After nine years, Arduino participated to Ars Electronica 2015 to present an intelligent module system developed at the Malmö office: the system is called Eslov and is meant to make creation and coding very easy. This system allows you to explore the concepts of physical computing by plugging modules that can be programmed using a visual interface.

Our partners at the PELARS* project and some of our team members went to Linz to build the PELARS “Learning + Making” Zone for the U19 / Create Your World area, a part of the festival dedicated to teenagers. A pop-up experimental learning environment was built and it aimed to support learners understand what’s going on when they do hands-on science, technology & math in the classroom. Students and visitors tried Eslov and made some game dynamics to experience how the modules work. The feedback from the participants was encouraging with many students staying for a couple of hours and even returning back for multiple sessions.

Eslov will be also presented on our booth at World Maker Faire New York on September 26th to 27th, and Maker Faire Rome on October 16th to 18th.

*Pelars stands for Practice-based Experiential Learning Analytics Research And Support. Pelars is a project meant for improving how teachers, learners and technologies can support one another in hands-on learning of science, technology and math (STEM). Pelars will develop technologies (kits, sensing and electronic systems for classrooms) that will help teachers and learners understand what happens when people do science and math in the classroom.

PELARS project has received funding from the European’s Seventh Framework Programme for research technological development and demonstrations under grant agreement 619738.

If you want to follow up the development of the project in depth, visit the PELARS main page at: http://learningmaking.eu

(The news was originally posted on Arduino Verkstad blog by Laura Balboa)

Sónar+D is the international conference that brings together a combination of activities with a common theme: the relationship between creativity and technology and the digital transformation of the cultural industries involved.

During latest edition David Cuartielles gave a talk about the value of Open Source and a workshop with Alessandro Contini titled Making Noise with Arduino. 

David presented some examples like:

• The Alcontrol Device (a breath analyser that detects high alcohol levels and limits mobile usage of a user depending on how drunk he/she is)
• The involuntary dance machine that uses electrical stimulus to different muscles
• A 5-day hack to a car that needed be driven remotely by musicians playing live
• A large scale light installation for the Jakarta Marathon

He also got the opportunity to talk about robotics, kids learning code and electronics, and the future of Arduino. Later on Bruce Sterling, curator of Casa Jasmina,  was the protagonist of the festival’s closing keynote and talked about technology, music and the past/current state of the industry.

News originally posted on Arduino Verkstad blog

Todo is the italian design consultancy and creative agency taking care of Arduino and Genuino brand identity and interviewed in this previous blogpost.

Last year, among other projects, they worked on an unconventional communication campaign to narrate the re-opening of the well-known Turin’s Egyptian Museum, displaying a collection of over 30,000 ancient pieces.

The campaign’s goal was to hold people’s attention over six months before the official opening of the Museum and be able to speak to a broad national and international audience.

TODO created an open air installation composed by an almost-4-meter-tall hourglass (with a hidden mechanism running on Arduino) that had to work day and night, for six months and over the winter. According to Wikipedia, this hourglass could be the 4th biggest of its kind in the world!

The main challenge was that they had to make sure that the very last grain inside the hourglass would fall on the day of the Museum’s inauguration.

The installation was created thanks to many collaborators among which Gabriele Gambotto who developed the electronic part based on the Arduino Yún on which they added a custom shield ( See pic below), connected to various sensors and a precision scale. The sand-like material passed through a valve and a long screw conveyor controlled by a mot

Take a look at the video of the ‘Hourglass Countdown’ and to see it in action:

In an indoor area of the museum an interactive display case was the other face of the campaign revealed to the audience:

A series of replicas of ancient Egyptian finds were covered in sand, and users could interact with the system by choosing the spot they wished to unveil, blowing into a microphone, and having their breath converted by a small robot arm, which placed itself in the exact spot, blew away the sand and revealed part of the find.

The experience came to life in two different contexts. Locally, a roadshow with several stops made the display case accessible all around the city. Online, through the campaign’s website, you could blow away the sand from anywhere in the world, seeing the live streaming video of the robot moving and unveiling the find.

The installation was running on a ROS system, Arduino Mega, using blow sensors and controller, and an iPad to allow interaction with the visitors of the museum.

Check the video to see the amazing expression of people discovering ancient objects below the sand:

The Selfie Plant is an interactive installation taking pictures of itself using Arduino Yún, Facebook Graph APIs and then uploads them to Facebook. It was developed by a group of students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design during “The secret life of objects” course held also by Arduino.cc team by Joshua Noble and Simone Rebaudengo. The final prototype was on display at the class exhibition, to observe the interaction of the audience with it, and the results are on Facebook.

The Selfie Plant is an attempt to provoke some thoughts above genre of expression. The Selfie Plant expresses itself in the form of nice-looking selfies, which it clicks according to its mood, weather or occasion. It mimics human behaviour, by giving it’s best pose and adjusting the camera angle to take the perfect selfie.

In the documentation on Github you can find all the details of the project composed by an Arduino Yún, controlling 2 servo motors and adjusting the positions of the plant and the camera stick; a python script (facebook.py) which communicates with Facebook’s graph API to post the captured photos on plant’s Facebook profile. In addition you’ll need also a LED Matrix, a Bread Board and 5 Volt Battery.

Here’s a preview of the diagram:

Selfie Plant is an interactive installation taking pictures of itself using Arduino Yún, Facebook Graph APIs and then uploads them to Facebook. It was developed by a group of students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design during “The secret life of objects” course held also by Arduino.cc team. The final prototype was placed in the exhibition of the school, to see the interaction of the audience with it and you can see the result on Facebook.

The Selfie Plant is an attempt to provoke some thoughts above genre of expression. The Selfie Plant expresses itself in the form of nice-looking selfies, which it clicks according to its mood, weather or occasion. It mimics human behaviour, by giving it’s best pose and adjusting the camera angle to take the perfect selfie.

In the documentation on Github you can find all the details of the project composed by an Arduino Yún, controlling 2 servo motors and adjusting the positions of the plant and the camera stick; a python script (facebook.py) which communicates with Facebook’s graph API to post the captured photos on plant’s Facebook profile. In addition you’ll need also a LED Matrix, a Bread Board and 5 Volt Battery.

Here’s a preview of the diagram:

Last month Massimo Banzi gave a lecture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (California, US). It was titled The Arduino Experience and covered the historical origins of Arduino, including a explanation of the process of designing tools which make digital technology accessible to people who are not experts, and the essential role of the larger Arduino ecosystem that supports it. After the keynote Len Shustek, chairman of the board of the Museum, curated a session of Q&A. If you didn’t have the chance to be there, the recorded video is online and you can watch it now:

Last month Massimo Banzi gave a lecture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (California, US). It was titled The Arduino Experience and covered the historical origins of Arduino, including a explanation of the process of designing tools which make digital technology accessible to people who are not experts, and the essential role of the larger Arduino ecosystem that supports it. After the keynote Len Shustek, chairman of the board of the Museum, curated a session of Q&A. If you didn’t have the chance to be there, the recorded video is online and you can watch it now:

Casa Jasmina, Torino’s Open-Source Connected Apartment, opens its doors on Saturday during Mini Maker Faire in Torino. The unique example of connected apartment with open-source ideals, promoted by Arduino and curated by the futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, is hosted by Toolbox Coworking in a old industrial building already shared by Officine Arduino (the Italian Arduino headquarter), and Fablab Torino.

During the opening, Casa Jasmina will be available publicly for the first time, hosting some local Maker furnitures, an Italian selection of Valcucine kitchen appliances, household works by International Open Source designers (OpenDesk, Jesse Howard, Aker, Open Structure), and a small display of various connected objects and artifacts from the Energy@Home consortium, Torino Share Festival, and designs and prototypes from the first Casa Jasmina “Call for Projects”.

In the forthcoming months, Casa Jasmina will host residency programs, workshops and talks. This “house of the future” is not restricted to technicians but is meant for people interested in everyday life under near-future conditions and will be available on AirBnB for futurist weekends in Torino.

During the day at the Faire from 10am to 7pm,  you can explore over 50  makers’ projects, listen to many talks and  to the presentation of Casa Jasmina project by Bruce Sterling, enjoy a kids’ area with activities and a lab for the little ones.

Casa Jasmina  guided tours are starting from 11.30 am. Check the program.

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.

‘Social Vibes’ is a Masters Degree (MSc.) project, in Interactive Media by Cian McLysaght, at the University of Limerick, Ireland. They shared with us their project, running on Arduino Uno, composed by a physical artifact designed and created specifically for an installation adopting the fundamental sound mechanisms used in a vibraphone, know also as a ‘Vibe’:

The instrument consists of twelve musical tones of different pitches. The music created on the instrument is derived from a continuous stream of input via multiple users on Twitter and the explicit interaction from Twitter users, tweeting the instrument directly to the project’s, “@vibe_experiment” Twitter account. Data associated with the emotional status of Twitter users, is mined from the Twitter network via Twitter’s open source, application programming interface (API).

For example if a user tweets “The sun is out, I’m happy”, the code I’ve written will strip out key words and strings associated with the user’s emotional state, within the tweets, ie “I’m happy”, and translate this to a musical notation. Mining Twitter’s API, allows a continuous stream of data. These emotional states are then mapped to specific notes on the physical musical instrument, located in a public space. The tempo of the musical expression will be entirely based upon the speed and volume of the incoming tweets on the Twitter API.

Twitter users who are both followers and non followers of the musical instrument’s Twitter account (@vibe_experiment) can tweet directly to the instrument and this direct interaction will be given precedence, allowing user’s who tweet directly to have their emotional state ‘played’. This allows users to hijack or take over the instrument and experiment with it in a playful manner, but also allows those with musical knowledge the potential to compose simple musical arrangements. When users are not tweeting the instrument directly, then the instrument will revert to mining the Twitter API.

To entice users to interact and observe the action of the instrument there is a live streaming broadcast of the instrument via Twitcam on the Vibe’s Twitter account. This is a live streaming broadcast of the instrument via Twitcam on the @vibe_experiment account. Twitcam, is Twitter’s built in live-streaming platform. This simply requires a webcam and a valid Twitter account.

The instrument constantly tweets back updates to it’s own Twitter account to not only inform people of the general status but also to engage users to interact directly with the ‘Vibe’.