Fab Academy is a distributed educational model directed by Neil Gershenfeld from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Students view and participate in global lectures broadcasted every week and on February 1st Massimo Banzi was invited to give a lecture to an audience of students from all over the world. You can watch the 50-minute recorded lesson in the video below:
The Academy Awards night is coming and it’s a perfect moment to be nominated and win a prize. Casa Jasmina project won its prize yesterday: the Internet of Things Awards, showcasing excellence in all areas across the Internet of Things since 2011, in the category of best IoT open source project – Editors Choice Winner.
The Open Source award “honors projects that bring those values to the Internet of Things, either by incorporating open source technology or by making public the details of their own designs and software”, this is the idea of the IoT awards organization in which Casa Jasmina completely believes.
The open source movement is for Arduino and consequently for Casa Jasmina, the core of internet in terms of hardware, software and protocols that compose the global communication infrastructure, and in this way the power of collaborative development is the main focus of Casa Jasmina idea.
As a futuristic Wunderkammer, Casa Jasmina will collect and share artificialia to present in a open way system what and how the IoT concepts will change the daily home life.
Winning this competition is for Casa Jasmina the acknowledgement of a project that take on to transform into reality a series of reflections around IoT and open source. Casa Jasmina is really proud to have been selected between 21 projects, because this represent the attention we are trying to attract.
There is still a lot of work, Casa Jasmina is working hard to rich the goal; it’s not simple but awards like this give hope to the project, and show the interest that exists on these issues.
So thank you all
(Read the blogpost on Casa Jasmina blog)
Photosynthesis is an interactive installation for primary school children created, designed and developed by Moritz von Burkersroda and exhibited at P3 Ambika, University of Westminster.
It’s a learning experience to understand the abstract process of photosynthesis in a hands-on way. Thanks to a physical interaction kids can easily understand what plants convert light into chemical energy to fuel their activities.
The installation uses an Arduino to measure data from a photoresistor and a hacked Wii-remote to connect the objects with the video feedback on the screen triggered by a Processing sketch. On the page of the project you can download a Design Research Document about Contextual study theory to understand the relationship between interactivity, learning and educational institutions, like museums.
Bonsai trees are not like other plants. There’s no single watering schedule that can be applied to a bonsai and the best way to tell if the bonsai needs water is to touch the soil. Experienced growers know when a tree needs to be watered by observing the foliage or just by the weight of the pot. If you are not used to taking care of this type of tree, Bonsai Watchdog could be the perfect project for you. It runs on Arduino and Genuino Uno and makes it really easy to monitor the moisture level in the soil.
Thomas Baum, created it and shared it some days ago on the Arduino Community on G+ :
Two pencil leads, an Arduino and a 12864 (ST7565) LCD watches out my little bonsai. The filling level shows how often the sapling need to be watered.
source and discription (in german) you can find here:
http://tiny.systems/categorie/lcdProjekt/BonsaiWatchdog.html
Scientists in Chile are turning foggy air into a reliable water source for nearby residents using a new sensor connected to Arduino Mega and XBee module. The project is called FogFinder and was developed by Richard LeBoeuf in collaboration with Juan Pablo Vargas and Jorge Gómez at the Universidad de los Andes. It’s a system to generate new renewable source of water for communities and reforestation through use of a probe and wireless communications technology to develop a liquid water flux map for fog harvesting.
Fog collectors are common in arid climates in Chile where rain runs scarce and are typically installed on hillsides and remote areas where fog is abundant. The innovative part of the project lies in determining where to install these collectors, how to orient them, and understanding how efficient they are at collecting water from the air. This can be done with a new type of sensor called the “Liquid Water Flux Probe” to measure the availability of water at current and potential fog collector sites. The sensor measures the liquid water content and speed of the fog and can be used to understand the optimal location and orientation for each of the collectors.
Matt Ahart of Digi, the company producing Xbee modules , told us:
“The primary function of the Arduino Mega is to simplify data collection and processing. The development team also made use of software libraries that simplified the use of sensors and API mode configuration for the XBee radios.
Another important reason for using Arduino, is that the Fog Finder project was created by students with only a few months to complete the design and creation of the device. A great thing about Arduino is that the learning curve is very fast and students can quickly start making contributions instead of spending weeks or months trying to understand the software and hardware.”
The FogFinder project has received support from the Universidad de los Andes through its Fondo de Ayuda de Investigación, Andes Iron – Dominga, and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In 2014 it was finalist in the Wireless Innovation Project sponsored by the Vodafone Americas Foundation.
In 2015 we’ve been setting-up an independent, modular production network with world-class partners that share our very own approach to open source hardware. We partnered with manufacturers and resellers including Adafruit in United States, Seeedstudio in China, Axel in Italy.
Now we are happy to share with our community the updated page dedicated to resellers, making Genuino and Arduino products available around the world. On the page you can find all the info and links to get in touch if you are interested in purchasing boards in your country, or you want to become one of our resellers.
From today we’ll be also highlighting new resellers on the Arduino blog, so you can get to know them better.
Watterott Electronic (Germany)
The team of Watterott Electronic is manufacturing Genuino boards and is the official Genuino reseller for Germany. We started selling Genuino boards manufactured by Watterott during Maker Faire Rome 2015.
In the picture you can see Stephan Watterott of Watterott Electronic (Germany) holding brand new Genuino boards ready to be shipped!
- Tell us a bit more about Watterott
I founded the company Watterott Electronic in early 2008 as a hobby project in Hausen (Thuringia, Germany). The goal was to offer some own microcontroller boards and special hard to find development components.
My first warehouse was in the garage of my parents house. After about 2 years the garage was to small and I moved to the city of Leinefelde (only 5km away). Until today I added more and more products to our portfolio and also the manufacturing of own boards has increased. Finally at the end of 2015 we became a manufacturer and reseller for Genuino boards.
- What’s your company’s super power?
We can do nearly everything in-house and so we a very short time from the idea to a prototype or final product/board.
- What’s your favorite Arduino or Genuino project?
I have two favorite Arduino/Genuino projects:
Contacts
Bespoke Electromechanical Instrument was built by Jay Harrison as part of a dissertation undertaken on the Creative Music Technology degree course at Staffordshire University. The instrument, running on Arduino Mega 2560 is designed to allow each note to be independently placed in a space:
The project involved the creation of an electromechanical system capable of autonomously playing a bespoke Lithophone musical instrument. The underlying idea was to create a Lithophone that allowed the audience to literally step inside it, giving a unique spatial and acoustic surround experience. Designing an autonomous electromechanical was the thought to be the most effective and reliable solution to achieving this.
The Arduino Mega 2560 was used to interface Max/MSP with the physical circuitry. Control messages/signals would be sent out of a Max/MSP patch using Maxuino, these signals would then be interpreted by the standard firmata sketch loaded onto the board and would go on to trigger and control the 24 rotary solenoids and 24 servo motors that work to produce the notes.
In the video below the instrument is arranged in a 24-foot surround configuration and the audience is invited to experience the instrument from within offering a unique spatial dimension to the Lithophone intended to completely envelop the listener:
For the third year we are inviting the open source community gathered around Arduino and Genuino globally to celebrate with us Arduino Day 2016 on Saturday April 2nd!
Arduino Day is a worldwide celebration of Arduino’s birthday. It’s a 24 hours-long event –organized directly by the community, or by the Arduino team– where people interested in Arduino get together, share their experiences, and learn more. Everyone can participate in the role of local organizer or as a participant.
For the past two years organizers throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australia involved participants in activities, workshops, events for a wide range of audiences and skillsets.
Stay tuned because in February we’ll be launching the open call for entries.
In the meanwhile explore what happened in 2014 and 2015 and … start organizing!
Hashtag: #ArduinoD16
Circuit Basic recently posted a 9-minute video unboxing, Setting Up, and Comparing the Arduino 101 to the Arduino Uno.
The Arduino 101 (US only) and the Genuino 101 (outside US), created in collaboration with Intel, keeps the same robust form factor and peripheral list of the Uno with the addition of onboard Bluetooth LE capabilities and a 6-axis accelerometer/gyro to expand your creativity into the connected world.
Watch the video below to learn the first steps on how to use this new board!
Good news everyone. Due to many requests from our community we agreed to extend the contest to January 31st 2016.
You have some more days to submit your ideas to the World’s Largest Arduino Maker Challenge, win one of the one thousand Arduino and Genuino MKR1000 and a fully-funded (up to $1,500) trip to Maker Faire Shenzhen, New York, Bay Area or Rome; a chance to present your creation at the Microsoft and the Arduino & Genuino booths; a professional video production of you and your creation; and a whopping $500 gift certificate to Adafruit.
Watch Massimo Banzi’s video presenting the contest.
Keep dreaming new ideas and have fun!
