BetterNouveau is organizing a promising workshop about circuit milling with Roland iModela in Turin. Massimo is going to walk you around milling your own shield.

[...] you’ll learn to design and create your very own Arduino shield (‘shields’ are boards that can be plugged on top of the Arduino extending its capabilities). We’ll start from schematics, create the layout and make real prototypes on-site: become a pro Arduino user and learn to design circuits with the Eagle PCB software and make your own Arduino Shields using the Roland iModela desktop milling machine. D.I.Y shields are the best way to move your project from a breadboard-based approach into a professional prototype.

The Workshop is held on February 17-18-19.

via [Better Nouveau]

For the past couple weeks I’ve been wrapped up in finals at ITP, and in producing the ITP winter show 2011, along with my colleague Marianne Petit. I lost count of all the great Arduino projects in the show, but probably somewhere around 70% of the 110 projects in the show have a little blue board somewhere inside. If you’re in New York City today or tomorrow, come on down, it’s a good time, with lots of creative projects covering a range of application areas from healthcare  to fashion to video sculpture to politics, data visualization, assistive technologies, and more.

Here are a few selected at random that are using Arduino:

Here is a good news for the creative at heart non-programmers!

Minibloq is a graphical programming environment for Arduino™, Multiplo, physical computing devices and robots. One of it’s main goals is to bring closer physical computing and robotic platforms to primary schools, kids and beginneers.

It comes with a good documentation and is the outcome of a kickstarter campaign.

Source: minibloq

Sometimes, it is amazing to see how technology is used to make the world a better place to live for the less fortunate. One such problem has been thought out and tackled by Anirudh Sharma aka touchaddict on IRC. His invention is called ‘Le-chal’ which translates to ‘Take me there’ in Hindi.

Sharma conceptualized and demonstrated the system at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab Design and Innovation Workshop 2011.

The Le Chal system comprises of a pair of shoes, one of which is fitted with Vibrators, proximity sensors and a Bluetooth pad which is connected to an Android phone that calculates directions and real time location using Google Maps and the phone’s built-in GPS and compass module.

For all the people calling Arduino a ‘toy’ and ‘too simple’ here is a fact: it’s simplicity gave the inventors the power to rapidly prototype, and the invention was ready in 6 days.

As per his presentation, the system costs barely a few hundred rupees to assemble with 8 mini vibrational motors costing Rs 90, a sole of specified dimensions, an Arduino Lilypad GSM+GPS shield custom made for Rs 400 or a wired version costing Rs 150 for all the components.

The shoes have also been tested at a blind school in Bangalore, India, and have received positive reviews.

Source: Medianama and Pixelonomics

New fellows in the TinkerKit!  family: [T000060] and [T000062] are two versions of the same gyroscope module (1x / 4x sensitivity) based on the LPR5150AL from ST Microelectronics. We are sharing example codes and a visual UI in Processing (hosted on Scuola)

Kenbak  computer (claimed to be one of the first personal computer – 1971) has come back from the shadows of the past.

I’d been thinking for a while that emulating an old-school switches-and-lamps computer would be a fun Arduino project, but had stalled looking at things like the Altair 8800 with its 30+ lights and 20+ switches. However, when I stumbled upon the Kenbak I thought it was something I could pull off as my first real Arduino project. Naturally I called it the KENBAK-uino. 
This is the end-product, it can be programmed via the buttons on the front panel and show outputs on the LEDs. It’s a faithful emulation of the original CPU but with a few enhancements thrown in like pre-loaded sample programs and access to a real time clock.

via flickr (set), (videos) (code).

Massimo interverrà all‘Arduino Day organizzato all’interno di Robotica 2011.  Oltre alle presentazioni di Davide Canepa [Scuola di Robotica] e Leonardo di Cosmo [Discienza] vari utenti Arduino (scuole e singoli) avranno la possibilità di mostrare / presentare il loro progetto [Programma]. (scrivi a info (chiocciola) scuoladirobotica.it partecipare allo show-case).  Arduino parteciperà attivamente a questa edizione di Robotica 2011 con uno stand. Veniteci a trovare per avere maggiori informazioni su Arduino e la didattica, sperimentare con vari progetti in esposizione e partecipare alle attività organizzate durante la fiera.

via [Robotica 2011]

Maker Faire New York is over and we are seeing a lot of reports and reviews about the new products Arduino has announced, we’re sincerely impressed by the amount of positive feedback and offers of collaboration that we have received.

We are  releasing a two part video extract of  my speech on saturday at Maker Faire New York. The title of the speech is “what’s ahead for Arduino”  and it describes the new products we’ve already announced on friday.

Yesterday we’ve had the pleasure of being slashdotted for the first time in our history with the side effect of being mentioned on a lot of websites. In particular what caught my attention is this article by Steve Rosenboaum on the Huffington Post entitled “What Barack Obama Could Learn From Maker Faire” :

Arduino is the kind of innovation eco-system that The White House could support today. Much like the President’s Fitness Challenge drove health and set goals for the nation, it’s easy to imagine an Arduino White House Challenge that would give young people the goals and rewards to drive big ideas into the economy. Today Dean Kamen’s US First Robotics teams are doing that in high schools across the country. And yet President Obama stays almost entirely silent on technology as if somehow the future of America is about us embracing and revitalizing the past.

Education and Community have always been at the core of Arduino….

Another big deal was the announcement that Radio Shack is going to be stocking Arduino in its thousands of stores. Everybody I met was tremendously excited about this (like we have been throughout the negotiation) and a momentous event for an open source project.

We closed our presentation with “Arduino is You”, this is something we like to remind everybody because the community is the lifeblood of Arduino. Give yourself a round of applause like we did in New York.

Yesterday we had a wonderful day at New York Hall of Science, for the Open Source Hardware Summit, in its second edition. We had the chance to see amazing presentations from makers all over the worlds [see schedule & list of participants]  We had a good time in taking with Alicia Gibb, one of the organizers who explained us this year’s numbers and some ideas for the future.

[SlideShare presentation after the break]

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