This week we’re presenting a new Genuino Reseller from Portugal: welcome Pedro Costa Silva of PTRobotics!

- Tell us a bit more about PTRobotics

Born in 2010, we are a startup that follows a lean business plan and our mission is to supply and support  engineers, inventors, designers and students with the products they need to accomplish their projects and ideas. As a micro-company in Portugal with a team of passion driven, highly motivated and skilled professionals, we represent and distribute worldwide brands, we have  more than +4000 different references in stock, with clients from  offices, laboratories, private and state organizations, foundations, schools and colleges,

- What’s your company’s super power

We support our clients in a many different ways, using a constantly improving process, interacting with them as individuals, who may or not need technical specific solutions. Our goal is to enable the individual tinkerer/engineer/student/inventor to get the products they need to make their ideas a reality.

- What’s your favourite Arduino or Genuino project?

I’m developing right now an Audio Matrix and a Speaker Matrix, both running on Genuino Uno. I’ll share them when they are done!

Contacts

PTRobotics Store Website Portugal  – Facebook – Twitter –  Linkedin – Youtube

We’re happy to announce the second winner of the Instagram giveaway!

Congratulations to Emmanuel Ani from Accra (Ghana) for the following picture taken at Genuino Day organized together with Mark Acquaisie Antwi, Andrew Kattenstroth, Atitsogbui Patrick Keli, Selorm Atsatsa, Humphery Batierah, Akati Micah .  He wins a Genuino MKR1000 and a Genuino Mug!

We were so grateful to have Mr. Harun come join us for the #Arduinoday #ArduinoD16 #ArduinoD16GH #ArduinoGhanaTeam https://t.co/ZNRpUrgSYv

A photo posted by Owura – Ani (@basicst) on Apr 2, 2016 at 3:13pm PDT

Feel like winning too? Participate now:

– Follow our official Arduino.cc account on Instagram

– Share your pics on your account on Instagram using hashtag #ArduinoD16 and #GenuinoD16 and mention us with the tag @Arduino.cc

– Every thursday, from April 7th to May 26th we are going to choose one of your pics (posted starting April 2nd) and announce on this blog a winner of an Arduino or a Genuino MKR1000 and one of our t-shirt or mug for a total of of 8 lucky people. Easy enough, right?

Remember to share cool pictures regarding Arduino and Genuino moments in your community also beyond Arduino and Genuino Day.
Show us your talent!

Massimo Banzi is among the judges on “America’s Greatest Makers” a reality competition from Mark Burnett (the reality-TV king behind “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” and “The Voice”) in partnership with Intel which debuted last week on TBS.

In a first of its kind competition, the tv show takes 24 teams of makers from across US and puts them in head-to-head challenges to invent disruptive projects and win $1 million. The team are composed by unique people from 15 years old to 59 with ideas going to inspire a whole new audience of potential makers.

In the first two episodes, each team pitched their device idea to the judging panel composed by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich; business and financial expert Carol Roth; comedian, serial entrepreneur and co-host of truTV’s Hack My Life Kevin Pereira; and one of the celebrity guests.

At the end of April during 4th episode guest judge Massimo Banzi joins the panel as the remaining makers compete in the “Make or Break” rounds for $100,000 and a spot in the million dollar finale. If you are not in the USA, watch the episode at this link after April 27th.

In the meanwhile you can also watch a beginner maker project to learn how to do obstacle avoidance using Arduino 101. Cara Santa Maria is the trainer who’s going to guide you into the tutorial about this really important topic for projects involving moving objects like robots and drones:

Follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and use hashtag #AmericasGreatestMakers

Git Commit is an interactive installation and exhibition about smart homes, and user response to pervasive technologies entering our private spaces. The installation aims to further the research that Casa Jasmina, powered by Arduino and Genuino, is carrying out regarding social home environment from an open design and user centered perspective.

In order to deeply understand the impact of IoT in the house for the possible stakeholders, an interactive system of four mini-printers will be set up at Palazzo Clerici, a 17th century building located in the heart of the city of Milan, and firstly belonged to one of the oldest and most powerful Milanese families, the Visconti dei Consignori di Somma.

Each printer will be connected to Casa Jasmina GitHub repository where users will be able to respond to questions and spark new avenues to the project.

The feedback gained will inform new types of interactions and approaches to the future smart home, that will reflow in the Casa Jasmina design process.

Come and visit us and give us your input too! Check this page and explore the topics.

Most of the music we listen to comes from convenient streaming services distributing music of thousands of artists from all over the world.  But only a small amount of money actually reaches the artists you like. A team of student (Nicolas Armand, Inês Araújo, Mette Mørch, Monika Seyfried)  used a MKR1000  to implement a donation service during the Interaction Design Programme at CIID with the support of Massimo Banzi and Dario Buzzini:

We wanted to bring some awareness to this issue with our project. So, with this in mind we envisioned Fair Speaker, a speaker that allows you to donate money to artists while you listen to music.

Just plug in your device, and start listening. You then set how much you want to donate the artist, compared to how much the usual streaming services pay them. For instance, Spotify pays around 0.0003$/min to the artist. This means that for them to get 1$, you’d have to listen to their music for 55,5 hours. If you don’t think that’s fair, you can set your own rate.

The speaker keeps track of how long you’ve been listening and how much money you’re donating. The system is powered by a Genuino MKR-1000, which is also used to connect wirelessly to the PayPal API, used to send your donation.

When you’re done, just press Pay and the money is sent to the Fair Speaker service, that then distributes it to the artists you selected when signing up.

Enjoy your music. Be fair to the ones who made it.

Watch the Fair Speaker in action:

Red is an optic-sound electronic object that uses simple light sources and optical elements to create audiovisual performance. The machine was named as a color because at the center of the work there is a red glass crystal and a flexible Fresnel lens. Dmitry Morozov aka :: vtol: : created it using Arduino with pure data and python scripts:

The project includes many reworked electronic devices – a CD-rom, an old scanner, reused electric motors. Multiple moving elements provide wide variability for rather primitive optical elements. It is accomplished by constant change of focal length between the light source, crystal and lens, as well as by changing the crystal’s tilt angle and mechanical distortion of the lens. The object works autonomously, by algorithm with many accidental events tied to feedback, with sensors defining the position of various mechanical elements in relation to the range of their movement. The sound part has up to 4 voices which depend on the activity of various elements. The sound is also in direct interaction with actual position of those elements, and basically is voicing the process of movement, brightness of light, and intensity of the piece.

Watch how it works in this hypnotic video:

We’re happy to announce the first winner of the Instagram giveaway we launched last week!

Congratulations to Gedeane Kenshima from Rio de Janeiro for the following pic taken at Genuino Day in Rio organized by Cefet/RJ and showing an amazing Tesla coil. She gets a Genuino MKR1000 and a Genuino Mug!

Olha eu aqui no #ArduinoDayRJ me sentindo Thor hahahahahaha Bobina de Tesla ?????? #Arduino #ArduinoDay #genuinoday #ArduinoDay16 #arduinod16 #tesla #bobinadetesla

A photo posted by Gedeane Kenshima (@gedeanekenshima) on Apr 2, 2016 at 7:02am PDT

Do you want to have the chance to win too?

It’s easy, that’s how it works:

– Follow our official Arduino.cc account on Instagram

– Share your pics on your account on Instagram using hashtag #ArduinoD16 and #GenuinoD16 and mention us with the tag @Arduino.cc

– Every thursday, from April 7th to May 26th we are going to choose one of your pics (posted starting April 2nd) and announce on this blog a winner of an Arduino or a Genuino MKR1000 and one of our t-shirt or mug for a total of of 8 lucky people. Easy enough, right?

Remember to share cool pictures regarding Arduino and Genuino cool moments in your community beyond Arduino and Genuino Day!
We’re looking forward to see your pics.

News Globus is an unusual physical interface that piques the curiosity of people and asks them to explore the world by the news putting in relation  places of the world. It was designed by Bjorn Karmann, Charlie Gedeon, Mikio Kiura, Sena Partal wiring 20 regions to a Genuino board inside the sphere. When two regions are connected with the jack, the Genuino selects a country randomly from each region and queries the NY Times API for news containing both locations. A web server then selects a story and converts the headline and byline to a mp3 file which is played either from the headphone jack or the speaker at the  base of the globe:

The shape of the globe is an interesting artifact from the past which was combined with modern technologies and online services. Instead of allowing people to hear the news of one place, the audio jacks bring to mind the metaphor of the phone operator to get people to discover surprising connections between places near and far from each other.

Check the video to see it working:

The project was developed during the Interaction Design Programme at CIID with the help of Massimo Banzi and Dario Buzzini.

April 2nd was a great day. We spent it celebrating Arduino and Genuino Day in more than 330 local communities and we had lots of fun!

Our social channels were full of mentions from pics and messages about the events and all the activities you organized or took part to worldwide. That’s why we want to keep celebrating and have some of you win goodies.

Now we are launching a giveaway on Instagram and you’re invited to participate!  How does it work?

– Follow our official Arduino.cc account on Instagram

– Share your pics on your account on Instagram using hashtag #ArduinoD16 and #GenuinoD16 and mention us with the tag @Arduino.cc

– Every thursday, from April 7th to May 26th we are going to choose one of your pics (posted starting April 2nd) and announce on this blog a winner of an Arduino or a Genuino MKR1000 and one of our t-shirt or mug for a total of of 8 lucky people. Easy enough, right?

Remember to share cool pictures regarding Arduino and Genuino cool moments in your community beyond Arduino and Genuino Day!
We’re looking forward to see your pics!

We are finally ready to release create.arduino.cc, the Arduino platform that will provide the community with a more modern and flexible tool to write code, a more integrated way of accessing content and learning while doing.

While we are still busy refining the web-based Editor (IDE) based on the feedback of the current beta-testing program, we are really excited to launch Arduino Project Hub, our tutorial platform powered by hackster.io. We cannot wait to see all the projects made with Arduino and Genuino boards that you will submit! Comment on the tutorials you are curious about, and ‘Respect’ the ones you like the most. We will feature the best projects on the Arduino Blog!

Within create.arduino.cc you will be also able to access a new website focused on Internet of Things. Arduino IoT collects inspiring tutorials, and provides guidance for anyone who wants to get started tinkering with the Internet of Things. Most importantly it presents the “Arduino IoT Manifesto”, an important statement that will guide the development of our IoT products and tools in the coming years, and that we hope will be adopted by a larger network of people and industries. We propose these three principles for the future of this burgeoning industry: Open, Sustainable and Fair!

As usual if you encounter any issue, or you have an idea you want to share, please let us know on the Arduino Forum, we’d love to hear your feedback!