I have been thinking about Arduino and Schools for a while. What I like about Arduino is the ease of use, of getting something happening quickly, I particularily like the call and respsone code. . I would like to see the user base explode, and that could happen with some help in schools teaching of Design and Technology. The incumbents in this are parrallex / Pic.

One of a number of people are thinking about how to get arduino into schools.

For this we need to think about a few diferent things.

The price: Arduino is still a little expensive(around £21), it is possible to make a small board with the microcontroller on it for a few pounds (or even paper : see paperduino), the main cost is the ftdi chip/usb interface that allows the arduino to talk to a computer. With the multi leaded surface mount ftdi chip retailing for £3-4(read: more complicated than the atmel chip it talks to), and the cables going for £15 it would not be possible to have a lot of these cables.

I am interested to see what comes out of the discussions of Arduino Puntu Zero, i know it may be some cut down versions.

How to access arduino, a lot of the competitors to arduino have visual programming(for instance Flowal). Here are the three visual programming languages I know of for the arduino.

amici (Windows and OSX) from Eduwear

EduWear aims at contributing to the reduction of inhibiting factors by employing an approach rooted both in education and in ICT development. The objective is to develop an educational low-cost construction kit for wearable and tangible interfaces.”

scratch (osx and windows) + processing/catenary + firmata

Catenary is a small, easy-to-use program that allows a project written in Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) to communicate with an Arduino board (http://www.arduino.cc). Catenary is written in Processing (http://processing.org), and runs as a Java application. It takes advantage of Scratch v1.3’s ability to send and receive broadcasts and global variable messages. Catenary acts as a middleman, shuttling certain messages back and forth between the Arduino board and Scratch.

Modkt.it (windows and osx) downloads

Modkit is an in-browser graphical programming environment for little devices called embedded systems development. Modkit can currently program arduino and arduino compatible hardware using simple graphical blocks similar to and inspired by the scratch programming environment.

Updates: amici now has an osx version.

Interested in any Linux based visual programming tools  for arduino.

wiring a DS18B20 to arduino

Originally uploaded by sctv
For my records, how to wire up the DS18B20 1 wire digital thermomenter (http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm?qv_pk=2812) but using the two wire functionality here.

This is one of the diagrams I use to help me wire up the DS18B30 (bought from nulelectronics.com and using his library) to the arduino.
These little sensors are pretty great, have heated them up to over 130C withouth them failing(though it did stop working). I am using these for getting the temperature of a peltier that I am driving through a hbridge.

I was happy when I got Arduino working on a stock xandros eeepc 701 in this post . However Arduino has moved on, and Xandros has lagged.

Running the latest arduino versions (13+) and the eeepc on a stock xandros is not possible due to the fact that the compiler (gcc-avr) is too old (need 4.32+ to support the avr328) . There is no way I know to upgrade Xandros to the latest version, so I have been looking at other linux installs. I need the new version because otherwise I wont be able to use the atmel 328 based arduino, as it needs the new compiler. However, as this chip has twice as much program memory it is very very useful.

So this is what I have done to get it all working.

You should have a Internet connection, a 1Gb usb stick and a bigger card (I am using a 4gb sd card, I will be booting my install with arduino 17 off this card)

1) Download live iso from http://www.eeebuntu.org/ (I chose the base version as it is the smallest)

2) find a Windows or Linux computer and download http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ (This allows you to make a live usb disk)

3) use unetbootin to copy the live iso to the usb disk (1Gb or bigger)

4) boot into it by plugging in and after turning on eeepc, hit esc

5) you will see at least two options, chose the disk that has the eeebuntu on it

6) it should boot up and you will see some options

7) chose install

it wll ask you some questions and ask where you want linux installed . Chose the the bigger card/usbstick that you have (you could install to the 4gb ssd in the eeepc, but I like to keep it for quick bootup)

9) once the is finnished you need to install the other dependancies of arduino 17 (this section from http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Linux/Ubuntu

use synaptics and install

• librxtx-java (this will bring in the rest of the java development environment that you need as well)
• gcc-avr
• binutils-avr
• avr-libc
• avrdude

then download arduino 17
unpack and run!

Andy Huntington Interaction and sound

Originally uploaded by sctv

On Wednesday the 13Th I attended the Show & Tell: Gadget DIY session at Thinking Digital- Digital University
A number of different speakers with compatable relationships to technology (coming from the Maker/Hacker ethic of If you cant understand it, take it to bits, you dont own it)

Brief notes for my Arduino session at BarcampSheffield.

Arduino

What is it?

microntroller

What does it do?

interface to other devices (temp sensors, gps, ethernet, i2c motors etc)

Why would I want one?

for solving problems or making project….. some examples

robotics

using servos and sensors

wearable

embedded wearable electronics using lillypad

toyhacking

Is it hard to use?

it has a gentle learning curve and lots of resources online

learning by doing

Where do I get one?

come in a variety of versions from very small (wearable) to large(for controlling RepRap, a rapid prototyper)

arduino

arduino.cc / tinker.it

arduino clones

freeduino nuelectronics.com

seeduino seed electronics

lillypad and arduino pro

sparkfun

What have you done with it?

artwork

LightResponsiveDevices http://transitlab.org/2008/11/15/light-responsive-objects-using-arduino/

sound

Auduino – granulator using code from http://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wiki/Auduino

others

webserver that posts environmental data or energy consumption

http://www.pachube.com/users/ni/feeds

wiimote controlled RGB led

http://www.coldclimate.co.uk/2008/04/28/wiimote-arduino-ibook-leds-yay/

Learning Resources

Arduino

http://www.arduino.cc/

Freeduino Database

http://www.freeduino.org/

ITP physical computing

http://itpa.nyu.edu/physcomp/Main/HomePage

LadyAda

http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/index.html

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Finished trialling my light-responsive objects that I developed at the AA2A placement and the ISIS Arts mini-residency. My motivation was to make a work that encoded knowledge of natural systems, to create a gentle empathy in the viewer. Over time these devices have transformed themselves in my eyes into pets, or dependant creatures. Although simple, they are evocative, they have metaphorical attachment points for anthropomorphism.Some of the verbal reactions to the work are that they are “sweet”, “cute”, “life-like”. So as well as a model system to learn about interaction, they are also a site of inquiry into human relationships with machines.
Approximately thirty people came to the work during ‘Feeding Times” in tic space at the Fine Arts School of Newcastle University. This was part of Connecting Principle2008 event. As the theme was Dialogue, it was apt that this gave me the opportunity to discuss the work, its future directions and get feedback from an diverse audience.

The work is a series of light producing and responsive devices. By having more than one, a feedback loop comes into being (emerges?), where the movement of one causes changes in the local light environment that produces a movement in the other, ad infinitum……

In this first installation, the 3 arduino devices share power through a mains powered usb hub and it is apparent that there are fluctuations in the power supply. This could be removed by separate power supplies, but this would remove some of the glitchyness and perhaps the idiosyncrasies that make this work appealing.

video LightResponsiveDevice

call and response

code follows….

//import processing.video.*;

MovieMaker mm; //the moviemaker container
Capture myCapture; //your webcam, isight

void setup() {
size(320, 240);

myCapture = new Capture(this, width,height);
//myCapture.settings(); uncomment this if you want to select the video source
mm = new MovieMaker(this, width, height, “callandresponse2.mov”,30,MovieMaker.H263, MovieMaker.HIGH); // Save compressed, at 30 frames per second, h263, high quality

}

void captureEvent(Capture myCapture) {
myCapture.read();
}

void draw() {
image(myCapture,0,0);
// Add window’s pixels to movie
mm.addFrame();
}

void keyPressed() {
if (key == ‘ ‘) {
// Finish the movie if space bar is pressed
mm.finish();
// Quit running the sketch once the file is written
exit();
}
}

First up was Bengt Sjolen(Stockholm)(http://www.automata.se/people/bengt/). He talked about a number of his works including one utilizing a servo-controlled citroen rearvision mirrors (Picture house at Belsay Hall, Northumberland) that used reflection to make a pixelated picture.
An elegant piece was the wifi camera – a single pixel camera that builds up images over a 20 min period of the local wifi environment.
The elephant phone connecting two distant elephant house, allowing the elephants to talk to each other.
One of the take home messages was that time is not money, money is time. So the few months he is working on other people projects buys him the time to make his own(http://www.automata.se/).
He placed an emphasis on peer production networks, in that the network became the artist. This network is sited at Teenageengineering(http://www.teenageengineering.com/), where Bengt and a number of others run their commercial operations(eg http://www.elektron.se).

This is full of useful tech like cnc machine and laser cutters etc. Not coming from a design or manufacturing background I found his brief description of small scale fabrication of circuitboards interesting eg the cnc machine can be used to cut circuit boards, place solder paste and pick and place components, then into the oven.

One of the questions that was directed at Bengt was why if there was software that was off the shelf that could drive his cnc machine, why he chose to code in python.
This gets to the heart of being a tooluser vs a tool maker.
A generic software needs to be generalised, and is often not open to modification. A bespoke software can be built to do what its maker wants.
Bengt mentioned that the process of making the tool slowed him down and thus errors werent made later in the process but as part of the development of the tool. This slight slowdown was preferable to an error at the production level.

This also brings into the debate, should new media artists know how to code? Are the simplified tools that are being provided to us (ie Arduino, Processing) a help or hindrance?
Are we asking for it to be too easy, and losing some of the nuances? This issue came up at the SketchingInteractions and SpacePlacePace events at Culturelab in the previous week.
My take is that the opensource tools arduino and processing allow a gentler introduction to the complexities of microcontrollers and programming than a full blown avr programming suite. At this stage I am not likely to do a 4 year engineering course.

Image via Wikipedia

I was at Mashed08 in Alexandra Palace . There is a good mix of hardware and software hackers, but I like the hardware ones best. It’s a bit like working with children ands animals. It should not be done in 24hrs unless you are really experienced. I spent too much time on a prototype when i should have spent time on the sketch, A learning experience, but I did dip into using python to talk to Arduino , and that was a valuable lesson.