This one FINALLY made me feel like I was being taught to code. Don't get me wrong, I've made massive programing progress by carefully examining the code I've been copying, and by looking things up I didn't understand, and by asking my programing guru to explain things to me. Also each of the projects do have challenges that ask you to altar the code in specific ways to accomplish additional tasks. But this is the first box that explicitly expected me to do more than just copy the original code.
So this project simulates rolling a die and displays the dice pips as lit LEDs. I used a detailed hardware diagram to wire the LED's in the correct pattern. The wiring was a bit challenging. And then I began writing the code. There were strategic blanks left in the code that had to be filled. The initial code wasn't too difficult to complete. The challenges did push me a bit this time, but I finally have begun to feel like I can do what I set out to do - learn to code arduino to build escape room props. Not only did I add an additional "die" with a second set of LEDs, I was able to get the serial monitor to display the total roll by adding the two dice together. Then I programed it to display "Doubles!" when you rolled the same number on both dice, and even got it to declare "Snake Eyes!" when you rolled double ones.
This one felt fun. Will I ever simulate a dice roll in a prop? Probably not. But I might want to light up LEDs in a particular pattern at some point. This one felt challenging without feeling frustrating. When I felt a bit stuck I took a walk around the block and worked through it. It only took one evening.