Maker Faire is a three-day, family-friendly event that has been celebrating the DIY Movement for the last 10 years. The ‘Greatest Show & Tell on Earth’ is designed for creative, innovative people of all ages and backgrounds, who like to tinker and love to make things.

In just a few days, the Arduino team will be in attendance for the 11th annual Maker Faire Bay Area as a Goldsmith Sponsor. Those heading to the San Mateo on May 20th-22nd will want to swing by our booth (#2321) and join us for some inspiring talks, especially the highly-anticipated State of Arduino by Massimo Banzi on Saturday at 12:30pm.

We’ve been preparing a series of demos to showcase the family of Arduino tools for the Internet of Things through our Arduino Create platform. Those who come by our booth will have the chance to experience the following firsthand:

• Cloud Sensor Station | “Make Sense of Your Data”
  The Cloud Sensor Station is equipped with four different sensors: gas detection, light intensity, motion detection (infrared) and temperature/humidity. These four sensors send values to the Arduino Cloud so that you can see real-time results of the collected data from everywhere.
• Yún Camera | “Lights! Camera! Facebook!”
  The Yún Camera captures photos at the press of a button and then automatically uploads them onto Facebook. (We’re sensing plenty of selfies in our near future!)
• Yún Message | “Leave a Message and I’ll Show It Back”
  The Yún Message is a smart desk, developed in collaboration with Opendesk, that displays custom messages on an LED matrix. This piece of smart furniture lets users share a reminder or note through a webpage. Come and leave a note or… do it online!
• Twitter Printer | “The IoTweet!”
  This connected thermal printer running on MKR1000 will automatically print tweets from all over the world with the #PrintArduino hashtag. (Look forward to seeing what you come up with!)

Additionally, we’ll be showcasing our Creative Technologies in the Classroom (CTC) program, which is a collaborative learning curriculum designed for schools that wish to incorporate emerging technologies into their existing technology classes.

Whether you’re a teacher or student, come and discover how to explore electronics through a series of hands-on coding projects that’ll provide you with the foundations of programming, electronics and mechanics.

Aside from some of our latest products and projects, we’ll also play host to several members of our growing open-source ecosystem and partners like Intel, ARM and Atmel, to name just a few.

Have a question about Arduino? Looking to get started but don’t know how? Beginners, or even experienced users, will have the chance to get their questions answered inside our booth. We’ve set aside an area where you can speak to our team of experts, from your recent invention to one of our boards. What’s more, you’ll even be able to take home an assortment of Arduino SWAG: stickers, pins and other cool giveaways!

Can’t wait to see everyone soon! In the meantime, stay tuned as we’ll be posting a confirmed agenda of scheduled talks in the next few days. For everything else, check out Maker Faire’s official site!

The Base42 team, which is part of the hacking community Tecnoateneu Vilablareix, has created a stunning water curtain with the help of 3D printing and Arduino. The installation, currently on display at the Temps de Flors flower show in Girona, uses 128 3D-printed nozzles and 64 3D-printed valves to dispense water in floral patterns.

The water curtain employs four Arduino Nanos to control the valves, which work in pairs to draw the flowers, words or other images. Meanwhile, an Arduino Mega provides a Wi-Fi connection to issue commands.

In terms of its mechanics, a tank at the base holds 500 liters of water, while a pump pushes that water to the top of the system at a rate of 80 liters per minute. From there, the water passes down through the 3D-printed nozzles, forming what appears as a 3m x 2m fluid screen. To create different patterns in the curtain, the nozzles can quickly adjust the direction of the water to one of two nozzles in a pair.

A few years ago, MIT’s Tangible Media Group developed “inFORM” — a dynamic display that used a series of motor-controlled pins to render digital content physically. In their latest project, the researchers have added some features to the existing platform to create what they’re calling “Materiable,” an interface that not only changes shape but also simulates a variety of materials such as rubber, water and sand.

Materiable’s tiny pins can be programmed with different properties simultaneously, as well as respond to touch and give haptic feedback in return. Each individual pixel has the ability to detect the pressure of user input and react with simulated physics via computer algorithms. This enables the interface to be used for everything from mocking up concepts, to prototyping landscape designs, to testing complex scenarios like earthquakes and tsunamis.

Shape changing interfaces give physical shapes to digital data so that users can feel and manipulate data with their hands and bodies. However, physical objects in our daily life not only have shape but also various material properties. In this project, we propose “Materiable,” an interaction technique to represent material properties using shape changing interfaces. Specifically, by integrating the multi-modal sensation techniques of haptics, our approach builds a perceptive model for the properties of deformable materials in response to direct manipulation without precise force feedback.

As a proof-of-concept prototype, we developed preliminary physics algorithms running on pin-based shape displays. The system can create computationally variable properties of deformable materials that are visually and physically perceivable. In our experiments, users identify three deformable material properties (flexibility, elasticity and viscosity) through direct touch interaction with the shape display and its dynamic movements.

Our research shows that shape changing interfaces can go beyond simply displaying shape allowing for rich embodied interaction and perceptions of rendered materials with the hands and body.

You can read more about the project on the Tangible Media Group’s page.

Great news for Makers working on IoT projects! The Arduino and Genuino Yún Shield — now available on our online store for $49.90/€43.90 — is a device that enables you to easily bring Yún features to Arduino and Genuino boards supporting shields.

It’s the perfect shield to start connecting your projects to the Internet thanks to the Yún Web Panel and the dedicated ”YunFirstConfig” sketch. This new feature, implemented in the new Arduino Software (IDE) 1.6.9, allows you to manage your shield preferences and upload your sketch on the attached Arduino or Genuino. Like the previous Yún board, the Yún Shield uses the Bridge library and extends your board capabilities using the Linux processor.

The new Yún family runs the latest version of OpenWRT (15.05 Chaos Calmer), which offers an additional layer of security and a large amount of bug fixes over previous Yún distribution. The precompiled package list is huge (we have more than 4,000 packages ready to be installed), and if you still can’t find what you are looking for, you can use the community provided repositories since the new release is fully modular (not a fork).

Want to learn more? Explore all there is to know about the Yún Shield, including its documentation via the links below:

• Yún Shield Product page
• Getting Started guide

Go hands-on with these dedicated tutorials:

Got any question? Join the forum!

Today, we’re releasing a shiny new version of the Arduino IDE, with the usual plethora of features and bug fixes.

The new Yún Shield allows you to upload a sketch over the air on any supported board so, as you can guess, our official cores were updated to support this feature. 

Simply select the YunShield entry from the Network port menu, the base board from the Board menu, press upload and voilà!

You can update the cores via Board Manager to get the latest version (1.6.11 for AVR, 1.6.8 for SAM and 1.6.6 for SAMD) but don’t miss the chance to update the IDE itself.

This release fixes a bunch of long-standing issues:

• the update popup is no longer always on top, error reporting on multitab sketches now works correctly, and compiling/uploading flows have been revisited
• the problem with FTDI serial ports on Windows introduced with IDE 1.6.8 has been fixed as well
• the AVR core now recognizes if a new bootloader is present and uses a safe RAM location to trigger programming (this is particularly important for large sketches, like the ones produced by our friends at Arduboy)
• the builder has been patched, and is now faster and easier to hack

Release after release the community effort continues to get stronger and that makes us extremely happy! As usual, be sure to check the whole changelog for a complete list of changes and credits.

Don’t forget to report any issue you may find, either on GitHub or on the Arduino forum: your help is very much appreciated — even if you’re not a tech specialist. And please consider supporting the Arduino Software by contributing to its development!

Download IDE 1.6.9 now and happy coding! (You can also read all about the new Yún Shield here.)

We’re happy to introduce you to our new Genuino Reseller in Australia: welcome Graham Mitchell of Core Electronics holding a brand new Genuino Uno R3!

- Tell us a bit more about Core Electronics.

Core Electronics is based in Newcastle, Australia. Since 2007, we have brought together creative products from around the world (now including Genuino!) to empower innovative Makers in Australia. The Arduino team and community have been an integral part of the Maker Movement, and we’re honestly excited to support Genuino here in Australia.

- What’s your company’s super power? 

It would have to be that Core Electronics is powered by a staff of Makers and DIYers. This means we’re passionate about what we do and “we get it” when it comes to product support.

- What’s your favourite Arduino or Genuino project?

“Robotanic” from VIVID Sydney 2015. VIVID Sydney is a very popular annual event where art, technology and commerce intersect. The “Robotanic” installation was a digital garden of organically shaped nodes with plant-like characteristics. Each node varied in shape and height. When touched, the nodes would put on a show of erratic light and would respond to motion-sensors, which triggered sounds associated with nature as if the environment was coming to life. At the heart of each node was an Arduino Mega.

It was a sensational project and we helped with a couple of product selections to get the team on track. I’ve showcased this project as it’s an example where creativity meets technology; enabled by Arduino and the broader community.

Contacts

Core Electronics Store Website   – Facebook – Twitter – G+

Whereas most musicians would prefer to program their beats on a computer, Koka Nikoladze has elected to take a different approach. The Norway-based violinist/composer/tech developer is the inventor of handmade analog beat making machines that use springs, coils, wood and metal to create sounds.

The instruments — known as Koka’s Beat Machines — are manually programmable to produce different kinds of rhythmic and melodic patterns. The newest member of the family is a bit more electromechanical, featuring an Arduino to amplify the notes and connect the various components inside the device’s wooden housing. There’s also a light on the front that flashes to each unique beat.

You can watch the second of Koka’s Beat Machines in action below.

Twitter is not only a convenient way to consume daily news and converse with friends online, it has become an excellent platform for gaining insight on what’s important at any particular moment in time. With this in mind, Maker Chadwick John Friedman has decided to harness the social network’s data into web-connected physical representations with the help of Arduino and Temboo.

PrecogNation uses three 3D-printed geometric masks as real-time sci-fi future forecasters, which illuminate and change colors to reflect sustainability trends throughout the world.

The three geometric 3D-printed masks are wirelessly connected to the Internet via an Arduino Yún. The masks were printed using a Zortrax 3D printer and white Z-ABS filament. The masks are a remixed version of Stephen Kongsle’s “Low Poly Mask.” Each mask took approximately 16 hours to print. The masks are constantly scraping data from Twitter in real-time via Temboo Choreos. Temboo assigns special API keys for Arduino devices that allow the user grab real-time data from Twitter that would otherwise be difficult to gather. That live data is then fed to the Arduino Yún, which illuminates a specific 10mm super bright LED, connected to the masks.

One of the largest challenges in representing this overload of data physically was finding the correct terms and/or keywords that activate a specific color/thought in the Precog’s faces. The three colors present in the faces are scraping the Twitterverse for terms relating to sustainability, environmental threats, and political involvement. PrecogNation has its very own Twitter account, which allows the masks to scan through data specifically submitted by sustainability related users, corporations, and initiatives.

As seen in the video below, progress in sustainable development (green) is represented by keywords such as renewable energy, clean coal, water treatment and wind turbines. Threats to sustainability (red) include deforestation, global warming, record heat, extinction, pollution, pandemics and so on. Meanwhile, blue denotes an overload of data and contradicting results.

The overload of data in the color blue works like this… say the word ‘polar’ is found, but then the words ‘melting-polar’ are found, followed by the words ‘polar bear.’ This is an unreadable thread of information – it’s not really giving us threats or progress related to sustainability so the face reflects the color blue to signify that confusion. Coming up with the correct terms to represent the overload of information was especially tricky, and writing the code to reflect that confusion was equally as challenging. I eventually found a series of keywords and demands that elicited the response I was hoping for in this category.

It is important to highlight the fact that although the colors red and blue may be perceived as negative (and usually appear more than the color green), they also mean that there are discussions about those negative sustainability issues happening every time those colors are activated. This is, in fact, a positive outcome, as one of the main goals of this project is to highlight the importance maintaining a dialogue – even if that dialogue surrounds daunting threats to sustainability. It is important that the masks provoke a highlighted continuation of focus surrounding social and political sustainability issues.

You can read all about the project on PrecogNation’s page.

Your coffee table can have many uses — it rests your drinks (with coasters, of course), stores miscellaneous items, adds some style to your living room, and even serves as the center of a conversation area. Up until now, though, one thing it hasn’t been was a music visualizer. But thanks to this guide from Make: Magazine, you’ll soon be able to start a dance party on demand using your $10 jumbo-sized IKEA side table.

Aside from the inexpensive piece of furniture, the project calls for an LED matrix, tons of lights, a mic, some small electronic components, and an Arduino Uno for its brain. This allows its display to react and “dance” to the tunes coming from your speakers. Since it employs a minimal amount of current, the good news is that you’ll be able to run it off an iPhone charger or any other USB port that’s nearby.

It’s based on the Tiny Music Visualizer project from Adafruit, using their I2C multiplexer board for a tiny 8×8 bicolor LED matrix. The Arduino code is from there, the circuit is from there — all I really created was a big handmade LED matrix, and put it into an IKEA table!

Plug its USB cable into a phone charger or any USB port, then crank up the tunes and enjoy watching the giant tricolor pixels dance like splashing fountains of spectrum analyzer goodness!

If you’re looking for an accessory that’ll be the light of your next shindig, head over to Make:’s full tutorial here. 

From getting out of bed to applying lipstick to eating breakfast, Simone Giertz has seemingly found every possible way to automate her morning routine. Next on that list? A hair-washing robot made up of a rubber hand, a bottle of shampoo and some basic electronics that allows her to lather, rinse and repeat, while leaving her hands free for other tasks like brushing her teeth.

Giertz’s latest project features a pair of Hitec servo motors, Actobotics from Servocity, an Arduino Uno and a 6V battery pack. Although you’d probably never use this thing in an actual real shower, a shampoo robot is still pretty darn hilarious. See it in action below!

I built a hair washing robot. pic.twitter.com/TSEAugnlfJ

— Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) May 6, 2016