Sean Miller 2nd year
Sean has some knowledge in electronic but not at all in coding and sean like to tinker with things
"I found the online instruction were confusing as they are very hard to adept to the things that are online"
"I thought that playing with physical computing will be difficult"
"the hardest part? - Coding - because its quite new to me"
"The electronics always tend to get loose and sometime the breadboard didn't fit"
"The experience were frustrating but I would consider it as an accomplishment"
"I still think that I would be a struggle if I were going to get back at it"
"When I heard the word open - I thought it would just be like joining things together and it would just works like a game-add on (Coding)"
"Actually, the wiring and the coding can be very hard if you don't pay attention to it"
"Once you get it to it then it is quite easy"
"Some of the interfaces of the component are very hard to tell where or what it represents"
"it would be nice if the breadboard just slotted in better"
"it is rather hard to tie the breadboard to the table and keep it stable"
"I always have a constant fear that things would fallen apart at anytime"
"Always use color coding when you are wiring things - it's so helpful"
"If I see any wires wiggle or move - I'm not comfortable with it at all"
"I would suggest that whoever wants to do this - you have to be really really organize because you might have to start it all over again at anytime"
"Always use color coding"
"There are two ways to fix your electronic interface - either redo it or making sure you keep track of every step and then trace it one step back at the time"
Viet Ngo The 3yr PD student
Viet has no knowledge of electronic and coding. This is his first time doing so
"I need the feeling of reassurance of what will break and what doesn't"
"When you work with simple physical object (non-electronic) , you knows when things break because you can see and you can feel it. With digital things it so hard to understand and it is more difficult to get your head around it"
"I didn't know how much MIND FUCK this would be"
"We do not know what can be trust"
"Teaching and covering all the basic before you do something is very important. I really need to be in the right mindset before doing things like this"
"The instruction in the book was rather confusing because one is very engineering-like and another were more actual. We weren't sure which part goes before one another, actually the color coding one were even more complex"
"It was just messy because it wasn't simple circuit - it was kind of this button goes to this rail (instead of this pin) and this rails connected to that rails and then go on forever .... "
"There were small differences but for us it was a big thing because we weren't sure how its works"
"I really need to feeling of reassurance that all these wires are connected and it is lock. I think this is very important"
"This S1S2SCNA does not means anything to me"
Pietro 3yr PD student
Pietro has no knowledge of electronic. He has some basic in HTML coding. This is his first time doing Physical computing
"When somethings start working, doesn't matter how simple it is, its like you are having your first child"
"It's not perfect sciences - its more like TRY TRY TRY - its a process of discovery"
"Coding was the hardest part, the electronic was quite simple"
"if something went wrong I will just start over - it is easier this way"
Roy had taught the 3rd year GSA on how to do basic physical computing with Arduino. He have been doing this for quite sometime and he knows most of the basic things about arduino
"Most people tends to start over because there is no way to tell what is and what is not working. They don't know where to look"
"The nice things about arduino is that you don't have to know all the thing before hands"
"electrical drawing is like a language, its not like that have to use it. They can come up with their own form"
"I can understand why using the circuit diagram can be confusing because it completely abstract"
"My drawing's style tends to change when I tried to explain to people. This usually based on how much they know"
"The biggest problem is getting the confidence in coding"
"Coding is very quick to identify what is working and what's not"
"At the end of the day, the biggest challenge for these people is - DECIDING TO FIX THE PROBLEM"
"The coding and the circuit work actually have an equal footing when its comes to problem and fixing it."
"People needs to be told to do physical debugging - checking everything on the circuit"
"Some people follow instruction and that's it. if there any problem then the only thing they believe they can do is to take it apart and do it again"
"It sort of ridiculous to have all the tools to be able to do electronic properly"
"I quite like how you can dodge your way without all that tools, the only thing I thing you really need is the multimeter. You can try to use other tools. For example you can even bite of the wires to get the cover out. that's works too.
"There is no particular values for these guys to be dealing with industrial component - well most of the stuff that they are dealing with are actually hobbyist components anyways"
"You need the component in some form and sometimes its bigger to have bigger, clearer things"
"Its more about getting things working"