Year 9: Binary Output

Objectives

• Investigate how digital systems represent text, image and audio data in binary. (ACTDIK024)
• Convert numbers from decimal to binary
• Understand and use the ASCII character set
• Understand one of the many stages in Australia’s biggest infrastructure project, the NBN.
• Basic familiarity of the TI-Innovator
• Improve coding confidence and experience

Vocabulary

About the Lesson

In this activity students write a short text message. The ASCII table is used to convert the text message into decimal numbers and then binary. The string of binary numbers it turned into a list that will be used by the program to turn the LED light on the TI-Innovator on and off according to the string of 1’s and 0’s. The initial result causes the LED to flicker as even the 10Hz bit rate is too fast for the human eye to translate. A wait command is used to slow the signal down to see if students are able to read the signal and then make suggestions on how to improve it.