[vtol] is quickly becoming our favorite technological artist. Just a few weeks ago he graced us with a Game Boy Camera gun, complete with the classic Game Boy printer. Now, he’s somehow managed to create even lower resolution images with a modified typewriter that produces ASCII art images.

As with everything dealing with typewriters, machine selection is key. [vtol] is using a Brother SX-4000 typewriter for this build, a neat little daisy wheel machine that’s somehow still being made today. The typewriter is controlled by an Arduino Mega that captures an image from a camera, converts it to ASCII art with Pure Data and MAX/MSP, then slowly (and loudly) prints it on a piece of paper one character at a time.

The ASCII art typewriter was recently shown at the 101 Festival where a number of people stood in front of a camera and slowly watched a portrait assemble itself out of individual characters. Check out the video of the exhibit below.

Last year Maker Faire Rome welcomed 600 projects, 200 performances, 90.000 visitors coming from all over the world.  Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition recently announced its third edition scheduled from the 16th to the 18th of October 2015 and will take place at  “La Sapienza” University in Rome, exceptionally “closed” for three days to host this international event.

The Curators of the Faire, Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino and Riccardo Luna, italian Digital Champion, are inviting makers of all kinds and ages to showcase their amazing work and embrace the do-it-yourself (or do-it-together) spirit with a great and appreciative audience.

Are you a Maker, an Innovator, a digital Craftsman? The MakerFaireRome’s Call4Makers is out!

There are many ways to participate:

• you can exhibit your project: we’ll give you a booth with table and chairs inside the halls, which will be filled with visitors who are curious and interested in meeting you
• you can give a presentation in public: we’ll give you a room or a stage where you can talk about your project or tell your story or deal with the issues that you want to propose
• you can hold a workshop: we’ll give you a workshop area where you can do interactive demonstrations and engage participants -adults and / or children- in practical activities
• you can perform in public: we’ll give you a space or a stage for you to perform in your creative, technological, robotic, musical, pyrotechnic performance…

The proposals regarding the exposure of projects, if accepted, will lead to the allocation of a booth, free of charge. Presence is required at this booth while Maker Faire Rome 2015 is open to the public (three days). It will also be possible to sell products or gadgets.

Accepted projects will be valorized on the MakerFaire Rome website. Besides, Maker Faire Rome press & media team will diffuse info about participants to the newspapers, radio and television stations, which in the past years have devoted a lot of attention to the projects and performers.

We expect creative, innovative, fun, interactive projects, showing the process by which the achievements enrich visitors, communicating passion and ingenuity.

Are you thinking about participanting? In the meanwhile:

• spread the word! #MFR15
• help us to involve all the makers you know (and especially those who still do not know they are makers!)
• subscribe to our newsletter to keep informed about news, events and discounts!

We are looking forward to seeing you all in Rome in October!

We are posting below an interesting blogpost published on the Adafruit’s website on Sunday April 19th, and then mentioned by Hackaday.

Give it a read and use the #TeamArduinoCC tag when posting a pic of your packaging: that’s how you can show your support to Arduino.cc!

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Please post old Arduino packaging that says “Manufactured under license from Arduino” #TeamArduinoCC
Hey folks, as a lot of you know there’s a huge Arduino vs Arduino dispute (Hackaday / MAKE coverage / Arduino.cc). We’re currently making an official Arduino with Arduino.cc so we’re not commenting at this time for all sorts of good reasons, however, we, as in the Arduino.cc community, could use your help. If you could dig up any old Arduino packaging that has “Manufactured under license from Arduino by SMART PROJECTS” and post the photos – that could be pretty helpful for “team Arduino.cc”.

PLEASE INDICATE what country where you purchased the products in and what year!

Pictured above, an Arduino UNO from September 2014 from Becky Stern’s desk. She had it unopened and we were able to see an important detail “Manufactured under license from Arduino by SMART PROJECTS S.r.l. Via Romano, 12 10010 Scarmagno Italy.

Please post any old packaging you have from older Arduino products that also have this on Flickr, G+, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you can, you can use the tag #TeamArduinoCC to help. You can also email it to teamarduinocc@adafruit.com

Here’s a video showing where’s the sentence mentioned by Adafruit and below the #TeamArduinoCC  hashtag timeline:

#TeamArduinoCC Tweets<>

Before we begin, we must begin with an obligatory disclaimer: handling mains voltage can be very dangerous. Do not do so unless you are qualified! You could burn your house down. (Without the lemons.) That being said, [TJ] has created an interesting dev board for controlling mains voltage over WiFi with the now-ubiquitous ESP8266 module. At only 50mm x 25mm, it is easily small enough to fit inside a junction box!

Called the MPSMv2, the core of the project is the ESP8266 module. The dev board itself can support anything with GPIO pins, whether it’s an Arudino, Raspberry Pi, or anything else with those features. Flashing the NodeMCU firmware is pretty much all that needs to be done in order to get the device up and running, and once you get the device connected to your WiFi you’ll be able to control whatever appliances you want.

The device uses a triac to do the switching, and is optically isolated from mains. Be sure to check out the video after the break to see the device in action. All in all, this could be a great way to get started with home automation, or maybe just do something simple like build a timer for your floor lamp. Anything is possible!

[Kirk Kaiser] isn’t afraid to admit his latest project a bit strange, being a plant-controlled set of robotic bongos. We don’t find it odd at all.  This is the kind of thing we love to see. His project’s origins began a month ago after taking a class at NYC Resistor about creating music from robotic instruments. Inspired to make his own, [Kirk] repurposed a neighbor’s old wooden dish rack to serve as a mount for solenoids that, when triggered, strike a couple of plastic cowbells or bongo drums.

A Raspberry Pi was originally used to interface the solenoids with a computer or MIDI keyboard, but after frying it, he went with a Teensy LC instead and never looked back. Taking advantage of the Teensy’s MIDI features, [Kirk] programmed a specific note to trigger each solenoid. When he realized that the Teensy also had capacitive touch sensors, he decided to get his plants in on the fun in a MaKey MaKey kind of way. Each plant is connected to the Teensy’s touchRead pins by stranded wire; the other end is stripped, covered with copper tape, and placed into the soil. When a plant’s capacitance surpasses a threshold, the respective MIDI note – and solenoid – is triggered. [Kirk] quickly discovered that hard-coding threshold values was not the best idea. Looking for large changes was a better method, as the capacitance was dramatically affected when the plant’s soil dried up. As [Kirk] stood back and admired his work, he realized there was one thing missing – lights! He hooked up an Arduino with a DMX shield and some LEDs that light up whenever a plant is touched.

We do feel a disclaimer is at hand for anyone interested in using this botanical technique: thorny varieties are ill-advised, unless you want to play a prank and make a cactus the only way to turn the bongos off!

Over the last few months, the internal struggles between the various founders of Arduino have come to a head. This began last November when Arduino SRL (the Italian version of an LLC) sued Arduino LLC for trademark infringement in Massachusetts District court. To assuage the hearts and minds of the maker community, Arduino SRL said they were the real Arduino by virtue of being the first ones to manufacture Arduino boards. A fork of the Arduino IDE by Arduino SRL – simply an update to the version number – was a ploy to further cement their position as the true developers of Arduino.

This is a mess, but not just for two organizations fighting over a trademark. If you’re selling Arduinos in your web store, which Arduino do you side with?

[Nate] from Sparkfun is answering that question with a non-answer.

Currently, Arduino SRL is the only source of Arduino Unos. Sparkfun will continue to buy Unos from SRL, but they’re not necessarily siding with Arduino SRL; people demand blue Arduinos with Italy silkscreened on the board, and Sparkfun is more than happy to supply these.

There are, however, questions about the future of Arduino hardware. The Arduino software stack will surely be around in a year, but anyone that will be purchasing thousands of little blue boards over the next year is understandably nervous.

This isn’t the first time Sparkfun has faced a challenge in Arduino supply. In 2012, when the Arduino Uno R3 was released, all the documentation for their very popular Inventor’s Kit was obsoleted overnight. In response to these supply chain problems, Sparkfun created the RedBoard.

Sparkfun has always offered to pay royalties on the RedBoard to Arduino LLC, just as they do with the Arduino Pro and Pro Mini. Effectively, Sparkfun is on the fence, with offers to manufacture the Arduino Zero, Uno, Mega, and Due coming from the LLC.

The reason for this is consumers. If someone wants an Arduino SRL-manufactured board, they’ll buy it. If, however, a customer wants to support Arduino LLC, that option is on the table as well.

It’s not a pretty position to be in, but it does show how someone can support one Arduino over another. In a year or two, there will only be one Arduino, but until then, if you have a preference, at least Sparkfun is giving you a choice.

Credit to Sparkfun for the great Spy vs. Spy image. Why don’t you sell googly eyes?

Sea Renderings is a water robot made by Geir Andersen in 2010 with the aim of measuring water depths in lakes and running on Arduino Duemilanove:

The purpose of this robot is to have it log water depths along a predefined set of waypoints. It stores its data on memory sticks or on SD cards. The estimated runtime is about 24 hours and with a top speed of 3km/h it will travel roughly 72km. With a log entry for every 10m this would give us over 700 depth measurements with full GPS reference.

Geir’s project page is hosted at Let’s Make Robots,  a free and volunteer based initiative produced and maintained by members of the robot building  community. You can have a look at the documentation and some of the illustrations showing the output of the measurements done at Lake Riskedalsvatnet in Norway.

Casa Jasmina and Arduino are proud to announce a collaboration with Opendesk at Atelier Clerici during Fuorisalone 2015.

Atelier Clerici will host an independent project curated by Space Caviar and Z33, with a daily program of exhibitions and activities aimed at questioning the future of design in relation to architecture, technology and global context of living.

Opendesk, the online platform for open and smart design, will join Atelier Clerici with ‘Open Making Platform’ a series of events exploring issues related to open source design as a global and, at the same time, local practice. The program of  ‘Open Making Platform’ will include an exhibition of smart open designs made by local Italian makers and two workshops: ‘Design for Open Making’ (Wed April 15th, 11.30 am – 1.30 pm)and ‘Smart Furniture’ (Fri April 17th, 2 – 5.30 PM), in collaboration with Arduino.

Arduino and Casa Jasmina invite you to take part to the meetup and informal workshop focusing on the integration of open source connected technologies into everyday objects. Friday’s event will include a presentation by Bruce Sterling about the Casa Jasmina project.

Register for the event here.