A potentiometer is a knob that you can turn to control something, e.g., the volume controller on your stereo is a potentiometer. When the two outer pins of potentiometer are connected to GND and 5V respectively, you can use the knob to control how much voltage is applied to the middle pin – the range being 0V to 5V.

Materials

• 1 Arduino Uno board
• 1 Education Shield
• 1 potentiometer
• 3 jumper wires

Instructions

1. Attach the shield onto the top of the Arduino board.
2. Connect the potentiometer to the breadboard.
3. Connect the single potentiometer pin to analog pin A5, and the other two to 5V and GND using jumper wires.
4. Upload example ‘knob’.

Code

Find the code in Example>EducationShield>Help>Knob

You should now open the serial monitor and twist the potentiometer. The reading to the left should show values between 0 and 1023, the reading to the right should show values between 0 and 10.

Commands

• Knob(analogPin) – creates the knob object.
  • Parameters

    • (int) analogPin – the analog pin to which the knob is connected.

• setLevels(levels) – maps the sensor value to certain amount of levels.
  • Parameters

    • (int) levels – number of levels the sensor is mapped into.

• getLevel() – returns the level of the sensor.
  • Return
    • (int) – current level of the sensor. From 0 to the value set in setLevels().

Troubleshooting

• Make sure everything is connected correctly.
• Make sure you have connected the potentiometer to the same pin as you have stated in your code.