A nice report on abc local news about Arduino and Maker Faire Bay Area with a short interview to Massimo Banzi saying: “Our angle is to really have people who have no experience in electronics and software, and make them able to create these kind of intelligent interactive objects”
Watch the video below, right after the break!
The Open Source Hardware Association invites submissions for the fourth annual Open Hardware Summit, to be held September 6, 2013 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Open Hardware Summit is the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware; a venue to discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing Open Source Hardware movement. The Open Hardware Summit is a venue to present, discuss, and learn about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, law, and education.
Knitic is an open source project which controls electronic knitting machines via Arduino. To be more precise, Knitic is like a new ‘brain’ for the Brother knitting machines allowing people to create any pattern and modify them on the fly. Knitic kit is composed by an Arduino Due, a diy printed circuit board on top of it, connected to the electronic parts of the original machine, (like end-of-line sensors, encoder, and 16 solenoids) and a software to control the needles real-time.
In the past days I interviewed Varvara & Mar, the duo who developed the project. They’ve been working together as artists since 2009 and their artistic practices lay at the intersection between art, technology, and science. When I run into their project I immediately liked their approach as they see knitting machines as the first real domestic fabrication tool, that has been overlooked in the age of digital fabrication.
Check the tutorial above and then below some answers to the questions I sent them.
How come you got interested in knitting?
Everything started in January 2012. We had an idea to knit poetry from spam emails. Hence, we were invited to the 3-month-long residency at MU gallery in Eindhoven and 1-month residency with solo exhibition at STPLN in Malmö, to develop our project. After seeing MAKE magazine article on hacked knitting machine by Becky Stern, we thought it’s easy and fun to do the hack. Well, we had a bit underestimated the complexity of the project, but finally made more than one knitting machines work and started also Knitic project.
How and why did Arduino become useful to your project?
Arduino is A and B in our work. It means we use Arduino for many purposes, and to be honest, we don’t imagine our lives without it.
We applied Arduino already in our first hack of knitting machines, when floppy emulation script didn’t work for us, since we had 940 and not the 930 machine. Hence, we connected all buttons of knitting machine keypad to Arduino and were able to program knitting machine automatically.
In terms of Knitic, Arduino has a key role, because it gets the outputs of sensors, energize the right solenoids according to the pattern, and communicates with Knitic program written in Processing.
Some weeks ago you were at Maker Faire in Newcastle : which type of people got interested mostly about Knitic?
Interestingly, the most interested group of people were Dutch educators and the ones connected to creative industries. Also people from local hacklabs were very interested.
In some of your presentations you said that knitting and some other more crafty practices are a bit overlooked by fablabs and makerspaces, why do you think is it like that? Is it a matter of gender balance or there’s something more?
We think it is mainly because of the gender and also because MIT, where the concept of fablab comes from, is dominated by engineers and architects, who saw more potential in hard-surfaced object fabrication, like 3d printing, laser cutting, CNC, etc. Plus there is not much information about hacking and developing open source knitting or sewing machine online. But we hope that things are slowly changing and soon lots of makerspaces will have knitting machines and other tools for handcraft. Hence, we think Knitic is an important example for re-empowering crafts with novel digital fabrication approaches.
I have a knitting machine at home and I realized you need a lot of patience to make it work, but then it’s fun. Do you think that these hacks could lower the barriers and make it more attractive to less nerdish types?
We don’t think that knitting requires more patience than 3D printing, for example. To be honest, with knitting one is able to achieve first results much faster than with a 3D printing machine. To learn a new skill always requires some time investment.
In your opinion, what type of micro-business connected to these knitting machines could flourish in the next years?
Good question. Definitely, custom made knitwear. At the moment, there are no services which are offering knitwear (sweater, scarf, etc) with your own pattern and letting you chose the yarn type. There could be also lots of interactive knitting and unique pattern generations. For example, we are working on a project called NeuroKnitting right now.
Soon we’ll make more information available on it. In addition to that, there is another business option that is open hardware in the form of Knitic Kit (pcb and components) or, why not, the whole knitting machine.
Thank you!
Adobe’s evangelist Renaun, created a video to explain how to use Chrome’s serial API to talk with an Arduino board as well as receive data from it. You just need to run this sketch file on your board and then run the code in Chrome. Watch the video below to hear Renaun commenting the code!
(message originally posted by Massimo Banzi on MakerfaireRome.eu)
Dear MakerFaire and Arduino friends,
In the past months we’ve been running around Europe with the Maker Faire tour to meet makers from many cities and for the first time we had a concrete perception that there’s a lot of tinkering and sharing in this part of the world.
I have to tell you a good news and I’d like to reach you all: we decided to extend the Call for Makers for some more days and allow you to defeat the procrastinator hiding in all of you ; )
The deadline to submit your application for Maker Faire Rome has now been extended to June 30. So don’t be shy or “lazy” 
and join us with your project!
While our team is reading submitted applications until now, those who need more time will get some other days. So make the most of it and get your applications in NOW.
If you are a Maker, Performer or Presenter here are just some of the topics that we’re looking for:
– 3D Printing
- Robot
- Education
- Design
- Fashion
- Arduino
- Crafts
- Science
- Digital Fabrication
- Green
- Transportation
- Interaction
- Young Makers (under 16)
Remember that:
all the makers can post their questions and find an answer on the Arduino Forum, in the special section dedicated to MakerFaire Rome and follow all the news and updates in the social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Venerdì 14 e sabato 15 giugno 2013 si terrà a Torino il tradizionale Arduino Camp Italia, evento completamente gratuito ideato per coinvolgere la community e organizzato da Officine Arduino in collaborazione con Toolbox.
L’evento di due giorni prevede un incontro dedicato alle idee e alle persone che stanno cambiando il mondo dal titolo “L’Innovazione dal Basso”, che ospiterà
(tutti i dettagli e le iscrizioni sul sito di Toolbox)
Il giorno successivo, sabato 15, dalle 10 di mattina fino alle 20.30 presso il Fablab Torino si svolgerà invece un vero e proprio Hackaton. I partecipanti divisi in gruppi si sfideranno all’ultimo circuito, creando ognuno un progetto e cercando di rispondere al meglio al tema proposto la mattina stessa.
Ospite d’eccezione sarà il nuovo Arduino Robot!
Entrambi i giorni prevedono un ingresso gratuito ma i posti saranno limitati dalla capienza del luogo dell’incontro. Per partecipare all’evento di venerdì, fatelo a questo link, invece per l’Hackaton, iscrivetevi qui.
Se vi interessa cerchiamo anche 5 volontari per l’Hackaton di sabato che ci aiutino a fare accoglienza, diano supporto logistico e informativo ai team. Vi interessa? Attivatevi qui!
Steve Spence, an amateur organic farmer in Andrew, South Carolina, has a smart way of irrigating his vegetables. He uses water from his pond and the fish waste to fertilize his plants, a technique known as aquaponics. But the critical balance between the makeup of the water and soil means Spence has to know exactly what’s going on in both. Real-time information about the pond’s make up is imperative to know he’s giving his veggies the best drink of water.
This is the beginning of a post published on ModernFarmer a couple of days ago. Click here to keep reading about nice stories and real examples (+ 5 farm hacks!) on how to use Arduino for farming and what happens when farmers start embracing the modern trends of DIY tech.
Global Sounds is an interactive installation by Rebecca Gischel. It is composed by a series of pyramids made of acrylic glass installed in a square in Edinburgh and each of them programmed to play different instrumental sections of a song when interacted with.
The composition, which was written especially for the project and includes a mix of instruments symbolic of different cultures such as the kato and didgeridoo, allude to the multicultural richness migrants have brought to the UK and Europe bringing parts of their own culture with them.
(in english below)
Se avete avuto l’occasione di visitarla, concorderete che la Fondazione Achille Castiglioni sia uno dei luoghi più magici di Milano, un luogo vivo, brulicante e allegro dove si respira l’amore per il design, per il progetto e per le persone.
Il 15 e 16 giugno prossimi in una delle stanze della sede della fondazione in Piazza Castello 27 a Milano, Massimo Banzi terrà un workshop di base intitolato “Arduino e la luce”, portando 15 partecipanti alla realizzazione di una lampada interattiva fabbricata digitalmente a partire da un design di studio Habits.
Dopo l’introduzione alle potenzialità di Arduino e ai fondamenti dell’interattività, Massimo guiderà i partecipanti attraverso esercizi guidati alla scoperta dell’abc di Arduino e di alcuni sensori. Nel resto del weekend Massimo lavorerà con gli studenti per rendere interattive le lampade e ogni partecipante porterà a casa la propria creazione al termine del corso.
Il workshop si svolge nell’ambito della mostra dedicata alla lampada Gibigiana disegnata da Achille Castiglioni presentata con bozzetti e prototipi proposti in una nuova chiave sperimentale. Il ricavato del workshop andrà alla Fondazione Achille Castiglioni.
Il corso è dedicato a principianti; non è necessaria alcuna conoscenza di elettronica e di programmazione. È richiesto a ogni partecipante di portare il proprio laptop con sistema operativo Windows, Mac (10.5 o superiore) o Linux. Su richiesta, sarà possibile pranzare in studio Castiglioni (a un costo di 20 euro per il sabato e la domenica).
Iscrivetevi cliccando qui e per ulteriori domande scrivete a fondazioneachillecastiglioni [at] press-office.co.
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Experimenting on light and interaction with Massimo Banzi
If you had the chance to visit it, you’d agree that Fondazione Achille Castiglioni is one of the most charming site of Milan, a lively and inspiring place, where you can breathe the love for design and for the people.
On the 15th and 16th of June Massimo Banzi will hold a two-day workshop (in italian) titled “Arduino e la luce” hosted in the rooms of the foundation in Piazza Castello 27 in Milan, bringing 15 participants into creating an interactive digitally-fabricated lamp, designed by Habits studio.
After introducing Arduino and the basics of interactivity, Massimo will guide participants into exploring the sensors and how to make their lamp interactive. Each of them will work on one lamp and is going to bring home the final result at the end of the second day.
The workshop is organized as part of the exhibition dedicated to the Gibigiana lamp, designed by Achille Castiglioni and presented in a new experimental version with sketches and prototypes. All proceeds from this workshop will go to Fondazione Achille Castiglioni.
The workshop will be in italian language and open to beginners, without any knowledge of electronics or programming.
Book your participation at this link and if you need more info write to achillecastiglioni [at] press-office.co
Are you a student living in a closed dorm? Ever wished for a window on a blank wall but maybe the house owners would not allow you to build? All of you would have seen tutorial about moodlamp with RGB LED strips and Arduino. This seems to be the perfect application for it.
For this tutorial the maker used Superlight LEDs and an Arduino which provides an effect directly corresponding to the preset daytime light outside.
Arduino time library is the core of the project.
For a very detailed tutorial on how to make it by yourself at home, head here!
