Being a dumb and clumsy robot has never been as fun as in the stupid robots competition Hebocon. This competition series is described as “robot contests for the technically ungifted” by its creator Daiju Ishikawa, and encourages anyone to join with no prior knowledge of robotics necessary.

What’s neat is that unlike other awards, Hebocon’s are symbolic as they are usually made out of recycled parts from every robot in the competition!

So far there have been two editions of Hebocon in Spain (Valencia and Makespace Madrid) where our very own David Cuartielles participated as a judge.

Last weekend, Cuartielles was invited to the Hebocon World Championship in Tokyo where he served on the judging panel alongside Nifty’s Dr. Kunio Matsui and an executive from NicoTsuku (a company dedicated to digital communities). The event drew a total of 32 robots from all across the world, including the United States, Hong Kong, Iceland, France, Singapore, Greece, Taiwan and Japan.

The winners were:

Nifty Award: An unusual car with a spinning doll that shot fake banknotes

NicoTsuku Award: A robot with a middle-age man that turned a table upside down (a literal representation of a Japanese colloquial expression that means getting mad)

Arduino/Genuino Award: A crocodile robot made by a 10-year-old that previously participated in Maker Faire Tokyo

The ‘Remote-Controlled Robot’ from Hong Kong won the sumo competition and it was about fooling the opponent by switching the roles of the remote control and the robot.

Thanks for inviting us to Hebocon’s World Championship 2016! Check out more on Twitter! 

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.

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It’s a great pleasure to introduce the new member of the Arduino and Genuino family: MKR1000 is a powerful board that combines the functionality of the Zero and the connectivity of the Wi-Fi Shield.

It’s based on the Atmel ATSAMW25 that is part of the SmartConnect family of Atmel Wireless devices, specifically designed for IoT. It offers the ideal solution for makers seeking to add Wi-Fi connectivity with minimal previous experience in networking.

The new board will be available for purchase from February 2016 but starting today #1000 MKR1000 can be won in the World’s Largest Arduino Maker Challenge in collaboration with Hackster.IO and Microsoft.

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Arduino Verkstad is partner of the Nordic Internet of Things Hackathon 2015 organized in collaboration with Mobile Heights & the MVD Project and taking place April 10th-12th, 2015 in the city of Lund, Sweden. Programmers, interaction designers, professionals and enthusiasts  are invited to a 50-hour competition for attendees from any part of the globe no matter their technical skills and focused on two topics: Smart Transportation or Smart Home.

The great news is that the organisation is ready to pay travel expenses to up 10 teams from outside Sweden. You can submit your idea or project proposal within the Hackathon’s framework and if it gets accepted they will fly you here to compete against the other teams.

Read more about it at this link

RobotChallenge staff updated us with some numbers regarding the “Hack the Arduino Robot” competition launched at the end of January and sponsored by RS Components. They received 58 submissions from 20 different countries of the world! 10 projects were then selected by an international Jury composed by David Cuartielles (Arduino), David Tarrant (RS Components, Design Spark), Karim Jafarmadar (INNOC) and Pavel Petrovic (Robotika.sk).

Now it’s time for the second phase. They are going to receive an Arduino Robot each, implement  the project they submitted and  publish the results (including a short video) by the 23rd of February.

The 10 projects selected are the following: (more…)

RobotChallenge staff updated us with some numbers regarding the “Hack the Arduino Robot” competition launched at the end of January and sponsored by RS Components. They received 58 submissions from 20 different countries of the world! 10 projects were then selected by an international Jury composed by David Cuartielles (Arduino), David Tarrant (RS Components, Design Spark), Karim Jafarmadar (INNOC) and Pavel Petrovic (Robotika.sk).

Now it’s time for the second phase. They are going to receive an Arduino Robot each, implement  the project they submitted and  publish the results (including a short video) by the 23rd of February.

The 10 projects selected are the following: (more…)

My Air, My Health was the title of a Challenge calling innovators to work on a wearable project integrating air-quality measurement with heart rate and breathing.

The promoters of the challenge, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIH), launched it because they think that the possibility of understanding the relations between air pollution and people’s health in real-time could have an important impact in preventing disease and illness in the population. In the description you can read:

The required system design must be capable of linking air pollutant concentrations with physiological data, providing geocoded and time-stamped files in an easy to use format, and transmitting this data via existing networks to a central data repository. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this challenge, solvers are highly encouraged to form teams drawing on multiple relevant expertise… (more…)

[Jennifer Bove] interviewed Massimo in the series of portraits she is making to introduce the IxDA awards.  BTW, don’t miss the chance to join, the deadline has been post-poned till October the 1st.

1- What is your favorite product, digital or otherwise, to use, and why?

When I was 8 years old my dad gave me a Braun Lectron Electronics Kit. It was packaged like a book. On the left side there was an actual book you could pop out that explained how electronics work using hand-drawn bubbles that kids could understand, followed by very clean and simple instructions on how to assemble the modules. Then on the right there was a play area made of metal, where you could make various projects and then neatly store away the building blocks when you were done. You could just close up the book afterwards and put it on the book shelf.

read the complete interview

Ad otto giorni dalla fine del primo ArduinoCamp è giunto il momento di tirare le conclusioni di quanto avvenuto, di come è avvenuto e in che modo migliorarlo.

Rinnoviamo il ringraziamento ad Innovation Festival ed Alintec per l’appoggio e la riuscita dell’evento. Roland DG Italia e WeFab sono venuti a portare un po’ delle loro diavolerie.

Infine un grandissimo saluto a tutti coloro che hanno fatto il Camp, cioé i 200 e più partecipanti che si sono susseguiti nella due giorni. I volontari (Uwe, Federico, Vanessa, Maria, Eleonora e Nico) hanno cercato di monitorare le entrate della gente. Pare che non tutti gli iscritti si siano presentati, ma che un numero maggiore di persone sia venuto senza essersi prenotato-

1) arduinocamp.com : é stato interessante utilizzare un sito unico e le funzionalità della wiki per coordinare gli interessati per permettere agli utenti di appuntare e realizzare loro stessi il report del Camp. In realtà ci siamo appoggiati ad alcuni form esterni. Nel prossimo futuro faremo in modo che il sito riesca a gestire le richieste direttamente.

2) Discussioni & Tavole Rotonde (sabato pomeriggio): la intro di Massimo ha coperto una buona parte di domande da parte della comunità. Il confronto ha portato sostanzialmente a due conclusioni: il playground italiano va ristrutturato e i prossimi articoli che escono su Wired Italia saranno user-generated, dalla comunità di Arduino italiana. Le discussioni sono state a) un introduzione di Uwe Federer su Arduino b) un introduzione con i docenti del progetto scuola da parte di Davide Gomba c) Costantino e WeFab sul discorso Fablab a Milano d) Android e Arduino con Massimo.

3) Progetti. L’elenco dei progetti presentati lo trovate sul ArduinoCamp. Purtroppo a causa del delirio organizzativo che il camp ha comportato, la conferma delle talk é avvenuta troppo a ridosso del camp, comportando la defezione di alcuni relatori. Ci scusiamo per questo inconveniente e rinnoviamo l’invito per la prossima volta.Le presentazioni “lampo” sono state una grande prova per i nostri relatori, che comunque se la sono cavata bene. Progetti nel complesso molto interessanti.

4) HackDay. L’entusiasmo (e l’odore di sudore) che si respiravano la domenica durante l’HackDay ci hanno conrfermato che momenti di questo tipo vanno riproposti e rispondono ad una serie di richieste da parte di una crescente comunità smanettona in Italia. Il tempo é stato un limitato. In future edizioni potrebbe essere aumentato ad un giorno e mezzo, con una notte che porta sempre consiglio di mezzo.

5) La vendita delle Arduino e di oggetti simili dovrà durare maggior tempo, e dovrà essere meglio gestita.

6) L’esposizione di oggetti realizzati con Arduino dovrò avere più spazio e dovrà essere reclamizzata con più largo anticipo.

Per chi volesse, qui ci sono foto del camp (realizzate per noi da Costantino Bongiorno). Qui altre da Pitusso e qui da Paolo Bonelli

Grazie a tutti quelli che hanno partecipato e ora pensiamo a quando fare il prossimo.

MIT PhD student Lennon Rodgers and his team of colleagues was among the 32 teams who entered this year’s all-electric race, bringing their custom-designed eSuperbike to the famous competition on the small island located between Ireland and Great Britain.

The brains of the bike are housed in an Arduino circuit board, which monitors data including the amount of energy used and the temperatures of each motor and battery. A screen on the dashboard continuously displays readings, allowing the rider to adjust the speed to conserve energy if needed. As a backup, the team made the system wireless, streaming data from the bike to their laptops — a modification the team’s rider, veteran Isle of Man racer and resident Allan Brew, appreciated.

via [MIT news]