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!

We are happy to announce Arduino MKR1000 and Genuino MKR1000 are now available in our stores at the price of 34,99$/30,99€ (+VAT)!

MKR1000 is the protagonist of World’s largest Arduino Maker Challenge and was shipped exceptionally to  1000 winners of the contest. Now, this powerful board which combines the functionality of the Zero and the WiFi Shield, is available to all makers wanting to design IoT projects with minimal previous experience in networking.

We are sharing some documentation so you can learn more about the features of this new board:

• Product page
• Getting Started guide

And  4 tutorials focused on the new features of Arduino and Genuino MKR1000:

• Analog to Midi build a device that recognizes an input frequency and outputs it to MIDI
• Wifi RTC   use the RTC (Real Time Clock) and the WiFi capabilities
• Scheduled Wifi SSL learn to use scheduled functions to establish a secure web connection
• Battery operations learn more about the battery support of the MKR1000

MKR1000 and Genuino MKR1000  is available for purchase now.

Arduino and its community is celebrating its birthday with a day of official and self-organised gatherings, encouraging people to meet and share their interest in open source DIY electronics with local friends and collaborators. More than 320 groups are creating events right now worldwide! Join the event and find the event near you on day.arduino.cc.

Massimo Banzi, Tom Igoe and David Mellis are in Berkeley to celebrate Arduino Day and Genuino Day. Here’s their message to all the community of organizers, participants and all Arduino fans!

To make this event a truly connected experience share your Arduino moments on social networks and especially on Instagram using the hashtags: #ArduinoD16 #GenuinoD16

Do you have an Instagram account? We’re launching  today the official profile of Arduino.cc and  inviting you to follow us!

After Facebook, Twitter and G+, now we are using Instagram to show all of you our events, products, behind the scene moments and getting  in touch with all the open source community.

Use hashtags like #Arduinocc, #ArduinoD16, #Genuino and make sure to follow us, and tag us in your pics using @Arduino.cc if you are interested we know about your projects, and share them on all other channels.

More news and goodies to come! Stay tuned.

Moodbox is a musical device created by a group of students (Iskra Uscumlic, Cyrus Kamath, Luca Mustacchi, Dario Loerke) to explore how we might set the mood in a studio space through music. They created it using Genuino Uno during the Interaction Design Programme at CIID with the help of Massimo Banzi and Dario Buzzini.

Moodbox enables you to set the perfect ambience and trigger different emotions:

Taking inspiration from the classic bar jukebox and its ability to influence the mood, we recognized that music and the atmosphere created by it are inextricably linked. When selecting a song to play in a social setting there is always a sense of negotiation involved. The person choosing has to consider the environment, the people around them, the current mood and that they would like to create.

With this in mind we set out to explore new opportunities for interaction in the communal space, using the environment of the studio as the setting.

As you can see in the video above, you can adjust the vibe of any space using four scales of emotions – from love to kill, serious to fun, chill to hype and dreamy to focus:

Emotions may be combined and fine-tuned with retro-style rotary knobs to dial-in feelings and get the perfect song choice. Like a jukebox, songs are queued once the selection is made. To provide visual feedback, lights also respond to the changes in mood, enhancing the overall influence on the space.

Moodbox connects to your iTunes account, with the rotary knobs sending information via a Genuino Uno and JavaScript to sort through a playlist. Our custom emotional algorithm then picks the right song and triggers mood lighting depending on the selection.