pingpong ball matrix (2x7x8)

Originally uploaded by Dr Brian
@coldclimate and @sc_r making things during howduino

Howduino, what a great event/weekend at the centre for life.
So we had two days of 6 hours each to make stuff around arduino or electronics in general. There were a lot of matrix light projects from @coldclimates and @sc_r s ping pong matrixes, to lee and friends amazing skip finds (two great matrix displays). Another theme was that of remote controll, with @alistair controlling a servo over the internet, and another team a remote controll car from their computer.
There was also the hacking of an animatronic head(yoda like) and the control of housegold power sockets(peter) through a networked arduino. Sophie did a squigglebot, and there was a whiteboard drawer, thom did a dalek that found your face (using the webcam) and pointed his blue led laser gun at you. @oomlout contributed to a lot of the projects, and jim of @sonodrome demoed using a led as an input(light detecting) and output(light  o) device, nice one
These are all the ones I remember, but it would be great to get a complete list.

What did I do?
Investigated using a ldr to get an idea of motor spin speed. In the future this will be great for getting an idea of how fast a centrifuge is spinning, or using it as a counter for bees entering and leaving a beehive.

Image by loscuadernosdejulia via Flickr

This is my notes and everyones tweets refering to the GloNet Conference Stream at Futureeverything 2010
#futr Glonet

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.

sparkfun trends to no 1 in google(US) searches

Originally uploaded by Dr Brian
Might get out with a camera, but this is indicative of the day.  

A day when an audatious sparkfun pledged to give away $100000 of stock $100 at a time to “people like me”.

Still trying to get my 0.1% slice of the pie but given the timesouts, thats not likely.

Amazing events

2200+ nicks on a single irc channel (admittedly only a percentage could talk)

a n1 in google trends

#Sparkfun not trending on twitter for an hour after getting to no1 on google. Does that indicate something about the world, or twitter or google or all of the above.

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!

Pachube, and project2891 are both projects that want in their own modest way to network the planet, but from quite different motivations.

Pachube’s key aim is to ” to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.” project2891 is Ben Dembroski’s Alt-w funded art project that “is a system of devices which can be collaborated with directly, without direct communication with original artist.”

What links them is the need to have a process by which devices can ‘talk’ to each other, a protocol. From Tom Igoes book “making things talk“, the rules for good communication are:

• listen more than you speak
• never assume
• agree on how you say things
• ask politely for clarification

I am stepping into using both of these systems, having made LightResponsiveDevice last year, and thinking further than just being responsive to light, but responsive to other inputs

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