This module we started working with the Arduino UNO. For this we had to buy a CreaTe toolkit, including and Arduino UNO, breadboard, different kinds of components and lots of wires. For a lot of people this was very exciting, since we finally started with building circuits ourselves, and making LEDs blink. For P&PC we had to do several assignments concerning circuits and the Arduino, where we learned the basics of an Arduino and what we could do with it. The last assignment, however, was a lot of fun: we had to build our own music instrument using the Arduino. One possible way to do this was using Capactive sensing, using someones touch. We decided to not do this, since almost everyone did it, and use a button matrix instead. Below a fritzing of our setup can be seen:

 

The idea was to create a Launchpad, where the right 4×4 grid of buttons could be pushed to create a sound, and the left 1×4 buttons could be pushed to switch pages. All 4 buttons gave a different page, so there were 4x4x4 = 64 different sounds to choose from. Below the final project can be seen:

 

We soldered the matrix to a prototyping board and made a wooden box for it. Inside the board and Arduino fitted, with room for the cable of the Arduino. To make the project more CreaTe, we added an RGB led strip to the sides. We programmed the strip to automatically dim the lights, but once a button was pressed, increase the light intensity a little, so it would look like the lights responded to your touch. 

The project was a lot of fun to make, and we got a decent grade.