Arduino and Nicodemus

 Arduino and Nicodemus

By Bobby Neal Winters

When we are making big changes in our lives we ask ourselves, am I doing the right thing? After we’ve made the big changes in our lives and it’s too late to go back, we ask ourselves, have I done the right thing?

Sometimes we get an answer, oh yes, and not a moment too soon.

First off, I am not retiring; I am leaving administration.  It will feel like I am retiring.  During my dad’s later years, when he was working as a truck driver, whenever someone asked him about retiring, he would say, “I retired when I stopped pushing that rod and tubing.”

This was his way of saying that his transition from oilfield construction to hauling bulk cement was a happy one.

As of the day I am writing this, I have 126 more days in my administrative position.  I will then transition to teaching full time. As our new Computer Science major is growing by leaps and bounds, I am preparing myself to teach courses within it.  I mentioned in a previous column that I am learning assembly language programming as a part of that.

I am using an Arduino Uno microcontroller to do this. 

Here I want to shout out to all of my friends in the Republic of Frontenac.  Yes, you read that correctly: Arduino.  It is Italian.  Get on the internet and google Arduino, and you will find a whole new world.  The Italians have done an excellent job designing a support network for learning how to use this particular family of microcontrollers. Leonardo da Vinci would be proud of them.

I’ve been tinkering around with Arduinos for a while, but always at home, never at the office.  Home is home; work is work, except when I take work home. 

I have a table in my office that I’ve used to keep magazines off.  This week I went in, and put all of the “Physics Today” magazines on it into the recycle bin; I moved the hot pot that I use to heat water for tea to a spot on the floor beside my bookshelf; I then started putting my tools--wire snippers, wire strippers, LEDs, breadboards, copper wire--onto the table.

I began working on a little machine. I am starting small because at the end I want something that I will be able to teach to beginners. I want something that will be able to display numbers sent to it by the Arduino.  I am using something called a 7-segment LED.  You’ve seen one even if you don’t know what it is.  Remember the old-style calculators where everything came out in red squares.  We used to amuse ourselves by making them spell “b00biES.”  Each of those digits was on a 7-segment LED.

One of those requires 8 wires to control, and I will be wanting to display more than one digit, so I am figuring out a way to toggle through one digit at a time.  I’ve figured out a way to display the digits; I’ve figured out a way to toggle through some choices; I will now be moving on to a way to do it all at the same time.

When I am done, I not only will need to know how to do it myself, I will need to know how to explain it to 19 and 20-year-olds.

I have purchased quite a few books at this point.  Let me just say that I can tell that some of these folks have never been in front of a classroom.  Let me continue to say that some of those who have, well, I know what their student rating forms look like.

Nevertheless, I am having a ball.

Any moment that is not occupied by listening to students complain about faculty, listening to staff complain about faculty, listening to faculty complain about each other (and it’s not even noon yet, folks!) I steal the opportunity to work on my wiring, to work on my code, to learn about the software tools so that I can teach them to my students.

Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can a man be born again when he is old?”

I feel like I’ve been born again.  I feel like I am living the computer science version of John 3:16.  The pianist was playing “Just as I am,” the preacher was urging sinners to walk the aisle, to “listen to that little voice in your heart.”

And I stepped out and walked toward the front.

I am looking forward to the rest of my career, to the rest of my life.  Everything I’ve done is a part of me and has made me who I am, and I regret nothing.

But it’s time to turn the page.  

Only 126 more days.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.