Arduino was conceived as an open source microcontroller for artists, designers, and others who aren't necessarily techie/programmer types. Of course, all sorts of makers have flocked to this technology because of its versatility. But in spite of its relative ease of use, there's still a barrier to entry for new users. Like kids. For that reason, BirdBrain Technologies' Hummingbird looks promising. They call it "pre-Arduino."
We are eager to announce the launch of the official Arduino Starter Kit! We have been working hard together in developing a complete selection of 15 projects that will let you become a true arduino tinkerer!
But that’s more:
The new starter kit has been developed together with a series of ten video tutorials hosted by Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi, which can be viewed at www.rs-components.com/arduino. Ideally used in conjunction with the videos, the kit provides an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It contains all of the essential components required to start programming with the Arduino Uno board, and a guidebook featuring 15 different projects, which are designed to evolve the user from beginner to professional level. Comprising a motor, servomotor and driver, the kit also offers particular benefits to users wishing to apply mechatronics to their designs.
read through for the whole components and projects list
We are aware this kit will let a lot of people step in the Arduino world: for this reason we opened a brand new category of the arduino forum. You can buy the Kit on RS Components and will soon be available on the Arduino Store and the other distributors [notify me when this happen]
Desde BricoGeek nos llega la noticia de la celebración de una nueva Barcamp, esta vez en Vigo. La reunión perfecta para cacharrear y debatir entre amigos sobre temas como el Open Hardware, Arduino o impresoras 3D entre otros muchos, y puede que con alguna que otra sorpresa.
Unas jornadas DIY muy interesantes que tendrán lugar en las instalaciones del CFP Daniel Castelao de Vigo en las que Alejandro Taracido presentará a su mítico robot ORUGAS con las últimas novedades añadidas.
Sin duda, un evento al que no se debe faltar!
Planning preliminar (sujeto a cambios):
Enlaces:
VIA | BricoGeek
Ecco il primo di una serie di workshop che Officine Arduino organizzerà in Italia. Quale luogo migliore da cui iniziare se non la capitale? Abbiamo parlato / immaginato / organizzato con molte persone in questi mesi – da Trieste in giù – ed il buon Alex Giordano lo ha già ribattezzato come il “Tour di Arduino“. Ci accontentiamo di portare workshop dove non sono mai stati, e quindi al Sud, nelle isole. Vogliamo rispondere alle decine di mail di utenti che hanon chiesto e chiedono un workshop a casa loro.
Oggi ci accontentiamo di annunciare questo workshop, che non sarebbe stato possibile senza l’appoggio di Cattid- Centro di Ricerca sulla Comunicazione e la Tecnologia dell’Università la “Sapienza” di Roma e gli amici di DiScienza, una associazione italiana di cui abbiamo parlato spesso, organizzatori dell’annuale Arduino Day che si tiene ogni anno proprio a Roma.
Una talk pubblica su Arduino e l’Educazione, con la spiegazione di vari progetti e possibilità di fare domande e networking é prevista in venerdì 28 settembre in luogo da definirsi. Qualora foste interessati iscrivetevi qui.
Abbiamo anche cercato di venire incontro ad alcune problematiche che sorgono quando si organizzano eventi in giro. Cosa succede se non avvengono vicino a te? Proprio per questo lanciamo un servizio abbastanza rudimentale: un form in cui potete dire dove siete e noi, una volta raggiunto un certo numero di persone vi informiamo in anticipo sulle date e i posti.
Ovviamente non volevamo escludere gli utenti del vivace forum italiano, ai quali offriamo di partecipare gratuitamente alla parte di realizzazione dei progetti della domenica. Per ovvie ragioni abbiamo dovuto limitare il numero di fruitori di questo servizio (che testiamo proprio in questa occasione) al numero di 5 persone. E’ molto importante supportare piccole realtà (non tanto piccole nel caso di Roma, ovviamente) di Smanettoni Arduinici Urbani (i famosi SAU).
Dubbi, domande, perplessità? visitate la pagina del workshop o scrivete a d.gomba(at)arduino.cc
Fans of Douglas Adams will no doubt catch the reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the title of Becky Stern’s latest project, The Babel Fish Language Toy. This sound- and RFID-enabled Arduino project with a crafty enclosure helps you learn foreign languages with RFID flash cards. When you bring a flash card near the fish’s tongue, you’ll hear the pronunciation of the word, which comes from .WAV files that you pre-load onto the SD card. And naturally, a full how-to writeup and video will help you along the way should you decide to make your own. Xie xie Becky!
El pasado fin de semana Arduteka, en colaboración con Cooking Hacks y el proyecto Milla Digital del ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, celebraron la Arduino Barcamp más multitudinaria realizada hasta la fecha en España.
Ponencias de todo tipo, desde impresoras 3D hasta las novedades que acontecen al mundo Arduino de la mano de David Cuartielles, pasando por algo de software libre como Plasma Active, un entorno KDE para dispositivos móviles, hicieron las delicias de todos los asistentes al evento.
Loccioni Group, is an italian company that sponsors every year a project internship entitled “Classe Virtuale”, dedicated to young students coming from local technical schools.
This year, “Classe Virtuale 2012″ has been composed by 27 students with different backgrounds, selected among 120 candidates. After a stating training period, during the three-weeks internship the team worked on a very nice Arduino-based project: Flow Meter.
Here you may find a brief interview we had with Daniele Caschera, one of the components of “Classe Virtuale 2012″, about Flow Meter and on how Arduino helped in its design.
Alessandro: Daniele, could you describe us what “Classe Virtuale” is, in practice?
Daniele: “Classe Virtuale”, the partnership between Loccioni Group and local technical education institutions, has began in 2001 when Mr. Loccioni decided to invest on young students, by offering training periods and stages inside his company. In 2010 the project, which occours on annual basis, expanded to three more scools and in 2012 it has reached the 12-th edition.
The goal of this collaboration is to train and educate young technicians, by serving as a bridge between school and a real employment.
A: Could you briefly describe us the “Flow Meter” project?
D: “Flow Meter” is a real flow measurer: it has been designed to measure the flow of all the students who have attended to the previous editions of “Classe Virtuale”, starting from the first edition.
First, we have designed a PHP web application usable to collect the information reagarding all the participants to the previous editions and, then, we used some Arduino boards to represent this amount of data into a visible form, by means of several LEDs.
More in details, Flow Meter can be turned on by laying the hands on it, which can be detected by means of some proximity sensors located on the surface.
Then, it begins to show the collected data, starting from the first edition of “Classe Virtuale”, by turning on a set of LEDs, arranged in three rows inside a semi-transparent, white sphere. The first row, composed by red LEDs, represents how many students are currently employed at Loccioni, while the second one, composed by blue LEDs, shows how many people work or study in Italy; the last row (again composed by red LEDs) presents how many people work or study abroad.
By leaving the hands on Flow Meter, it is possible to scroll through all the editions of “Classe Virtuale”.
Finally, four small pillars, placed at the corners of the structure, represent the four schools involved in the 2012 edition of the project: a set of LEDs is used to show how many students come from each institution per year.
A: How Arduino contributed to this Flow Meter?
D: Many of us did not know Arduino at the beginning of “Classe Virtuale 2012″. The board has been introduced us during the initial training period by some electronic engineers at Loccioni. Then, we started to find out more information about it and how to adopt it in our project on the web, on books and so on.
Arduino has been fundamental in our project, simply because it composes the “brain” of Flow Meter, by means of a set 4 Arduino Uno and an Arduino Mega, and because it is used to activate the LEDs composing its “visual” interface.
A: How do you evaluate this internship experience?
D: This experience has been very positive for us, mainly because it gave us the chance to work on a real project together with very skilled people and technicians. Moreover, since the team has been divided into small working groups (e.g., those working on mechanical parts and those working on electronics and programming), we have gained experience on topics that you typically won’t study at school. Everyone has learned a lot during “Classe Virtuale”!
This very nice project, which has been presented on July 19 (the streaming of the event will be available here), represents another example of how open-source solutions can be used as effective enabling technologies, even for educational purposes.
Great job “Classe Virtuale” and thanks for this interview!
We are really thrilled to blog Massimo’s delightful talk of yesterday about Arduino and the open hardware movement: TED team chose it to be the first video to be traslated and released for everybody to see.
Enjoy!
You might have heard the news via other media, but we are building a robot. For almost two years now we have been collaborating with the Complubot Educational Robotics Association from Madrid, Spain. We have gone through several iterations of prototypes, we have been 3D printing wheels, we have looked into color screens, screws, sound speakers …
(c) 2012 Complubot, Nerea revising the robots for RC-Mexico 2012
Things are coming along and we are close to the release our first robot. The experience of building this is being amazing and I am sure there will be more bots following this first one.
When we started this process, I knew a lot about digital electronics, but little about robotics. During the last two years I burnt some transistor chips, and made some motors move, I read the books, talked to the people, traveled back and forth to Complubot’s headquarters at a school in Alcala de Henares to check ideas, revise the hardware, and talk about software.
Six months ago, we -Ivan, Nerea, Eduardo and me- passed over the eagle files to Arduino’s hardware guru for him to evaluate the best way to manufacture the robot. We tested battery charging systems, DC-DC converters to improve the response from the motors, tried better display technologies, and now we have our alpha robot running. The project we have been calling “Lottie Lemon” is about to become The Arduino Robot.
(c) 2012 Compubot, Ivan (left) and Nerea talking to some of the RCJ volunteers before opening to the public
We are presenting The Arduino Robot at the RoboCup Mexico 2012 at Complubot’s booth. Nerea, Ivan, and Eduardo are representing Arduino, showing the robots, running a workshop for the attendants to the RCJ event, demoing all the official Arduino boards, and reporting back for the rest of us.
Follow their adventures (in Spanish) at their blog, and come back to ours for more information soon.