Tinker it now!

Arduino has the random() function, that generates random numbers.

Try this code:

int count;
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("Here are some random numbers");
  for (count=1; count<=10; count++) {
    Serial.println(random(100));
  }
}
void loop() {
}

I get the numbers 7, 49, 73, 58, 30, 72, 44, 78, 23, 9. You probably did too. Not very random.

Generating truly random numbers in electronics isn’t easy. There are all sorts of problems to solve – where to get the random numbers from. How to make sure they really are even and fair.

We often have need for truly random numbers on Tinker.it! projects, so we wrote a library to do just that. We’ve released it so that others can use it too. TrueRandom is downloadable from our Google Code pages.

So lets try that again, with TrueRandom installed.

#include <TrueRandom.h>

int count;
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("Here are some random numbers");
  for (count=1; count<=10; count++) {
    Serial.println(TrueRandom.random(100));
  }
}
void loop() {
}

Much better.

We’re looking at using this library for games, ESP experiments, fortune telling, cryptography (generating keys, challenges and nonces) and automatically allocating unique serial numbers (UUID, Ethernet MAC addresses). We’d love to know what you use it for.

++ Thesis work of Pratt Institute graduate Alicia Gibb entitled New Media Art, Design and the Arduino Controller.

++ Post by Mark Pilgrim on the hopefully not-so-likely Tinkerer’s Sunset.

++ Freedom to Tinker site run by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life.

++ Swissnex SFOis a space, a service, and a platform for the exchange of knowledge and ideas in science, education, art, and innovation.

++ We were told Sorting Things Out was quite good by the lovely Elisabeth Goodman.

We’re very proud to announce that we’ll be running a series of workshops at the Victoria and Albert Museum in parallel with the Decode exhibition covering subject areas like Processing, Beginners Arduino, Toy hacking and Smart Clothing (ie Lilypad Arduino!) so sign up quick!

++ Our friends at St Paul’s School for Boys made the twitter feed of Tower Bridge into a physical hack too. Lovely.

++ Nice writup of Sketching in Hardware a one day conference on the hardware hacking future scenarios we attended a few months ago.

++ Manchester’s madlab are having a day of robot footballing.

Swooped in to lead a quick but fantastic Arduino Beginner’s Workshop at tweak!, the interactive media arts festival this week in Limerick. We all met up on the north side of town, in the grey and ancient St. Munchin’s Church (bizarre name), which was festooned with all manner of cables wires, electronica, and sound kit. It’s not used as a church anymore, and people can reserve it for staging events and meetings – for free, shockingly. With Tinker.it! compatriot John Nussey on hand (thanks for that last minute soldering job, John!), we rattled through the larger part of a normally 2-day workshop in about 6 hours, covering all the basic Arduino topics for beginners and some intermediate level participants. The reception was very positive and left people wanting a whole lot more. We were warmly received by our host Nora O’Murchú of the Interaction Design Centre (Univ. Limerick) – chief organiser of the festival – and quickly got down to hacking, wiring up, LED flashing, and sensing.

Two or three other workshops are going on this week, including one on OpenFrameworks (led by Arturo Castro). There was a local staging of This Happened!, a panel discussion on Open Ended Technology Design, and several performances of electronic and electro-acoustic music. We didn’t stay long for the experimental music, as the noise-to-tolerability ratio was inversely mapped. (I was reminded of my old vinyl copy of Dry Lungs – has this stuff gone nowhere in 20 years?) Rounded off with a few lashings of Guinness from the wellspring of its glory, we were pretty well sorted by the time we had to leave, sadly just in time to miss more live performances and a film event on Saturday. A quite pleasant jaunt to the emerald isle and well worth it to see what is up in one small corner of the media arts community. Rumors say there won’t be another one next, year…but I’d be surprised!

Last week in Manchester, ALT-C (Association for Learning Technology) held its annual conference for those working in the technology enhanced learning (TEL) domain. The general turnout for this sort of event consists of academics who are researching the use of technology to support learning, policy wonks from the govenrnment, and people from industry hawking their wares. This year, it was a fairly interesting turnout. There were the same old seminars and papers showing the latest uses of technology for learning such as a recreation of a Roman Resort in Second Life as a learning environment, or the use of video games in the classroom. Also notable was a keynote address from the Vice Chancellor of the Open University who was basically touting the benefits of distance learning and all things OU. He was there to support the business of distance learning and he was really evangelizing like one of the pros from a San Jose technology startup company. I was there to present a paper on using sketching (yeah, with a paper and pencil) as a design method to get figure out how educators plan learning. Admittedly, an esoteric topic, but in fact, the way that people plan education is not very well understood. It’s hard work. At Tinker.it!, we’ve been planning and refining our Beginner’s Workshops around the Arduino platform for a few years now and we are just now getting the mix right between electronics theory, interaction design, and programming.

As far as technology and learning goes, this conference is more focused on how technology affects learning activities and can be pressed into service in support of it. There were a lot of theoretical papers from academics, and a few really quite bad examples of the “oooh lookie at our new techology idea” variety. Whereas BETT, by contrast, is like the Consumer Electrons Show of learning technology and has exhibitors from all over including, LEGO, Parallax, and other folks who are dabbling in tinkering, hacking, and learning. It’ll be interesting to see how making and hacking are represented there this year – I’ll be there for sure.

The physical world is made of stuff. Stuff costs money. It has to be transported. Building things takes time. And yet software is virtual. Data. A pattern of electrons. It can move from one continent to another in a split-second, for a microscopic fraction of a penny. Installation is one mouse click away. But you can’t touch it. Software is locked behind the monitor, trapped beneath your mouse.

What if the electronic world were more like the software world? What if trying out a new circuit was as simple as downloading new software and moving a few wires around a breadboard.

There are numerous Arduinos all around the world. They are standardised and compatible – they all run the same software. They are cheap, and easy to acquire or build.

Auduino launch event

Auduino is a synthesiser based on this principle. It is based around an Arduino, with the absolute minimum of extra components. A beginner can build one in less than 15 minutes. If you have an Arduino already, the rest of the components cost little more than the price of a pint of beer. You may have everything you need in a drawer right now.

With the obstacles of ’stuff’ reduced, Auduino starts to behave like ethereal data. Money and distribution are no longer a barrier. Anyone can download with a single click. Within days of its release, experimenters around the globe were not only building Auduino, but building upon it.

Auduino was released in late 2008. Within two weeks of release, it had crossed the Atlantic with new sliding controls. In the Netherlands, it got a shiny case of aluminium. New year passed, and a cardboard encased version appeared. The Arduino Mega and new 328 based Duemilanove appeared, and Auduino was updated to support them.

By the middle of 2009, there were experiments in paper based circuit fabrication. Paperduino was swiftly followed by a paper based Auduino. Circular arrays of dials and LEDs were added. A hybrid with a stylus control. And it continued. A colour reactive synthesiser. Making sounds from fabric.

In the last few days, we have spotted a physical sequencer, and a great case made from cardboard and a Sharpie.

Auduino and many other free projects are hosted at the Tinker.it! Google Code repository.

We’re back at the Guardian for the very exclusive Guardian Hackday 2. I’m doing a lightning talk to enthuse people into making their data and the internet physical using Arduino and thought I’d post the links I’m mentioning.

++ Centograph project by Tinker.it!

++ Tom Taylor’s micro-printer project

++ Ambient Orb by Nicolas O’Leary

++ Bakertweet by Poke

++ Bubblino by Ewan McEwen

Get started with:

++ Arduino website

++ Ethernet Shield specs and code examples

++ Arduino Ethernet code examples

++ DHCP library by Jordan Terrell

++ Beginners links and resources from our workshops

++ Simple Tutorials

++ Google code open source stuff by Peter Knight our senior engineer

We were bored, then we saw the lovely tshirts that Matt Jones was making, and so it felt right to make some t-shirts of our own! Check them out! there’s t-shirts and hoodies for girl and for boys!

As part of an article about the Arduino, the BBC technology came to our office and filmed a few different Arduino-based projects from people we knew and our own staff.

The article features the Brockenspiel from Brock Craft, our Senior Interaction design as well as well as our April fool’s project Hariglow and t!pot a weight-senstivie kettle and display which we developed as an internal project and was presented in the video by Peter Knight, our Senior Engineer.

The article also includes the lovely Bakertweet by Poke and an Etch a Sketch project by Arnon Katz which some of you might know best for his twitter feed :)

Have a look at the video and article on the BBC website.