Week 5 - Transistors, relays, etc.
I had been wondering about the limitaions of Arduino's voltage out before. I knew there had to be a way to control a more power-hungry circuit using the Arduino but didn't know where to look. Transistors, I would say, are the most important piece of electronics in my opinion, they open up doors to lots of new possibilities.
How they function is not as intuitive as I'd like it to be. I still find it hard to grasp even though I know what goes where in terms of the pins. I think it's best to think of it as a black box for now that by getting a small voltage can trigger another circuit with fast speeds.
I faced some issues during the H-Bridge lab. I was frustrated because everything seemed to be right but I still saw no movement on my DC motor. I inspected all my connections, tried a battery thinking Arduino's 5Vout was not enough to drive the motor to finally realize that I had connected the stand by on my motor driver to ground instead of voltage 🤦🏻♂️. After connecting the stand-by pin to 3.3V from the Arduino it started functioning as expected.
— Nima Niazi