Arduino Workshop

The Microprocessor- The brain of the computer.
Arduino is a chance to interact with the 'brain'.

Physical computing is part of everyday life, oyster cards, sliding doors, gaming consoles are all situations in which physical computing is present.

How are the conditions measured?

How do you change the conditions?

The above table shows how the thinking behind a system works.

Arduino:

An open source platform based on a variety of easy to use hardware and software. Arduino's community is continuously expanding. Designers, programmers and hobbyists alike are all exploring new projects using the Arduino board.
While exploring this within the Authorship and Interaction module I particularly connected with the workshop and purcahsed the Arduino Uno starter-kit, below is my own experimentation with the kit.
I hope to create my final outcome using Arduino, and have collated some of the research into more in depth projects at the bottom of this page, as these are what inspired me to continue using this platform and learning more.

The first project I completed within the workshop was the keyboard project. This uses 4 switches and a piezo capusule that registers when you've pressed a button and releases a pitchy note. This mini keyboard is extremely easy to build and understand and using the guidelines of the electronic circuit mapped in the book was really helpful!

Arduino is the least scary form of processing and electronics I've ever experienced, it allows you to learn and understand new things in a fun and simple environment. The community is supportive and cheers on everyones projects.
Plus, everytime somethin works, I feel like a genius, even if it is just making a light blink on and off.

The second project I've explored is the Touch Lamp. This project is slightly more complex than the keyboard and uses transparent gels, the RGB led and 3 photoresisters.

On the left there is a video of me beginning this project. It cuts of just before I start putting the gels together so that the filtered light controls the colour of the RGB led.

I enjoyed this project as the interactivity was really engaging to other people.

These images of the completed project would probably have looked better in a darker environment, but it shows the important parts of the project.

Really Cool Arduino Projects-

Unfortunately none of the work below is mine. But I've been inspired to learn and create more with Arduino because of these innovative and interesting ideas.

LUZ is a project created by Marina Mellado. It is aimed at people who are physically and psychologically affected by the lack of sun or daylight.

It uses both Arduino and Adafruit to control the sensibility of the lamp depending on the conditions outside.

The Satellitie Lamps project by YOUrban is create to show part of our invisible landscape, the GPS system.

"To explore how GPS takes place in cities, and how it is shaped by the urban environment, we have designed and developed a series of Satellite Lamps. These lamps contain a GPS receiver and change their brightness according to the strength and accuracy of GPS signals. When we photograph the Satellite Lamps using timelapse photography, the flickering of the lamps show how GPS accuracy fluctuates over time in a particular space." - From the YOUrban webpage- viewable here: http://yourban.no/2014/08/20/satellite-lamps-2/

These two projects are ones that really inspired me. They explore really interesting and possibly overlooked areas of our daily lives and make them into something really engaging and interesting. There are plenty of amazing projects showcased on the Arduino blog which can be viewed here: http://blog.arduino.cc/