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:

If you are a fan of cosplay, props and hand built creations you can’t miss the work of  James Bruton. Based in Uk he’s got a personal project YouTube channel with a new video every week describing his work in details. At the end of June he posted the 34th “episode” of the project started nearly a year ago about  building an Iron Man Hulkbuster giant suit you can actually wear!

In the video below you can follow how he’s sorting out the arm mechatronics for the elbow, hand and cuff weapon with some 3D printing with Lulzbot and controlling the interaction with  Arduino Uno (electronic part starting around minute 10):

Explore the playlist of the project for other cool videos.

Mike Szczys of Hackaday met Massimo Banzi at Maker Faire Shenzhen and interviewed him about manufacturing Genuino in China, the current and future of Arduino, and how recent events may shape the Open Hardware landscape.

Enjoy the video:

Like the LilyPad Arduino boards, the Arduino Gemma is designed to create interactive projects you can wear. It can be sewn into clothing and other fabric with conductive thread and be connected to sensors and actuators.

After you explored the Getting Started page and learn how to move the first steps with it, it’s time to explore its features with a real project.

Becky Stern from Adafruit recently created a tutorial for making a vibrating mindfulness bracelet and learn the basics of wearables with Gemma! It’s like that “stand up every hour” feature you find on smart watches, but DIY.

The guide shows you how to solder up the circuit using an Arduino Gemma microcontroller, small pager motor, as well as how to whip up a cute linked leather bracelet to hold everything.

Build yourself a buzzing bracelet for subtle haptic feedback as time passes! It’s great for reminding yourself to get up and walk away from your desk for a few minutes each hour, or just as a way to have a new awareness of how the perception of passing time varies based on what you’re doing.

You’ll whip up a vibrating motor circuit using a transistor, resistor, and diode, and use GEMMA to control the frequency of vibration in between low-power microcontroller naps. The circuit lives inside a linked leather/rubber bracelet, but you could build it into whatever you please. This project involves some precision soldering, but is otherwise quite easy!

Read the bill of materials, follow the steps and create your Buzzing Mindfulness Bracelet on Adafruit.

Like the LilyPad Arduino boards, the Arduino Gemma is designed to create interactive projects you can wear. It can be sewn into clothing and other fabric with conductive thread and be connected to sensors and actuators.

After you explored the Getting Started page and learn how to move the first steps with it, it’s time to explore its features with a real project.

Becky Stern from Adafruit recently created a tutorial for making a vibrating mindfulness bracelet and learn the basics of wearables with Gemma! It’s like that “stand up every hour” feature you find on smart watches, but DIY.

The guide shows you how to solder up the circuit using an Arduino Gemma microcontroller, small pager motor, as well as how to whip up a cute linked leather bracelet to hold everything.

Build yourself a buzzing bracelet for subtle haptic feedback as time passes! It’s great for reminding yourself to get up and walk away from your desk for a few minutes each hour, or just as a way to have a new awareness of how the perception of passing time varies based on what you’re doing.

You’ll whip up a vibrating motor circuit using a transistor, resistor, and diode, and use GEMMA to control the frequency of vibration in between low-power microcontroller naps. The circuit lives inside a linked leather/rubber bracelet, but you could build it into whatever you please. This project involves some precision soldering, but is otherwise quite easy!

Read the bill of materials, follow the steps and create your Buzzing Mindfulness Bracelet on Adafruit.

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:

Creative Mornings is a series of talks given by creative types all over the world and recorded for everyone to see online.

Last May, 22-year-old Nerea de la Riva Iriepa, one of the worlds most promising young talents in Robotics gave an inspiring talk about her journey in the world of robotics, her discovery of Arduino, how to work in team and also how to deal with a male-dominated robot world.

She is currently student of Electronic Communications at the University of Alcalá in Madrid and also an intern at Arduino in Malmö where she is creating educational content for beginners and finding ways to make coding easier for young users.

It’s time to introduce you to another great tutorial made for  Intel Edison.  Mimic Monster is a project allowing you to record soundbites and playing them back manipulated.
In this step-by-step project, everyone who is interested in audio features and mods , can find useful information on how to manipulate audio files and create amazing effects from your voice.

Grawr! It’s a mimic monster! What did you say? Grawr! It’s the mimic monster!

Having landed on Earth, this little alien needs you to teach it how to speak. Speak into its audio antenna and it will repeat your words back. Press a button and change its pitch. In this tutorial, you will learn in more detail, how to work with a USB sound card, a microphone, and a speaker.

Before you begin, make sure you’ve followed through Intel® Edison Getting Started guide, and our previous tutorial, the Intel® Edison mini-breakout Getting Started Guide.

 Check the other tutorials of the series.

Last night Massimo Banzi was in New York City and met LadyAda and Phil Torrone for an exclusive interview during Ask an Engineer session.
They talked about many cool things starting from the history of Arduino to the forthcoming availability of Arduino Gemma, the Microsoft/Arduino partnership on opensource projects and the #TeamArduinoCC campaign!

Enjoy the video: