The Proto Cylon

By Bobby Neal Winters
I’ve been captured by another enthusiasm.  The Arduino controller card.  If you go to http://arduino.cc/en/, then you can learn as much as I know about it in short order.  There is probably a fancy name for it, and if you read the whole page on the link I just gave you, then you can probably find it.  Regardless of what you call it, it is basically a little computer that you can use to run stuff.  
It costs about $20.
I learned of its existence while looking around for Raspberry Pi. This turns out to be a slightly different kettle of fish, but I will doubtless return to Raspberry Pi eventually.  But I digress.
The Arduino collection of cards give you the ability to interact with the mechanical world. You can control a small amount of electrical current using the C programming language.  This appealed to the same part of my brain that was attracted to the Potato Cannon and the Itty Bitty Ubuntu Box.  
(Since it controls a small amount of current and the potato cannon needs a small amount of current to produce a spark, there is even the possibility of combining the two.  Using an Arduino card to make a potato machine gun. Hmmmm.)
In any case, one of the classical projects for a card such as this is to make a robotic car.  That is my long range goal.  But why stop with just a car?  Why not think really long range and work one’s way up to a Cylon. (I am thinking a Six or an Eight. The Threes aren’t stable.)   In the meantime, we do baby steps.  My first step is learning how to blink LEDs on breadboard. The code is below:

int inputPin=5;
int ledPin1=2;
int ledPin2=6;
int ledPin3=8;

void setup() {
 pinMode(ledPin1, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(ledPin2, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(ledPin3, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(inputPin, INPUT);
 digitalWrite(inputPin,HIGH);
}

void loop() {
 blinkOff(ledPin1, 0);
 blinkOff(ledPin2, 0);
 blinkOff(ledPin3, 0);
 blinkOn(ledPin1, 500);
 blinkOn(ledPin2, 500);
 blinkOn(ledPin3, 500);
 blinkOff(ledPin3, 500);
 blinkOff(ledPin1, 500);
 blinkOff(ledPin2, 500);   
}

void blinkOn( int ledNum, int duration)
{
 int switchOpen=digitalRead(inputPin);
 digitalWrite(ledNum, ! switchOpen);
 delay(duration);  
}
void blinkOff( int ledNum, int duration)
{
 int switchOpen=digitalRead(inputPin);
 digitalWrite(ledNum, switchOpen);
 delay(duration);  
}

This is what it looks like: