Exploding Star Color Organ
For my starter project I built the Exploding Star Color Organ which flashes different colors to the beat of music. It works because there is a microphone, which gets its energy from the battery. There are also capacitors, resistors, ICs, transistors, LED lights and horizontal trimmer resistors. The capacitors are used to store the energy. The resistors are used to limit the amount of energy used so the color organ doesn’t receive too much energy. The ICs, which stands for Integrated Circuit, are the brain behind the whole Color Organ. Their job is to tell what to work and when on the Color Organ. The transistors are used to amplify the current of energy. The LEDs, which stand for Light Emitting Diodes, are lights that flash different colors to the beat of the music. Finally there are two horizontal trimmer resistors, one is blue and the other is metallic. The blue one is used to adjust the speed at which the lights move. The metallic trimmer resistor is used to adjust the sensitivity of the microphone.
By doing this starter project, I learned that when testing out my Color organ, I had to make sure every wire was cut properly because at first they weren’t, which caused my board to short circuit. I also had to make sure my soldering work was neat for the same reason. Finally, I have worked with many kits before, however, I really learned about each and every component that I was soldering into the board. Before, I would just blindly follow the instructions without an understanding of what I was using or why.