Learning Arduino – Project 3 – Traffic lights

Project 3 of the Arduino Starter Kit was pretty easy to complete. It’s a variation of the previous two projects except we are handling multiple LEDs at once and they are wired in parallel. Nothing much to note except for a couple of thing i noticed about the equipment itself (not necessarily relating to the projects) :

• The solder-less board that came with my kit is not the same as the one drawn on the diagrams. Mine only has one row on each of the opposite ends, instead of the two shown on the board on the diagrams. It’s not a big deal now, but perhaps this is gonna make things a bit harder at some point as i will have to re-interpret and adapt the wiring slightly to get the same effect as the diagram on the manual.
• To no surprise the latest project i had worked on was still loaded on the Arduino until i replaced it with the new one. This is the intended behavior, but the old program started to run in the moment before i uploaded the new one (with the new wiring on the board). It was not a problem now, but maybe in the future i can damage the parts if the board is trying to run a old program and the wiring is set differently for the new project. That’s why i decided to create a “reset” program to empty the board of any programs in between projects.

This is what the traffic lights look like when completed. Now my skill level is equivalent to lights on a christmas tree!

The next project introduces a switch to make things interactive. I hope to get some time to work on it soon.