Il weekend del 20 aprile scorso l’Arduino Tour si è fermato a Verona. Condividiamo con voi le foto dell’evento da cui traspare l’entusiasmo dei partecipanti  che, non solo hanno potuto sperimentare le potenzialità dello Starter Kit, ma hanno avuto  il supporto  del Treviso Arduino User Group, da tempo attivo nella divulgazione e promozione di Arduino nel territorio veneto.

I progetti prototipati durante la giornata di domenica sono stati tutti interessanti e in particolare vorremmo menzionare:

• SunShift (aka “raggio della morte”), ovvero un sistema che con il concetto dell’inseguitore solare, muove uno specchio per riflettere il sole verso un punto specifico (ottimo per illuminare casa!)
• Cercapersone con risposte pre-programmate: un sistema che visualizza su LCD i messaggi in arrivo, e tramite dei bottoni permette di inviare una risposta a scelta tra quelle preprogrammate

Il workshop era ospitato da TheFab, uno spazio per maker  in cui non ci sono solo eventi e workshop ma possiamo trovare anche delle macchine tipografiche Heidelberg attualmente usate da LinosType e proprio con queste macchine è stato realizzato il poster donato a Massimo Banzi in occasione della sua visita a Desio.

Nella  foto qui sotto appare la matrice del circuito utilizzata stampare   la locandina  e celebrare  la tappa del Tour Arduino (che vedete più sotto) a Verona:

 

Ci vediamo alla prossima tappa a Napoli, affrettatevi a prenotare perchè sono ancora disponibili solo alcuni posti!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Monday, April 29th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Community, workshop(s).You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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RUAH is an interactive corset powered by Arduino Lilypad and created by Giulia Tomasello for her BA graduation project. Its main aim is to help people into learning the importance and the benefits of a deep diaphragmatic breathing.

The circuit is composed by a sensor sewn on an elastic belt and an actuator placed inside the corset.
The stretch sensor catches the move of diaphragmatic breath and sends a feedback from Lilypad to muscle wire, a flexinol spring, inflating and deforming the centre of the structure.
Through this interaction between user and bustier, user becomes conscious about his body and his
breath, increasing his sensory abilities and his physical endurance.
The slow controlled breath, which balances body and mind, is acquired only after a long workout.
As the wearer feels it like a real second skin, RUAH transmits and receives emotional feedback, contrasting a continuous sense of stillness and movement, opposite feelings that surround us and join up to ecstasy.

If you are interested in checking out the details of the project, you can explore Giulia’s pictures of the work in progress and her github code repository, after watching the video below with the Ruah in action!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Saturday, April 27th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, LilyPad, Lilypad, Wearable Computing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Last february we announced the official dates of  MakerFaire Rome – The European Edition – taking place next October and finally, also released  the Call for Makers to invite tinkerers to enter projects and take part to this event celebrating the makers’ revolution in Italy.

Non we’d like  to start exchanging ideas and presenting you some of the protagonists that’s why we are organizing a series of Hangouts OnAir, to inspire and be inspired by some of our friends who are going to participate.
The first hangout is planned for next monday 22nd of april h.8pm CET – Massimo Banzi will be the moderator and his guests are:

Join us on googleplus and see you on monday! (the hangout on-air video will be embedded in this post)

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Friday, April 19th, 2013 and is filed under events.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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After  participating to Codemotion Rome last month, from the 9th of  May we’ll be spending a couple of days at Codemotion Berlin,  an innovative tech event engaging developers of all languages and technologies.

We’re having an Arduino wearables workshop organized together with Kobakant duo (Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson) and focused on the use of Lilypad.

In these 8 hours workshop we’ll explore how computing can be made wearable using the Arduino Lilypad and a selection of conductive materials to make textile sensors and sew electrical connections.

In order to quickly prototype interactive wearables within the workshop, we’ll provide a selection of open source lasercut felt designs that can readily be assembled to garments and accessories. The textiles sensors and fabric circuits can be stitched into felt and powered by battery to make final stand-alone objects.

The cool thing is that no previous experience in programming or sewing is required to participate, so don’t be shy! Check the details and the earlybird offer on Codemotion website!

The next day, Massimo Banzi, thanx to Maker Faire Rome, is opening the Conference with a keynote speech titled: “People over megahertz”.

Come and join us in Berlin!

**UPDATE**

On the 11th you can join the conversation in the panel starting at 5.20pm with Mika Satomi, Hannah Perner Wilson and Cecilia Palmer:

Makers movement and fashion are getting closer than we think

What happens when fashion and technology get combined? During the panel we’ll explore how the use of low-cost devices and machines is multiplying possibilities of participation and is transforming the way we approach our garments.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Sunday, April 21st, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Lilypad.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Gilda Negrini and Riccardo Vendramin, two young product designers from Italy, wrote us to share their last work, designed during a course called Autoproduzioni at Politecnico of  Milano. It’s called MusicInk, it runs on an Arduino Duemilanove board, and  gives an alternative method to teach music to children. That’s how they describe it:

MusicInk makes drawings turning into real music, this magical process is due to a mashup of various eterogenous technologies: Conductive Ink  by Bare Conductive, MPR121 controller, Arduino (Duemilanove board), LiPo shield (removed on a second time), Bluetooth shield by Seedstudio, Android platform, Pure Data for Android (libido), Pure Data patch.
Our project was developed with the help of our friend Manh Luong Bui and has been a very hard work.
We started our project studying the possibilities to create new and cheap musical instruments, then we discovered studies about conductive ink and we decided to create something different with these two technologies.

Here you can see their experience in testing MusicInk in a kindergarten in Milano with children between 4 and 5 years old:

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Education, music.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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The Following is an american TV Series which premiered last january and telling the story of

 former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) and his attempts to recapture serial killer Joe Carroll following the latter’s escape from prison

On the 9th of April Season 1, chapter 12  aired and some of you noticed the unexpected!

An Arduino Uno spotted for the first time in a TV series at 17m 40s: Kevin Bacon jumps over an ArduinoUno-activated device … the red led blinking seems pretty dangerous!

But what kind of device is it exactly?

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Image(s), Tv.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Robert Book is a tinkerer by nature and works at Silicon Valley Bank with Ian McCutcheon, a geek by nature. One day they were talking and Robert shared his big problem: his son Jerry, who suffers from Muscular Dystrophy, couldn’t use a keyboard anymore but loved to play computer games. Jerry could only be able to use a mouse with his right hand and very limited abilities in his left.

After a chat they realized that if they put their heads together they could make something that might enable him to play the different computer games with more ease and enjoyment.
Ian knew that Arduino Leonardo has a great capability, it can emulate a keyboard and a mouse and soon they came up with the first release of an augmented joystick making Jerry much happier. This collaboration became a great story  you can watch in the video below and it’s going to make even more people happy thanks to the shared code to build the joystick yourself.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Thursday, April 25th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Kids, Leonardo.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Coderdojo is a global collaboration providing free and open learning to young people, especially in programming technology. Last weekend David Cuartielles from the Arduino team went to Slane Castle in Ireland  to make a brief presentation to the CoderDojo conference about the Castilla project and how we are hacking Secondary School education in Spain.

Here’s the blurb:

During the Spring term 2013, Arduino Verkstad, is working in analyzing how to bring open hardware and software as a way to transform education at secondary schools in the region of Castilla La Mancha, Spain. This talk will describe the way content is being created and validated in an experiment involving 24 schools, 30 teachers, over 500 kids, and a 6-members design team. There are many similarities between the ecosystem at a classroom and the one to be found at a typical CoderDojo group. The author will draw parallels and explain how the content generated for the above mentioned experiment can be applied to mentor in learning about electronics in one-to-one educational scenarios.

The room was packed and they had quite some fun listening to the stories from Dojos all around the world where kids are learning about technology supported by mentors. Specially touching was the presentation about Black Girls Code who started just a year ago with a series of summer camp sessions for over 650 kids across the US. Check the video below to know more about it:

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Monday, April 15th, 2013 and is filed under conference, Education, events.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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The question was simple: ”How many times can I assemble LEGO bricks before they wear out?” And Phillipe Cantin found the answer  after building a machine to test it: it took 10 days and 37,112 assembling and disassembling actions.

He used an arm moved by a servo-motor, a infrared sensor validating if the lego was off or on, and an Arduino Uno controlling the machine. Here’s the video explanation of the machine and below another one after 102 hours into the ongoing test :

Stay tuned to Phillipe’s website as he said that he’s going to build a faster machine and right now he suggests:

Don’t try this at home. It’s long, noisy and cruel to LEGO bricks.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 and is filed under arduino.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Photographer and Instructables user Alexander Morris created a giant Instagram inspired photo-booth and published all the steps to make one yourself. It’s the perfect solution to pimp-up your parties!

What’s inside of the box? An Arduino DUE coded to start the photo-booth sequence once the big red button is pressed and some other stuff:

You can start exploring the tutorial on Instructables and hopefully Alexander will soon share the code on github.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, April 17th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, DUE, Tutorial.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Hello, I am Frank Magazu. I am 16 years old and go to school in Pasco, Florida. I make robots with the Arduino and got interviewed by my school district. Here is a video of me. Thanks for helping me become proficient at robotics as well as electronics and programing in general.

Thank you Frank! You made our day with your email. Keep up with the great work you and your professor are doing to inspire more people in getting involved in diy robots.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 and is filed under Education, robot.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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(Den Text auf Deutsch findet Ihr weiter unten)

Today we are announcing the first of a series of video tutorials in german created in collaboration with our friend Max, founder of MaxTechTV and published on Arduino channel on Youtube.

The tutorial of this month explains how to turn your Arduino Esplora into a customized computer gamepad to play any of your videogames. And it’s just the beginning to start the real fun of personalizing the controller: what about configuring it to start a special weapon with a shout using the microphone, included in the board? The options are endless! (here’s the tutorial in english)

For this example we configured the code to be suitable for SuperTuxKart, an open-source racing game we love to play during our breaks!

Enjoy the video below and share with us your new projects made with Esplora, or other Arduino boards, joining our official Flickr Group.

————————————————-

Wir freuen uns heute das erste Video einer Reihe von Videotutorials auf deutsch veröffentlichen zu können. Die Tutorials werden in Zusammenarbeit mit unserem Freund Max, Gründer von MaxTechTV produziert und auf dem Arduino YouTube-Kanal veröffentlicht .

Das Tutorial des Monats April erklärt wie man den Arduino Esplora  in ein individuelles Gamepad für den Computer verwandeln kann, um jedes beliebige Videospiel damit zu steuern. Und das ist nur eine von vielen tollen Möglichkeiten den Controller zu personalisieren und anzupassen: Wie wäre es das eingebaute Mikrofon zu nutzen, um über einen Sprachbefehl eine ‘Special Weapon’ abzufeuern ? Die Möglichkeiten sind endlos! (Hier das Tutorial auf Englisch)

Für dieses Beispiel haben wir den Code angepasst, um damit das open-source Spiel SuperTuxKart zu steuern, ein Rennspiel, das wir auch gern mal in unseren Pausen spielen.
Viel Spaß mit dem Video! Ihr könnt Eure Projekte mit dem Esplora oder einem anderen Arduino Board in unserer offiziellen Flickr Gruppe teilen.

————————————————- Ankündigung

Du sprichst deutsch und möchtest uns dabei unterstützen einen Teil der Arduino Dokumentation in deine Sprache zu übersetzen? Wir haben schon angefangen und hier kann man unseren Fortschritt beobachten: http://arduino.cc/de/Main/Products.

Wenn Du uns helfen willst, schreibe Max (max @ maxtechtv.de) und er wird Dir erklären wie Du in das Gemeinschafts-Übersetzungsprojekt eingebunden werden kannst. Danke!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, controllers, Esplora, game controllers, Languages, Tutorial.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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If you happen to come to Milano this week the city is hosting a lot of events  organized in different locations for the 6-day Salone del Mobile dedicated mainly to furniture design but offering a lot of other initiatives taking place around 4 main areas like: the fair, Zona Tortona, VenturaLambrate and Brera.

In the last couple of years some events related to the makers’ culture have started to pop-up during the Salone and we have something coming up too!

Officine Arduino will be at Salone Satellite  (created in 1998 for the express purpose of bringing together  young designers under 35  and this 15th edition is putting the focus to ‘Design Technology’) with an installation called La Bottega Digitale where workshops, meetings and exhibition of 5 projects will show to visitors the digital-fabrication approach to design. Here you can check the agenda and book your participation.

This is one of the new projects you’ll find when visiting us at the fair, it’s called Spruzzo, an open source sprouter based on shared knowledge:

Right near Zona Tortona also we co-organized with some friends We Make Open-Design, an event all focused on open-design. It’s going to exhibit 6 projects which have codes and schemes released on the web, made mostly with digital fabrication techniques , just like OpenMirror by DigitalHabits. (3 of the projects will be presented during Popupmakers Speciale Salone )

During the week will be offering free workshops on 3dprinting, Arduino Tinkerkit and Cut&Fold design. The week will end on Sunday with a final event dedicated to Makerfaire Rome. You are invited to join us for a brunch with Massimo Banzi, Giorgio Olivero and Alessandro Masserdotti to  chat around open design approaches and the makers’ revolution (check the eventbrite page to book your ticket). Stay Tuned!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Monday, April 8th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, events, Exhibition.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Last week-end we just had a good time at the Maker Faire of Shenzen, hosted in the wonderful OCT District.

We were invited by Eric Pan from Seeedstudio (thanks Eric for the good time!). The Maker Faire has been a priceless experience to get in touch with the chinese maker community, as well as networking with different Chinese and Chinese-based maker companies creating interesting contents & products.

We finally inaugurated our very first official Weibo account, and shared chinese materials about Arduino. You could come and play with the Esplora as well as code your very own interface, Thanks to our friend Federico Musto and Anna Kao for the help. and Maling and Terry who volunteered for us in the booth giving Arduino goodies and pins to a ton of interested chinese makers and curious. Zack Smith, working now in the HAXLR8R, joined us for some help to test his chinese language. There has been many speeches and presentations (as well as an Arduino workshop held by Guo Haoyun, the chinese translator of Getting Started With Arduino), and all of a sudden I understood I have to learn chinese (!).

The guys of Haxlr8r showed us their cool creations: Haxlr8r is a startup incubator taking cool ideas and startups from around the world and helping them developing and fine tuning their own product (solve all the puzzles in developing a project, 3 to 6 month) for production here in China. They are based closed to the world famous SEG Electronics Market, widely portrayed from Bunnie Wang in this post and from Evil Mad Scientist here.

On Sunday (totally drained out from the previous day) we teamed up with the Trasfabric “Hacked Better” workshop, we visited Chaihuo Makerspace in OCT where Tom Igoe, Zack Hoeken Smith, Gao Lei, Eric Pan (Seeedstudio) talked about maker movement and DIY culture in China, with Silvia Lindtner (ISTC & Fudan University) and Anna Greenspan (NYU Shanghai), organizers of the workshop.

I had the cool opportunity to sit back and listen to many interesting facts and odd metaphors, joining the informal panel. The main idea which came out is looking at the city of Shenzen like the place to be for producing (open) hardware right now, perfectly represented in a cool metaphor of Eric:

Shenzen is the Hollywood of hardware products, where big companies are just like the big Majors: that’s where independent, low-budget movies come out. (movies = products, boards).

Zack and Eric, as well as Tom, talked about the the value of Brand, both as Market Identity and Responsibility. Zack: It looks a bit like a recipe. Hambuger. Everybody makes an hamburger. You can go to McDonald / Burger King or in the finest place. You can make it yourself. What are you hungry for? Basically open sour(c)e hardware can get everybody be the very personal cook of themselves, or at least acknowledges, with different tools and know-hows, the audience (maker movement, kids, any of us).

What are you hungry for?

P.S. please keep an eye on the Transfabric blog to a more comprehensive and less informal sum-up of the workshop, I’m just the one who loves Cinema, Hamburger and Open Source Hardware.

This entry was postedby Davide Gomba on Thursday, April 11th, 2013 and is filed under Education, events, Exhibition, Open Source, Opinion, press.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Il nuovo Arduino Starter Kit, lanciato oramai qualche mese fa, sta entusiasmando grandi e piccini con il suo libro di tutorial, le componenti speciali e la serie di video in cui Massimo Banzi spiega come realizzarli. Se però preferite che i docenti delle Officine Arduino ve lo spieghino dal vivo e siano pronti a rispondere a tutte le vostre domande allora è meglio che seguiate una delle tappe dell’Arduino Tour.

La prossima tappa prevista per Maggio fa scalo a Napoli:

• venerdì 3 maggio: presentazione pubblica di Arduino (ora aperitivo)
• sabato 4 e domenica 5 maggio: workshop intensivo di Arduino (tutto il giorno per due giorni)

L’iniziativa è promossa e ospitata dagli amici di  Riot Studio in Via S. Biagio dei Librai, 39 Napoli 80138 Italia.

Prenotate il vostro posto - il prezzo è comprensivo di Starter kit!

 

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Friday, April 12th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, events, workshop(s).You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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MEOWSER is a (M)ineral (E)lement Br(owser): a wooden display cabinet containing rocks and mineral samples with LED lighting controlled from a laptop computer.  The laptop can display either the periodic table or a layout of the cabinets.  When the user mouses over elements or minerals the appropriate lights in the wooden cabinet light up.  An Arduino microcontroller serves as the computer – LED interface.

Here’s the video explaining how it works:

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Saturday, March 30th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Education.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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This spring, patches of the East Coast will turn buzzy and crunchy because of … bugs.  Periodical cicadas (or Magicicadas) usually live underground but after 13 or 17 years, they emerge synchronously and in tremendous numbers to look for a mate.  Radiolab launched a campaign to predict their arrival with a bit of DIY science and using an Arduino UNO.

You can follow the instructions of the  simple tutorial on how to monitor soil temperature until it reaches 64° F (17,7 C°) — when the cicadas should start to emerge. The homemade temperature kit will be reporting the findings back to to Radiolab so they can  put them on a map and share crowdsourced observations with the world. Get ready for Swarmageddon, watch the video below!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Tutorial.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Sabato 6 aprile 2013 si tiene a Roma, l’Arduino Day – Think Make Share. Si tratta di una giornata interamente dedicata ad Arduino e alla prototipazione elettronica organizzata da DiScienza, un’associazione che dal 2009 si impegna nella divulgazione scientifica concentrando gran parte del suo lavoro sulla didattica della robotica.

Gli obiettivi principali della giornata sono di avvicinare un ampio pubblico alla prototipazione e all’open hardware basato su Arduino e quello di diventare una piattaforma di approfondimento e confronto per tutti quelli che già lo utilizzano.
Durante la giornata saremo presenti con uno stand ufficiale Arduino, lo store e con diversi laboratori organizzati da Officine Arduino,  base e avanzati, accessibili sia da chi è la prima volta che si avvicina a questo mondo, sia per chi già ne conosce le sue sfaccettature. Ecco alcuni esempi in programma:

Arduino 101
dalle ore 15:00 alle ore 18:00
Portate il vostro notebook!
da 14 a 99 anni
Partenza sprint con Arduino e TinkerKit. Un laboratorio per costruire oggetti interattivi plug and play!

Esplora + Processing
dalle ore 11:00 alle ore 13:00
Portate il vostro notebook!
da 16 a 99 anni
Programmazione di Processing con Arduino come controller. Grazie a Processing e ad Esplora tornerà in vita uno storico arcade!

Il mio primo sketch
dalle ore 11:30 alle ore 13:30
Portate il vostro notebook!
Partiamo dalle basi con Arduino. Colleghiamo tutto e diamo luce ai nostri led. Gli amici dell’Arduino User Group Roma ci aiuteranno a muovere i primi passi con Arduino.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

E per chi si sta preparando alla Maker Faire Rome e ha voglia di essere coinvolto/a sin da ora, vi consigliamo di seguire questa presentazione:

La Maker Faire Rome
ore 18:00
1001 modi per farla insieme a noi! Roma ospiterà in ottobre un grande evento dedicato ai Makers. Conoscerete tutti i dettagli per partecipare come Makers ed essere coinvolti nel “Making of”!

Scoprite le altre attività e prenotate il vostro workshop consultando il sito dell’evento!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Education, events, workshop(s).You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Imagine being an artist with an insane desire to learn the tools that would set your art apart, that would inspire you to create something closest to your imagination. Imagine a burning desire improve the lives of others with all the skills that you have. Imagine, being Jody Culkin.

Jody started her career with Technical Photography at the Medical Department of New York University, an art form that is long lost in today’s world of Instagram and digital photography. A course taken on Physical Computing in 1998 at the age of 45 at ITP, NYU to learn electronics and coding, pushed her to be the maker that she is today. She is currently teaching a course in a Community college in New York. She is also an avid sculptor, an artist, a comics maker, a welder and many more things that marks a true maker. An exclusive interview with her here would take you closer to the world of makers.

Priya: What is your oldest memory as a geek and a maker? Also what were the first experiments that got you started in electronics?

Jody: I remember my junior high school days when we were taught about computers yet never got to work on one. Me and my friend used to exchange notes in ASCII art with pencil on paper. Also I had been making small functional objects like a table and lamps.

The first circuits were really simple with a play of many switches. I loved to use switches for so many different things.

Priya: How was the transition from being an artist to an electronics maker? Which, according to you, is the better way to go?
Jody: I think ideas need to be more clearer than only electronics, for that you need to be a designer. Otherwise I see a lot of designers getting help for electronics in the art world.

Priya: I am a huge fan of the Arduino comic strip that you did years back for arduino. What inspired you to do that? Are you working on more such comics?

Jody: Back in 2009, during a summer camp at ITP, I wanted to express whatever I had understood very clearly. So I decided to document it using a comic strip for others too. What you might observe in the comic, is that there is a central character telling the story, it is not only electronics and wires, which is an essential part to make it appealing in any comic.

Yes, I did some work for a breadboard workshop organized by Make. I would also like to do some work on CSS and JavaScript.

Priya: Wait wait.. You code JavaScript?

Jody: Yes, I started with Code Academy, they have some really great lessons to get you started with.

Priya: Impressive! What are the tools, might you suggest to be the essentials for any designer aspiring to add electronics to the art?

Jody: The tools I would suggest are Arduino, Processing, JS, also I liked MAXmsp interface, other random stuff like Digital multimeter, screw driver, basic sensors etc.

Priya: As an artist what are your most commonly used sensors? Also do you have to use general purpose PCBs or get it custom made?

Jody: I use photocells a lot. I also like IR sensors and Force sensitive Resistors, as they are pretty easy to interface. Regarding PCBs, I have always used breadboards. For some reason, they have always held up pretty strong.

Priya: What drives you? And what advice do you have to make it big in the world of Interactive Designs?

Jody: Curiosity drives me. I love putting different stuff together and observing the final results. Like one of my installations is a self turning-pages book, an added functionality of turning the pages via web was interesting.

To be a designer, one should learn to express things in a simple way. A majority of time should be spent working. Apart from that, networking is a must. Try to hang out with the designers whose work you get inspired by. People like to see works of different designers under the same roof. So try to improve your work to get in the grove with them.

Priya: Very insightful. What are your latest works that you would like to talk about these days?

Jody: There was a show at Florida, at the Boca Raton Museum of Art – I had some displays on fashion there. Also had a presentation on the way comics can be used to explain technology. I was working on a Lasersaur build with Eric Hagan, which is an open source laser cutter project started by Nortd labs at ITP at NYU.

Priya: Lastly, how does it feel to be a woman in tech doing electronics and art together? How did it feel back at the university? What is your current passion?

Jody: It feels great and empowering. T, The strength in the university was 50-50 for men and women. However, I observed that the men were putting in more efforts to learn in Physical Computing, whereas the women were more into web development. I wished women participated more. Tom, really supported and guided me well.

Currently, my passion is to teach the diverse students attending the Community College. Yes, some are very well prepared, some are not, but then, that is where a teacher’s true test of creativity lies.

Thank you for your time Jody!

(All of her work has been documented here.)

This entry was postedby Priya Kuber on Thursday, April 4th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Community, inspiration.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Si prepara un fine settimana denso di eventi: a partire dall ‘Arduino Day a Roma, ospitato nella bellissima cornice del Cinema Palazzo, per permettere a chiunque fosse interessato di muovere i primi passi nel mondo di Arduino.  Se invece sabato rimanete tra Torino-Milano-Genova non potete non prendere in considerazione di fare un salto al Festival di Toolbox , vera celebrazione delle tre anime che popolano questo spazio di coworking: la ricchezza della condivisione, l’intraprendenza delle startup e la creatività dei maker e del DIY.

Tante le attività per festeggiare il terzo compleanno del coworking che ospita Fablab Torino: dal workshop di realizzazione di gioielli elettronici del FablabTorino, alla presentazione di Arduino , dai Big Data (Topix)  a come creare la propria campagna di crowdfunding.

Vi aspettiamo tutti lì sabato 6 aprile dalle 10 alle 10!

This entry was postedby Davide Gomba on Friday, April 5th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, events, Italiano, languages.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Many people asked Alpesh Vitha how to create something like Makey Makey using Arduino and he created this cool video, together with Mowgli, to share with all of us how to use an Arduino Leonardo to accomplish the task. He lives in Kolkata and  runs a company called “Inventify” to popularize Arduino and science in Indian schools especially those with less resources. Enjoy the video tutorial !

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Saturday, March 23rd, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Leonardo, Tutorial.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Dal 19 al 21 aprile Arduino atterra a Verona e aggiunge una nuova tappa dopo  Matera, Reggio Emilia e Milano.

Il venerdì 19 potrete assistere  alla presentazione pubblica del progetto Arduino e nel weekend due giorni di full immersion per imparare a muovere i primi passi con gli oggetti interattivi.

L’iniziativa è  promossa e ospitata da The Fab e TheCollective e si svolgerà presso TheFab in Vicoletto Valle n. 2, Verona.

I partecipanti al workshop avranno tra le mani e poi si porteranno a casa il nuovo Starter Kit, di cui potete leggere la recensione su Domusweb, così da continuare a casa le sperimentazioni: tutti sono benvenuti al workshop perchè non è richiesta alcuna precedente conoscenza di programmazione o di elettronica.

Se siete della zona intorno Verona questo è il momento di attivarvi e prenotare uno dei posti a disposizione nello shop!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Monday, March 25th, 2013 and is filed under arduino, workshops.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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(Italian version below)

Are you a musician, music amateur, electronic bricoleur or maker who makes music by creating your own instruments and tools using Arduino?

We are looking for your music tracks to be presented in a radio program entirely dedicated to (DIY) music made with Arduino based synths and instruments.The program is scheduled within the GwenFestival program, an international music and radio festival organized in Chiasso (TI, Switzerland) during April 2013.

Gwenfestival is promoted by Radio Gwendalyn, an on-line independent radio located at Chiasso railway station (during the festival, from April 1st to April 30th, Radio Gwendalyn will use a FM frequency to transmit its music program).

The program will be on air on saturday 13 and sunday 14 April, from 17.30 – 18.00.

How to participate:
Tracks  should include at least an instrument or synth made with Arduino and they will be selected according to few parameters:

- quality of the sound design and music;

- originality of the implemented solution;

- originality of the process or production story.

All genres are accepted.

The program lasts only 1:20 (two episodes of 40 min each), so a limited number of tracks will be selected. However, the list of the excluded tracks will be published  on a public on-line page.

Deadline 10 April 2013

——–

Call for Arduino Synth Music

Sei un musicista, un’amante della musica, un bricoleur elettronico o maker che crea musica con strumenti basati su Arduino?

Allora, inviaci una traccia del tuo progetto musicale per un programma radiofonico dedicato alla musica realizzata con strumenti DIY.

Il programma è inserito nel palinsesto radiofonico del GwenFestival, festival internazionale di musica e radiofonia che avrà luogo a Chiasso (Ticino, Svizzera) durante il mese di aprile 2013. Il festival è promosso da Radio Gwendalyn, radio online indipendente di Chiasso che per solo un mese avrà la possibilità di trasmettere su frequenze radio FM.

Il programma andrà on-air sabato 13 e domenica 14 aprile, dalle 17.30 alle 18.00 su www.radiogwen.ch (on line streaming e podcast) e su FM 107.2 (Lugano) and FM 97.3 (Chiasso).

Ecco i requisiti per partecipare:

Le tracce dovranno includere almeno uno strumento o sintetizzatore DIY basato sulla scheda Arduino. I criteri di valutazione sono:

- qualità del sound design e della musica;

- originalità della soluzione diy implementata;

- originalità del processo di costruzione o altre aspetti connessi alla produzione.

Sono accettati tutti i generi musical (dall’elettronica alla musica country).

Il programma dura circa un’ora e venti minuti ed è diviso in due puntate, quindi, sarà accettato solo un numero limitato di tracce.

Le tracce non selezionate saranno inserite in una lista pubblicata on-line.

Per inviare la propria traccia, basta completare il modulo pubblicato su questa pagina.

Scadenza 10 Aprile 2013

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 and is filed under events, music.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Tom Schofield created an installation artwork which visualises the ‘Doomsday Clock’, a symbolic clock maintained by an academic journal, ‘The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ which:

conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction–the figurative midnight–and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

The artwork is composed by two pieces:

• a small computer programme running on a server which ‘scrapes’ the content of the bulletins home page as often as possible. The software checks the current status of the clock and then sends the results over the internet
• a small wall clock which receives data and displays the time of the Doomsday Clock on a red LED clock display. This process repeats as fast possible so that the device shows in near-real-time the status of the doomsday clock. 

The project uses an Arduino Uno board and an Arduino Ethernet shield and the clock is controlled with a MAX7219 Led control chip. Tom published  all the code and design for the indicator in his Github code repo  and told us he’s  very interested in the possibility that other people might make their own indicators. So, don’t be shy and give it a try!

 

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 and is filed under Ar(t)duino, arduino, ethernet, shield.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Last weekend Arduino and Officine Arduino participated to  the third edition of Codemotion Rome, the international event focused on the art of programming.

During the three-day event we organized presentations and lab sessions: Federico Vanzati gave a great talk on the Internet of Things world and the new Arduino Gsm Shield, plus a live coding session on how to use it; then Davide Gomba introduced Processing using the Arduino Esplora as a controller to code and play Pong videogame.

In this creative context the activity that left us with more intense memories has been the 3d printing workshop involving kids an parents into experimenting for the first time the excitement of transforming bits into atoms.

As you can see from the pictures below, kids (with the help of their geek parents) after understanding the basics of the cloud-based 3d app Tinkercad, started creating their virtual objects. Later on the Kentsrappers  team and mister Slic3r with their own 3d printers showed them how, layer by layer, any 3d file could be materialized into an object.

It’s a pity that a couple of days ago Tinkercad announced the closure of the platform, but we hope their new project is going to be as cool as this in involving newbies into the 3dprinting revolution!

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Friday, March 29th, 2013 and is filed under 3D printing, Education, events, workshop(s).You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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