Recap of Input & Output, Digital & Analog

What We’ve Covered So Far

Input is how robots get information about the world.

Robots get input from sensors, chips and interfaces.

Output is how robots effect the world around them.

The most common ways that robots do this is with motors, LEDs and communication units.

Communication is a special form of input and output.

Communication can happen either through wires or without wires using radio waves, light and other forms.

Digital inputs and output can only be on or off:

This means there is either all the electricity present or there is no electricity present.

Digital inputs and outputs are usually represented as booleans.

An analog input sensor can measure anywhere between all the way on and all the way off.

An analog output uses something called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to turn an output on and off really, really fast:

This makes the output appear to be somewhere in between all the way on and all the way off.

Next Step:

Ok! You’ve worked your way through a whole bunch of coding concepts. Congratulations! This is the end of the beginner code section. If you want to go further check out Beyond Basic Coding or start playing around with Sparki and writing your own code: