A wordplay of constellation and electricity - connecting all the components!
I had several problems before the next lab because of RS Components, who I bought for conductive ink but got additional hidden fees on my bank account, fell for their dark pattern of 'free shipping', and unclear discount promo code. Hence, explains the curving lines of emotions in March 6-7 but it has been going on since March 4.
Thankfully, they sent me an email message in March 13 saying they will adjust and give back $23.23. Since they know I'm just an international student on-budget and paying stuff other such as tuition fees is difficult for me.
As of March 8, I have been refining and designing my blog/website time to time, researching on the languages and APIs used to make it easier for people to navigate and read my blogs [1]. It’s still a long way to go in implementing it but I'm glad there is progress, such as adding hover and link colour to make it easier for people to differentiate and better margins on the blogs. I also discovered the problem I had in my blog but never knew what it was called until now, dangerouslySetInnerHTML with Next.js. Since this blog website of mines does not have a proper design, the hyperlink mention previously explains how to design the complicated structure collected from Ghost CMS.
March 9 was a tedious day. Since I was traumatized on my experience with RS Components, I decided to go physical shopping. It took 45 mins to get into Jaycar Maitland even though it’s just a 10 minutes’ drive there, since I don't have a car and took their long bus that dropped me off in a stop that still required me to walk 10 minutes in a hot, sunny day to get into my destination.
Super glad to see and meet Estelle shopping there after 20 minutes of my stay, and it was a pleasant customer experience with Peter and Kenn who went out of their way to find all the resources they have to fulfill the shopping list we had!
On that same day, I have been researching more on light sensors, circuits and how other people worked it out in YouTube [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. Created a blueprint using Figma to modify it from the simple circuit given in BlackBoard for my RS Component recycled box structure (why, oh why I would use their box). Next, I added conductive ink, LEDs and few components on my boxes with the help of the blueprint I made. Credits to my dad, who is an electrical engineer, for helping me out despite the difficulties in out online conversation – love you, Tatay <3 It took a total of ~6 hours to prepare the entire thing.
March 10, the LEDs worked during lab which was awesome! Had fun with Estelle and Aaron on doing our stuff. Then when I went home, I added the battery strap on the ‘houses’ using a hobby knife to cut the wires off, masking tape and colouring it over with black marker.
Next day, the circuit of the modified version finally worked - I was ecstatic!! I just had to add more conductive ink near to the phototransistors to finally make it do what it was supposed to do – sense light.
Then by Friday, I researched on what I could do more on my website/blog and discovered that the commenting system I was using, Disqus, has too many ads for one page and privacy issues. So, I decided to remove it instead and replace it with a simple copyrights footer because manually adding another commenting system like Lyket or CommentBox.io is still out of my skillsets. I hope to add it once I get my head around the logic and languages in using Next.js and TypeScript. I also made a template for my doghouse/glowing dog design.
Finally, today of March 14, I was able to decorate the two projects I made, one is a doghouse or glowing dog and another is like a lamp with bookmark holders. The doghouse’s LEDs is working but I think the trimpot, or transistor, or phototransistors are not, nevertheless it still lights up with the battery on! These experiments gave me more confidence in myself in believing that it is possible to create things that you thought was difficult!
