Neel Joshi, Sing Bing Kang, C. Lawrence Zitnick, and Richard Szeliski from Microsoft Research presented a paper at the SIGGRAPH 2010 conference in Los Angeles where they introduced image treatment algorithms using sensor information gathered by an Arduino board (3 gyroscopes and a 3 axis accelerometer) to compensate errors introduced while shooting a camera due to the movement of the capturing device. Their article can be downloaded directly from Microsoft Research’s website; you will find their PDF there, but also the slideshow they used to introduce their work, and some examples of the application of their correction algorithms to some pictures.

(c) 2010 Microsoft Research

As mentioned in this article at PC-Magazine, which was our source:

The four researchers named in the study managed to construct their hardware sensor package completely off-the-shelf, using a combination of one three-axis accelerometers, three gyroscopes, and a Bluetooth radio all wired to an open-source Arduino controller.

“Our method is completely automatic, handles per-pixel, spatially-varying blur, and out-performs the current leading image-based methods,” reads the accompanying paper.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that uses 6 [degrees-of-freedom] inertial sensors for dense, per-pixel spatially-varying image deblurring and the first work to gather dense ground-truth measurements for camera-shake blur.”

Laboral Centro de Arte, Spain, has commissioned the creation of a documentary about Arduino. The filmmakers are almost done with it and today they released the trailer to it. A lot of the footage was shot during the Arduino Uno meeting in March 2010, that took place at ITP, New York University.

TRAILER Arduino: The Documentary from gnd on Vimeo.

In the video you can see among others: Phil (Make, Adafruit), Zach (Makerbot), Alicia (Buglabs), Eric (ITP), Igor (Telefónica), Tom, Dave, Massimo, and David (me), as well as many Arduino ethusiasts, developers, and users.

The documentary is CC licensed, which means you guys can use it in class, public display, etc. The official release including the 45m TV version (with English and Spanish subtitles), the full interviews to all of us, videos taken at Makerbot, Adafruit, NYC Resistor, etc will be soon announced at the film’s website: arduinothedocumentary.org. If you want to volunteer making the subtitles in your own language, feel free to contact the guys behind it.

UPDATE: if you want to feature the guys who made the documentary, they are: Rodrigo Calvo Eguren y Raúl Díez Alaejos.

Last weeks Arduino was featured a couple of times on the online press. First we found it at this article by Chris Anderson at his website DIY-drones. There he talks about his visit to Smartprojects’ facilities close to Ivrea, Italy. For those not familiar with Smartprojects, it is the company manufacturing the Arduino USB (NG, Diecimila, Duemilanove), Arduino Mini, Arduino Mega, Arduino BT, and Arduino Serial, as well as a bunch of the official Shields. There is a nice collection of pictures showing all the steps in the process of making the boards, only missing images of the certification lab where the Arduino boards get the official CE and FCC labling. I think we never mentioned this before, but Gianluca partner in the business with Daniela, who has for the first time been featured as part of the process of making Arduino possible. Here a picture of  both of them holding some of the copper boards in the making:

(c) 2010 Chris Anderson, as seen at diydrones.com

Chris briefly mentions the release of Arduino 1.0, our IDE, puts a deadline on our release (you can see he talks about September this year, even if we haven’t really announced anything … yet), and shows a blurry picture of Gianluca’s desk with some prototypes of the boards-to-be. You can take that last picture from his blog and try to zoom in it if you want to … I doubt you will see anything that will let you foresee what we have in mind right now I guess this is just adding to the myth.

Here the picture for those of you that want to exercise your eyes and imagination:

(c) 2010 Chris Anderson, as seen at diydrones.com

Also from the Wired factory (Chris works there), Arduino was featured at this blog post where Phil Torrone (Senior Editor at Make Magazine, as well as partner of Adafruit) and Massimo get to explain why our platform is good for those that want to get started  in the world of embedded electronics. I want to close this post by quoting Massimo at that article:

“It’s cheap and open source with lots of documentation written in a not too technical language. Above all, it has a very welcoming attitude towards beginners and tries not to scare them too much.”

Read More

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/the-future-of-arduino

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/hardware-hobbyists-arduino

Las últimas semanas Arduino ha aparecido un par de veces en la prensa en línea. La primera mención viene de este artículo por Chris Anderson en su web DIY-drones. Habla sobre su visita a Smartprojects, cerca de Ivrea, Italia. Para aquellos que aún no conocéis Smartprojects, es la empresa que fabrica Arduino USB (en los formatos NG, Diecimila, Duemilanove), Arduino Mini, Arduino Mega, Arduino BT y Arduino Serie, además de una serie de Shields oficiales. En el artículo, se muestra una colección de fotografías del proceso de fabricación de las placas. Tan solo faltan imágenes del laboratorio de certificación donde Arduino pasa las pruebas de marcado CE y FCC. Creo que nunca lo mencionamos antes, pero Gianluca cuenta con un socio en el negocio, Daniela, quien por primera vez aparece como parte del trabajo realizado con Arduino. Aquí una fotografía de ambos sujetando unas de las placas de cobre:

(c) 2010 Chris Anderson, tomada de diydrones.com

Chris menciona brevemente el lanzamiento de Arduino 1.0, nuestro sistema de desarrollo (IDE), pone una fecha de entrega (habla de septiembre de este año, aunque nosotros no hemos hecho ninguna declaración al respecto … aún) y muestra una imagen borrosa de la mesa de Gianluca con algunos prototipos de las que serán nuestras nuevas placas. Podéis descargar esa imagen de la blog de Chris e intentar hacer un zoom … dudo que podáis ver algo que os permita anticipar que es lo que tenemos en mente Involuntariamente esto sirve para crear el mito.

Aquí la fotografía para aquellos que queráis ejercitar vuestra vista e imaginación:

(c) 2010 Chris Anderson, tomada de diydrones.com

También de la fábrica de Wired (Chris trabaja ahí), Arduino fue mencionado en este artículo, donde Phil Torrone (Editor Senior de Make Magazine, así como socio de Adafruit) y Massimo explican porqué nuestra plataforma es buena para aquellos que quieren iniciarse rápidamente en el mundo de la electrónica embebida. Quiero cerrar mi artículo con una frase de Massimo sacada de esa web:

“Es barato y en código abierto con mucha documentación escrita de manera no técnica. Sobre todo ofrece una cara amiga a los principiantes e intenta no asustarles demasiado.”

Para Leer Más

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/the-future-of-arduino

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/hardware-hobbyists-arduino

This week Arduino has been featured on La Repubblica‘s online version. For those of you not familiar to it, La Repubblica is a fairly large Italian newspaper (the largest according to some sources). The article is not super big, but let’s put it this way: WE ARE ON LA REPUBBLICA. If you read Italian or if you enjoy messing around with some funky online translation services, you should take a look at:

http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/05/24/news/physical_computer-4296687/

Esta semana Arduino ha salido publicado en un artículo en La Repubblica.it, la versión en línea del rotativo italiano del mismo nombre (según las fuentes es el mayor periódico de Italia). La historia no está mal … aunque viéndolo de otro modo: ESTAMOS EN LA REPUBBLICA. Si quieres leer sobre el proyecto en italiano o si te apetece usa alguno de esos divertidísimos sistemas de traducción en línea, sólo tienes que mirar acá:

http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/05/24/news/physical_computer-4296687/

Ekstra Bladet is a Danish paper that has a quite large online version. This week they have a small online TV documentary about Arduino’s presence at the OSD conference in Copenhagen last week. We cannot embed their video in our site (they give no chance to do so) but visit this link to see it. If you watch the clip you will notice there is a Pong game made with a series of RGB LED matrixes by the guys at BSD-DK, as well as a whole display of different projects that can be made with Arduino … that was a nice job! For the next Open Source Days, please remember I live just across the Oresund, and send me an invitation, thanks

Arduino clip on Ekstra Bladet March 2010

I was checking the statistics on the server this morning, when I discovered a couple of hundreds hits coming from a German illustrator (Johannes Kretzschmar) that posts his comics about technology in the form of a blog. Take a look at the one for today … one image sometimes counts more than 1000 words.

Arduino on Beetlebum.de, copyright by the author, 2010

For more illustrated fun, visit: Beetlebum.de

Metro Teknik 2010-02-17, cover, scanned by Mange

I thought the guys from Wired made me us look like crazy dudes in the pictures they took of us last year … but that photographer did a nice job compared to the photoshoped version of me coming out on this week’s Metro Teknik, the free paper about technology. The paper is featuring Arduino, and they took a couple of pictures here at my lab at K3. I am glad someone cares about our story and puts it into everyday people’s hands. The article is written in a language that is easy to understand and looks for examples of people working with Arduino at different levels. You can even see a how-to guide around the IDE … not bad at all … if it wasn’t for those pictures that make me look like the guy with the craziest hair-dude in the universe.

Metro Teknik 20100217, article, scanned by Mange

The journalist that featured Arduino as a side-effect while talking about RepRap the other day on Wall Street Journal got very interested in the subject and called all of the team members to put together an article for the online issue of the WSJ. He is focusing in the market generated by Arduino but more specificly in how open source hardware can boost interesting business opportunities.
I like the way it is written, and got happy to see that someone got to interview Gianluca in depth. Arduino is not only about boards, software and education, it is also about the compromise of manufacturers to provide a community of makers with the best tools possible, assuring quality and reliability.

The main producer of the Arduino is Smart Projects Snc, based in the tiny town of Scarmagno, Italy. This year, the two-person firm is on track to sell at least 60,000 of the microcontrollers, which retail for at least $30 a piece, up from 34,000 last year. Owner Gianluca Martino, an electrical engineer, has had to contract out much of the production to keep up with growth.

It’s a peculiar predicament, since the Arduino’s designs are on the Internet for anyone to download and use.While there are clones on the market, the microcontrollers that Mr. Martino produces, with the map of Italy printed on the back of it, are by far the most popular.

“What’s interesting in this kind of open-source project is the feeling of confidence the consumer has,” he says, since people can look up the designs and tailor the Arduino to their needs.

Read the whole article here. Thanks to Justin Lahart (the journalist), some nice investors may read the article and call us back

The Wall Street Journal looks into hackerspaces, prototyping, tinkering … and even Arduino in an article published today:

Mr. Smith, 25, studied computer science at the University of Iowa, and worked as a Web developer. But a few years ago, he started playing with an “Arduino” — an open-source microcontroller. These are used as the “electric brains” for everything from wall-avoiding robots to a hat that pokes the wearer’s heads if the person stops smiling. “I was hooked,” he recalls.

Intrigued by the idea of making a machine than can build its own parts, Mr. Smith got interested in “rapid prototyping machines” — 3D printers that lay down layers of materials like plastic to form objects. The technology is used by manufacturers to make prototypes, with industrial machines typically costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Mr. Smith’s NYC Resistor friends Mr. Pettis and Adam Mayer joined the project. Using off-the-shelf electronics and parts, along with a laser cutter, they came up with a machine. Now they’re selling kits to make 3D printers.

Their company, MakerBot Industries, has shipped 350 of the $750 kits so far. They hired two employees, started paying themselves, and are building another 150 kits for their next shipment.

The article is worth reading, looks into the alternatives to corporate jobs that tinkering is generating during the current economic crisis. You should also give a look at the article’s comments, priceless.