Last saturday we had a great day celebrating the Arduino Camp, hosting the traditional hackaton inside Officine Arduino and Fablab Torino spaces and the huge courtyard of Toolbox Coworking. Many people, cool projects, and a theme: “Reinventing interfaces of home appliances” (… interpreted in a very wide way, though).

We had three winners and a special nomination, check yourself among the amazing shoots by Cosimo Maffione on our Flickr set.

First prize – “No friends No air”:  an air system based on computer vision

Second prize – “Rombot“: the alarm clock that you have to drive back to turn it off

Third prize – “InterVintage“: a domestic communication tool based on vintage stuff

Special Mention – “Coffee or Die“: a special interface for a flame

So far we’ve been organizing  three Arduino Camps, and we have many requests of people willing to join or organize such an event all over the world to celebrate Arduino users’ community. That’s why for the next years’ edition we are planning to offer to community-based groups the possibility to organize their own hackaton on the same day in different locations. Same theme, a variety of approaches to solve a problem. Stay tuned!

L’estate non ferma l’appuntamento con l’Arduino Tour che, dopo Alessandria, continua il suo percorso verso Trento. Questa volta saremo ospiti della  Fondazione Bruno Kessler, centro di ricerca di livello internazionale che ospita oltre 350 ricercatori in ambito scientifico, tecnologico, sociale e umanistico.

Come ogni tappa, l’appuntamento si snoda su 3 giorni. Il venerdì presentazione pubblica serale e i due giorni successivi, sabato e domenica, li dedicheremo a esplorare una panoramica degli impieghi di Arduino e permettere ai partecipanti di realizzare un piccolo progetto. Aspettatevi di lasciare il corso con una serie di strumenti per orientarvi in una crescente e variegata quantità di materiale per continuare ad imparare online.

Entrambe gli appuntamenti si terranno presso il Polo scientifico e tecnologico di Via Sommarive 18 – Povo (TN).

L’iscrizione al workshop vi permette anche di ottenere uno sconto del 10% per l’acquisto dell’Arduino Starter Kit o, se ce l’avete già, di altri prodotti dello store online.

I posti sono limitati, quindi se avete voglia di aprirvi al mondo di Arduino, affrettatevi a prenotare la vostra partecipazione cliccando su questo link.

Mr. Oyvind from Oslo sent us a cool  hack of a 75-years-old radio into an iPhone dock using an Arduino.

On his website you can read the complete tutorial or download the code and below you can have more details on the way he used the board:

the Arduino is used to read the state of the dual potentiometer that controls the volume and then translate this value into a certain number of LEDs being lit on the volume indicator.

I am using a Duemilanove. The code for the project is very simple and can be found here:http://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/radio_ino.zip

•  An overview of the inside of the dock (very messy, I know )

•  I am using a dual potentiometer (2 pots in one). Here you can see one pot connected to the amplifier on the left to control the volume, and the other connected to the Arduino on the right to read the position of the pot.

Dalle 19 in diretta da Toolbox a Torino:

Questi i temi e i protagonisti:

Open source, open hardware, peer-to-peer, creative commons: idee (e persone) che stanno disegnando un mondo che delle regole e dei modelli economici precedenti non sa che farsene, dove l’innovazione non passa solo dai laboratori R&D ma anche dalle scrivanie di un coworking, dove al mito del prodotto perfetto si sostituisce il concetto del sempre-migliorabile, dell’eterno beta, dove il fallimento non incute timore perché è una delle strade che portano al successo.

Un movimento frastagliato di volti nuovi e nuove idee che dal basso sale verso l’alto, che definisce nuovi stili di vita e nuovi modi di organizzare la società. Benvenuti nella Terza Rivoluzione Industriale.

• Riccardo Luna, primo direttore di Wired Italia, con il suo nuovo libro “Cambiamo Tutto”,
• Massimo Banzi, fondatore di Arduino,
• Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino, tra i promotori dell’Agenda Digitale
• Leonardo Camiciotti, responsabile del programma per la creazione di imprese innovative di TOP-IX.

Thanks to Lance who created a project on Instructables,  you’ll be able to create remote-controlled eyes using Arduino Uno, two servos, some plexiglass and a couple of doll’s eyes.

If you like animatronics,  watch the video below: the result is pretty scary!
 

 
 

Sabato e domenica prossimi presso la Fondazione Achille Castiglioni a Milano, Massimo Banzi terrà un workshop dal titolo “Arduino e la luce” in cui i partecipanti realizzeranno la Tinker Lamp (nelle foto) fabbricata digitalmente e disegnata dallo studio Habits, resa interattiva tramite Arduino.

Il ricavato del workshop andrà alla Fondazione Achille Castiglioni.

Ci sono ancora alcuni posti disponibili! Prenotatevi qui entro venerdì 14 alle 14.

Next weekend Arduino Verkstad in Malmö  is organizing a one-day workshop in collaboration with Sony Mobile to experiment on programming from the Arduino IDE on Sony SmartWatch.

You don’t have to be a programmer to participate because this is low level hacking and if you, for example, are interested in graphic design or interaction design this might be something for you. Participants will work in groups and get tutoring throughout  to test the watch and modify it  on custom ideas.

The hands-on event will take place saturday 15th of June from 12 to 18 at STPLN in the city of Malmö (Sweden) . There is a limited amount of spots for the event and you can sign up by sending an e-mail to s.zetterdahl [at] arduino.cc no later than Friday the 14th of June.

In order to prepare grouping, please add some info on your technical background and language spoken (English/Swedish/Spanish). Attendance is for free and they will serve lunch and coffee.

The event is hosted in association with STPLN and Fabriken

Kris Temmerman, a freelance creative developer based in Belgium, just published a nice report on how he built a painting machine running on an Arduino Due and an Android tablet.

I was always interested to remove the perfection from computer graphics. So thought it would be fun to try to make the most obvious thing first. A machine that uses a paint brush to print a drawing.

As you can see from the video below, Kris was able to translate the pen pressure on the tablet into specific brush strokes on the paper:

Follow the link to discover the code on github and enjoy the painting!

Open source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. Arduino and many other projects share a similar philosophy of creating free open source tools allowing non-technical people to work with hardware and software.

Arduino is based on the contribution of many other open source projects. We are grateful to these efforts and want to support them. Since we’re not always able to contribute code or technical support we want to do it through donations.

From now on every year Arduino will donate to the open source projects it collaborates with and shares Arduino approach and philosophy.

In 2013 the institutions to which Arduino donated 2,500$ each are the following:

• Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context. The project was initiated in 2001 by Casey Reas and Benjamin Fry.

The Arduino IDE is derived from the Processing IDE.

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users.

The foundation has created the licenses used by Arduino and created the GCC compiler which is used as a compiler for the Arduino code.

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

Both the Arduino hardware reference designs and documentation are distributed under a Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5.

• Fritzing is an open-source hardware initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics: a software tool, a community website and services in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, fostering an ecosystem that allows users to document their prototypes and share them with others.

Fritzing is used for illustrations in Arduino documentation.

• PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites originally developed by Patrick R. Michaud.

PmWiki is the Arduino official wiki since 2004.

• Linux foundation promotes, protects and advances Linux by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community to ensure Linux remains free and technically advanced.

Arduino has always been a fan of Linux and many users of Arduino use Linux. Furthermore, the new Arduino Yún is the first member of a family of wifi products combining the power Linux with ease of use of Arduino.

And finally,

• CERN for the improvement of KiCad. Kicad is a free and open source software PCB design tool. The objective of this development project is to enhance Kicad to make it an efficient tool for PCB design, which people can use to share their design information without compromising productivity. This contribution is part of CERN’s broader efforts in Open Source Hardware.

This is just a first small step towards more contributions to keep the open source ecosystem growing, in the coming years the amount we will devote to donations will keep increasing based on our revenues.

We hope more companies that are involved in Open Source Hardware and Software will follow our example.

Next to our Arduino booth at Makerfaire Bay Area we had a cool project created by Antipodes, a girls robotics team headquartered in Pacifica, California, USA. It’s a Do It Yourself (DIY) remote controlled (RC) model maglev with electromagnetic propulsion, or shortly called maglev.

A maglev is just like a conventional train but instead of wheels it has magnets and it levitates!

The team did a great job not only for the results achieved but especially in sharing the project’s documentation, detailed with all the steps for the construction through videos and pictures so that others can more easily follow in their footsteps.

The maglev, which won the Maker Faire Editor’s Choice blue ribbon,  contains Arduino UNO, Arduino  Wireless Protoshield, plus many other components you can explore in their videos below and in the project page.