Introduction to Electronics

Hello!

This is a small practical course in Electronics, following these theoretical lessons: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhNzYIgWJ-jYKyFQY17kkuvdsiJDYk2cP

What you need

In order to be able to run the experiments you need:

1. Any computer (Windows, Linux or Mac), better if it is a laptop (because it can run on batteries):
2. An Arduino UNO board (or others compatible boards) + a breadboard + some basic electronic components. I have this kit:
3. The Arduino IDE software platform: https://www.arduino.cc/en/software
4. The Processing software platform (use last STABLE version): https://processing.org/
5. The Kicad EDA software suite: https://www.kicad.org/

For the Bioamplifier experiment you also need:

1. some (at least 3) skin patch electrodes (e.g. https://www.biopac.com/product/general-purpose-electrodes/)
2. Three alligator clamps, for the connection to the electrodes:
3. one glorious :) TL084 operational amplifier:

I have also modified the trimmers I use in these experiments, by soldering them on a small PCB like this one:

...it's not strictly necessary but it helps a lot, otherwise it might be difficult to insert it on the breadboard!

What to do now

The easiest thing to do now, is go here:

and download the ZIP file on your PC.

In order to run the Bioamplifier experiment, you need to install the ControlP5 library of Processing. So, you launch Processing and then you do the following things:

1. Realize that the library is missing:
2. Go to add library:
3. Install the library:
4. Verify the library has been installed:
5. In the Serialplotter.pde code, set the correct serial port for Arduino:

After all this, you should be able to run the Serialplotter app you need to visualize the analog signals from Arduino: