Last friday in Rome during the press conference of Maker Faire Rome 4th edition, Riccardo Luna together with Massimo Banzi announced that next October the event is going to become “better, bigger and stronger”.
A new location by Fiera di Roma building will host six pavilions in an area of over 100.000 sq.m. for makers, visitors, conferences, seminars and workshops. The event promoted by the Rome Chamber of Commerce and powered by its Innovation Unit “AssetCamera “ is once more curated by Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder, along with Riccardo Luna, Italian Digital Champion.

The topics featured at Maker Faire Rome 2016 are going to be home automation, re-use, drones and robots, 3D printing, digital manufacturing, industry 4.0, IoT – Internet of things, mobility, safety & security, food , fashion, music and especially Food & Nutrition.Together with the Future Food Institute (FFI), trust voted to food and innovation, Maker Faire will focus on the intersection between food and technology and will deepen the relationship between nutrition, health & wellbeing. The “Call 4 Makers” 2016 will open on April 18th and will close on June 5th.

Maker Faire Rome is also looking for amazing project with a “Call for BigBang Projects”  open until March 31^st.  The call will consider large-scale, entertaining, high impact, interactive projects. Installations and performances proposals will be welcome, too. The goal is to create the most immersive scenery one could dream of for a Faire of such character.

In the meanwhile take a look at the European Maker Week, an entire week of makers’ events, from May 30th to June 5th,  promoted by The European Commission and implemented by Maker Faire Rome in collaboration with Startup Europe, the event:

aims to draw European citizens to the “Maker world” thanks to the aid of Fablabs, Makerspaces, Hackerspaces and the hardware startups environment. The goals of European Maker Week are two folds: create awareness about the importance of the maker culture to foster an education of creativity and innovation in all schools across Europe; build bridges between local authorities and media and the main players of their own local makers ecosystems. It is of particularly importance to reach out to new players (e.g. Schools) who have never organized a maker event before.

Join us for the Arduino Day event organized by our team at the Jacobs Institute on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley with the participation of Massimo Banzi, David Mellis and Tom Igoe.

We are seeking volunteers to assist us during the event. We are going to have free workshops, talks by the founders, and art and tech displays.

We are looking for volunteer assistance during the event e.g. staffing information tables and displays, bringing a project to demo, helping during workshops, picking up coffee & lunch, and providing technical assistance. This is not a paid gig, but to show our appreciation that you are spending your time with us, Arduino has prepared a small gift for you.

We welcome all levels of skills and curiosity. More important than your technical skills are your people skills. Please provide us with basic information about yourself and your interests. Use the appropriate form depending on whether you have volunteered with us in the past:

First time volunteers? Please fill out this form. If you have volunteered for Arduino before, please contact us at arduinovolunteer [at] gmail.com.

We also have two paid positions: one for a two-person video camera crew and the other for a photographer. To apply, please fill out this form.

When: April 2nd, 2016
Location: University of California Berkeley at Jacobs Institute – 2530 Ridge Rd, Berkeley, CA 94709
Website: http://jacobsinstitute.berkeley.edu/
Arduino Day website: https://day.arduino.cc
Staff: Judy A. Castro (Event Manager), Michael Shiloh (Educator)

Arduino Day’s events’ map is updating constantly with new events created by local communities worldwide. The participation is open to anyone who wants to celebrate Arduino, Genuino and all the amazing things that have been done (or can be done!) with them and the community of open source enthusiasts. The call for submission is now extended and open until March 15th! We’ve already received 280 submissions from more than 55 countries! Celebrate with us and add your local event  now on day.arduino.cc.

If you want to attend one of the events near your town,  check the map on the Arduino Day website and remember that this year we are also celebrating Genuino, Arduino’s sister brand for products sold outside of USA. US-based events will be called ’Arduino Day’, while events based outside the US will be called ’Genuino Day’.

Some days ago Massimo Banzi and his team announced that the third edition of Arduino Day organized directly by the Arduino team will take place on Saturday April 2nd 2016 in Berkeley (CA) at Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, University of California with Massimo Banzi, Tom Igoe and David Mellis.

“We’re really excited to express our love for open source – said Massimo Banzi, CEO at Arduino – in a day of celebration of our amazing community of makers, developers and partners. 6 million downloads of the Arduino Development Environment in the last year alone show the sheer size of our community.”

This is the draft agenda of the event (registration form coming soon):

– 11 am – 6 pm: exhibition of Arduino projects
– 12 pm – 4 pm : hands-on activities
– 3 pm -5.30 pm : Arduino co-founders  presentations

• David Mellis  “Makers and machine learning: a system for analysis of real-time sensor data”
• Tom Igoe “Talk Making amazing things talk”
• Massimo Banzi “IoT and the connected objects”

“I’m also excited” – said David Mellis, Arduino co-founder – “to hold an Arduino Day at UC Berkeley’s Jacobs Institute because they both represent a playful and innovative approach to design and engineering. I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing things that people here at Berkeley have been building with Arduino. I’m also hoping that Arduino Day will be a chance to connect makers on campus with those in the broader community.”

 David Cuartielles will be in Mexico City to take part to Genuino Day organized by Hacedores at Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City.

Share your pictures, comments and news on your social channels using Hashtag: #ArduinoD16

Today we are happy to release the Arduino IDE 1.6.8 and updated cores for almost all supported platforms (AVR 1.6.10, SAM 1.6.7, Curie 1.0.5).

This new version of Arduino Software adds support for scaling interface for UHD monitors: if the IDE is too small because your display resolution is very high or just because you want it bigger now you can set the scaling factor from the preferences panel:

Just uncheck the “Automatic” box, set the magnification to a suitable value and restart the IDE. Below you can see the “before” and “after” screenshot examples:

Another improvement is that the IDE now tries harder to remember the last window position when it’s closed and to restore it when it’s opened again. It’s a small improvement that should save some clicks every time the IDE is opened. (check Credits)

In collaboration with Intel we also released the new core, here are some of the updates:

• we solved the upload problems encountered by some users on the 101 and we increased general upload speed.
• the Arduino and Genuino 101 CurieIMU library is now reviewed, more usable and with many examples that show the features of the onboard sensor
• we included new libraries for the Curie Core: CurieTimerOne: it’s now easier to play with Hardware Timers (for RTC functionality, instead, use CurieTime)
• CurieEEPROM: use this library to simulate the non-volatile memory available on AVR cores.
• CurieSoftwareSerial: the Curie version of the library allows you to create serial ports on (almost) any digital pin.

The complete changelog on the Intel core is available here.

We also included some frontend enhancement and improvements and, as usual, we made a lot of bug fixes, adjustments and fresh documentation thanks to the contribution of our community. The complete list of fixes and credits is available here.

Don’t forget to report any issue you find, either on Github or on the Arduino forum: your help is very much appreciated. It doesn’t matter if you are not a tech specialist: every feedback adds value.
Enjoy coding!

Our good friends over at Primo Toys have just launched their brand new Cubetto Playset and joined Arduino AtHeart program! Cubetto is a playful wooden robot that helps young children (3-6) discover programming through storytelling, adventure and collaboration. It’s the first coding toy of its kind to work without a screen or digital interface, and lets children learn to code before they can read or write. Cubetto is for boys and girls of any language anywhere in the world. It has been designed to help create a new, universal standard in tangible coding that will help will drive today’s coding revolution from the ground up.

The Cubetto Playset is exclusively available on Kickstarter for the discounted price of $149 until April 6th:

Part of the Arduino At Heart program, Cubetto provides gender-neutral play that boosts a child’s creativity, critical thinking, spatial awareness and communication skills. A beta version of the product, which raised over $80,000 (nearly £57,000) on Kickstarter in 2013, is used by more than 300 schools and 500 families in over 40 countries worldwide. Following years of testing and numerous iterations, Cubetto now boasts a learning platform that expands and connects to a limitless number of devices via Bluetooth.

Check the video to see it in action!

Casa Jasmina and FabLab Torino in partnership with Officine Arduino e Toolbox Coworking are hosting the IX° edition of the Share Prize, an international competition that promotes and supports contemporary art in the digital age .

The prize theme is ”House Guests” and focuses on the use of electronic art inside the private domestic space.

Share prize’s artistic director is Bruce Sterling, writer, journalist and critic of the new media. He invited two special guests to join the international jury: Cap. Samantha Cristoforetti and Paola Antonelli.

Captain Samantha Cristoforetti is the European Space Agency astronaut protagonist of Futura mission, the second long-duration mission ASI,  engineer and design enthusiast. Paola Antonelli, is the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of R&D at MoMA New York. Paola Antonelli was responsible for adding video games, the Arduino control board and innovative 3DPrinted objects to the NY MoMA’s permanent design collection.

The jury is then completed by Chiara Garibaldi, the SHARE Festival director, Jasmina Tesanovic, widely known as “the Jasmina of Casa Jasmina”.

On March 4th the Share jury will meet to select the entries for Share Festival and Samantha Cristoforetti and Paola Antonelli are going to give a public talk at Toolbox Coworking  from h.17:30 to h.19:30 (CET).  Stay tuned  on our social channels for the live streaming link. 

This week we’re happy to  introduce a new Genuino Reseller from Canada with Julie Gendron of RobotShop!

- Tell us a bit more about RobotShop

At RobotShop, we specialize in personal and professional robot technology and offer a wide range of robotic products and services in this sector. We have offices in USA, Canada and France. Our vision is to be the world leading source for personal and professional robot technology that help increase the pleasure, knowledge, liberty and security of individuals. We are also committed to promoting and advocating the interest and necessity of robotics use towards positive ends, allowing humanity to attain a better world.

- What’s your company’s super power

Putting robotics at your service!

- What’s your favourite Arduino or Genuino project?

We enjoy Arduino robots and projects from beginners that are starting in robotics. For example this Arduino robot from a beginner on the Let’s Make Robots Blog and forum. We like it because it represents the Arduino and Genuino brand well with a simple and fun “do it yourself” / hobbyist project. This is the meaning of Arduino; for anyone to be able to build a robot or interactive project easily. This is why we help the way we can, by providing Arduino tutorials that can help beginners as well as more advanced Arduino users.

Contacts

RobotShop Store Website Canada  – Facebook – Twitter –  Google+

Some weeks ago we started introducing to the community our list of resellers and the updated page where you can find resellers of Genuino and Arduino products around the world.

We started with Watterott from Germany and now, in the picture below,  you can see Diego and Oscar from BricoGeek  based in Spain and ready to ship  Genuino Uno and Genuino Mega  boards!

Let’s get to know them better:

- Tell us a bit more about BricoGeek

We started our company in 2005 and later in 2007 we became one of the first Arduino official distributors for Spain and Portugal. After winning a board in a contest organized by uchobby.com I had so much fun with my new board, I continued to make more projects which I posted in our blog and realised that this little board was really easy to understand and I could make  great things with it. Many of our viewers also enjoyed our projects and started making too. And here we are, 10 years later, sharing projects and growing our community of fellow makers!

- What’s your company’s super power?

We aim to be honest and don’t fool our customers. We try to make BricoGeek a good place to share knowledge and ideas and it seems our customers love that as much as we do.

- What’s your favorite Arduino or Genuino project?

[Oscar] There are so many projects I like and it’s hard to keep track of all of them but I recently discovered a really cool project called “Cubetto” which is a game with a little robot to help kids understand and learn programming. And from the same guys another one called “Toot” also for kids and based on the Montessori learning system. Im working on very similar projects that hopefully I will release them in a few weeks (but shhh it’s a surprise for my daughter! ;D). I really enjoy when I make a project that helps young people learn new technical skills, you will be surprised how smart kids can be when they really enjoy learning.

Contacts

BricoGeek Store Website  – Facebook – Twitter – Youtube - Instagram – Google+

The Academy Awards night is coming and it’s a perfect moment to be nominated and  win a prize.  Casa Jasmina project won its prize yesterday: the Internet of Things Awards, showcasing excellence in all areas across the Internet of Things since 2011, in the category of best IoT open source project – Editors Choice Winner.

The Open Source award “honors projects that bring those values to the Internet of Things, either by incorporating open source technology or by making public the details of their own designs and software”, this is the idea of the IoT awards organization in which Casa Jasmina completely believes.

The open source movement is for Arduino and consequently for Casa Jasmina, the core of internet in terms of hardware, software and protocols that compose the global communication infrastructure, and in this way the power of collaborative development is the main focus of Casa Jasmina idea.

As a futuristic Wunderkammer, Casa Jasmina will collect and share artificialia to present in a open way system what and how the IoT concepts will change the daily home life.

Winning this competition is for Casa Jasmina the acknowledgement of a project that take on to transform into reality a series of reflections around IoT and open source. Casa Jasmina is really proud to have been selected between 21 projects, because this represent the attention we are trying to attract.

There is still a lot of work, Casa Jasmina is working hard to rich the goal; it’s not simple but awards like this give hope to the project, and show the interest that exists on these issues.

So thank you all

(Read the blogpost on Casa Jasmina blog)

For the third year we are inviting the open source community gathered around Arduino and Genuino globally to celebrate with us Arduino Day 2016 on Saturday April 2nd!

Arduino Day is a worldwide celebration of Arduino’s birthday. It’s a 24 hours-long event –organized directly by the community, or by the Arduino team– where people interested in Arduino get together, share their experiences, and learn more. Everyone can participate in the role of local organizer or as a participant.

For the past two years organizers throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australia involved participants in activities, workshops, events for a wide range of audiences and skillsets.

Stay tuned because in February we’ll be launching the open call for entries.

In the meanwhile explore what happened in 2014 and 2015 and … start organizing!

Hashtag: #ArduinoD16