an actual visual to relate the size for every other part. Instead of a simple wooden skeleton, I am using an light wood air frame design because it would provide more support for the weight of the PCduino, servo motors, foam and fur. In truth, I've been depending heavily on my father to help me write the coding on the PCduino because it is so advanced. I can spend more than a year on my busy schedule trying to teach myself the entire language, but I cannot afford it. Therefore, I've asked my father to take it slow with me and try to explain all that he wants me to do. So far, I have learned the "dumbed-down" basics of electronics. Conductors are anything that permit the flow of energy. Resistors serve the function of taking a large flow of energy and restricting it to a smaller flow, in doing so releasing some energy in the form of light or heat. Capacitors uses two plates separating to fields of electrons at a certain distance, using the attraction to store a large amount of energy that when released can be used to kick start something like a motor. An inductor is basically a wire wrapped around a coil. Around all flowing energy is a small magnetic field. In the coils or "chokes", the magnetic fields are placed atop one another to regulate the current, to slow it down. All these are passive devices. The only active device I learned about today is a transistor. It is an electrical switch that I believe follows a resistor. When the switch is open (stopping current flow), the potential energy or amount of voltage being imputed is the same as it is before and after the resistor. However when the switch is closed by adding a very slight amount of voltage that eventually will join the flow forward, the current flows directly to ground again. When the current is once again in motion, the resistor does its job and transfers some of the voltage to heat of light. This basic explanation of a transistor explains a simple mini light switch.
Anyway, my father and I have been having trouble with the motor board because it is going unrecognized by the PCduino. Even when we first placed an I/O expander shield in between, the Duino acknowledges the motor board's existence, but we cannot communicate with it. The theory I have is that in sautering the pins to the motor board, my dad may have possibly damaged something with the heat. Hopefully, we will get over this issue soon.