This Wednesday is the second class of our 3-week introductory course for Arduino. Attendees should bring with them a laptop, Arduino, electronic components* and a USB cable for their Arduino. Some spare Arduinos and electronics will be available on the day, but they will be given out on a first-come-first-served basis.
The class is free, but spaces are limited so attendees are advised to arrive early to avoid disappointment. As 091 Labs is a non-profit teaching-and-learning group, any donations on the day would be greatly appreciated.
A few of our members recently made a buswalkingbus walking trip out to Maplin Electronics here in Galway to source some electronics. A few months ago I purchased a Velleman solder-it-yourself clapper kit, which I subsequently plugged into an Arduino and had some fun with. After picking up some resistors, piezos and other bits n’ bobs, I took another look at the solder-it-yourself section for some inspiration. I came across something which tickled my hackery-fancy, an “IR Light Barrier”, again from Velleman.
The basic principle is the following: Two PCBs, one with the sole purpose of illuminating two IR LEDs, the other having a photo transistor and a fairly large buzzer. Place the two boards across from each other, break the IR “beam” between the IR LEDs and photo transistor and the deafening buzzer starts sounding. Belated apologies to those across the road in John Mulholland.
So in a typical maker reaction, my thoughts were, “Well that sucks”. So I ripped out the buzzer, placed two wires on the PCB contacts and plugged them into my Arduino microcontroller:
What I now have is a brilliantly useful and marvellously simple security system. My next step is to hook up the Arduino code to the Twitter API and have it tweet a message every time the beam is crossed.
Thursday 26th at 4pm is the first Processing and Arduino meetup at 091Labs. From Thursday 2nd September on we will be meeting regularly once a week at 6pm in the space.
For starters we will be following the O’Reilly Online course
‘Processing and Arduino in Tandem’
Creating Your Own Digital Art Tools
Starting Tuesday 31st 11pm GMT O’Reilly will stream the course which you can follow for free online, quick go sign up http://training.oreilly.com/arduino/, but it you cant make it to every class we have pooled together to download the course video which we will be following week by week 6pm every Thursday at 091Labs.
Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.
“It’s an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.
Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer”
Put them together and you get really great interactive art works and installations.
But first you will need to get yourself some materials
The volcanic ash cloud disrupted many of our plans this week. Our first monthly guest speaker John Breslin was one of the 750k travellers stranded throughout the world. We are rescheduling his talk at Hotel Meyrick for 7pm Tuesday, April 27th. Adrian and Ellen at Meetforeal won a presentation slot at eComm America 2010 for their innovative Crowdscanner app but were unable to travel and sent a video in their place. Stefan at Metaio gave an inspiring augmented reality presentation at eComm via a Microvision Pico Projector and paper sheet which everyone is raving about.
Thanks to everyone who made our Community Meetup last night. We discussed a number of potential streams to get up and running within our sandbox. After looking at each proposal we have decided on two new streams to sit alongside our Android stream.
The first is an Arduino stream which our newest member Dara will lead over the coming weeks. It was an easy choice after being inspired by our recently attended Mitch Altman and Jimmie P. Rodgers Electronic Workshop at the Science Gallery hosted by TOG and Robots.ie. The second is a Game Development stream which like the Android stream will be a collective voyage of discovery given interested members are new to the space but keen to learn more.
A third potential stream will need further discussion with Sebastian and members of the Galway LUG before proceeding further. Hopefully they will be able to make our next community meetup 7pm Tuesday, April 13th at the Galway Bakery Company. We now have 4 entries for our new logo design competition. All entries received on or before April 30th will be shared here. If your feeling creative get in contact with your 2 color entry.
