Tinker it now!

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.

++ OpenSoundControl hack by Matti Niinmaki using the Arduino and Pure Data with Animata a nice open source animation package.

++ Speaking of tangible music, Psychosynth is a nice project, composing music by moving physical objects on a table. Check out the 3D music interface virtual version.

++ Graffiti project is a Gesture Recognition Management Framework for Interactive Tabletop Interfaces, by Alessandro De Nardi from NUI Groups showing you seamless natural interaction between the TUI and GUI with source.

++ Whether Keytar, a keyboard/guitar controlled by Arduino, is the world’s sexist instrument or not, it’s certainly worth checking out…

++ Have any ideas to create a more environmentally friendly vehicle? The Toyota Technology Challenge 2008-09 invites UK school student teams to attend the Design & Build an Environmentally Friendly Model Vehicle competition. A wonderful chance to mess around with a free* kit supplied by Rapid, containing all the components necessary to build a vehicle, and possibly win up to £1,000 for your school as well!

++ Manchester’s yearly Futuresonic conference is offering a 6 month internship for anyone interested in digital art, live music, and events logistics.

++ Is Augmented Reality this year’s hot trend? Suddenly it’s everywhere. Mikkoh’s lovely tutorial shows you how to get started with FlarToolKit playing with Augmented Reality in Flash. Another free library, yay!

++ Speaking of which, check out VixML platform for iPhone development. The approval system is a bit of a pain, but it makes dev work much more accessible.

++ Have a project you want to show off? Why don’t you sign up as an exhibitor to the UK Makerfaire on March 14th-15th!

++ Nice O’Reilly publication that’s come out recently called Programming Interactivity: A Guide for Processing, Arduino, and OpenFrameworks authored by Joshua Noble.

++ Speaking of which, we’re very honoured to have been name-checked in Dan Saffer’s latest book Designing Gestural Interfaces, also published by O’Reilly.

++ Nice little publication by Peter Kirn called Create Digital Music , free to download the pdf or £11 to get a lovely copy, this book goes through the basics of circuit bending, toy hacking, MIDI and music making.

++ Apparently 2009 is the Year of the Hacker.

++ Lovely 3d-light work by Squidsoup called Stealth and Discontinuum.

Stealth Project from squidie on Vimeo.

We had a great time last week at the Takeaway festival as we were invited to offer an RFID workshop. 35 people showed up from all walks of life and worked in teams on producing functional (and sometimes a bit glitchy) prototypes.

All fun though.

Have a look at some code for the Arduino and other documentation as well as some pics on Flickr!

Our good friends at Roomware in Amsterdam are offering a one day workshop this coming Saturday.

“The Roomware Project is an open-source framework for interactive spaces. It allows developers of multiple origins to enhance any venue or event using technologies such as BlueTooth and RFID.

“Roomware” is an application running in a defined space. For instance: linking people’s photographs to the screens of a club, sharing musical tastes with the DJ, finding other interesting people on your mobile phone, a photo booth activated by the entry tickets of two people, etc”

Sign up on Upcoming!

The advantage of being a network of people with such different interests and talents, is that we can release products (software/hardware) with a fast pace.
One week we release a hardware piece, the next a software one, the one after a paper about an installation, a tutorial, a tip.
I was always excited about this opportunity, because I think that a hacker-minded group can do a lot of good to the community.
This was one of the purposes of twodotone joining Tinker.it.
For example we have a Windows C++ programmer that can do many things very quickly. His name is salvatore (a.k.a. “saver”).

To cut a long story short, the intro is to announce we finally released TinkerProxy for the Windows platform.
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A while ago I wrote a small app that would execute AppleScript commands depending on the data send from an Arduino board connected to my mac. I’ve been asked a few times to release it but it was just a quick hack. Now thanks to HyperWerk in Basel, I’ve had the time to fix it a bit for a student project. I’m releasing it to see what people do with it.

Here is a screenshot :

and Here is a piece of code for Arduino

// Applescript Proxy test
// Skip to the next song on itunes every 10 seconds
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
Serial.print("A");
delay(10000);
}

What this does is that arduino sends an A every 10 seconds and that A is processed by AppleScript proxy that tells iTunes to skip to the next song…

I’m sure that there are million of uses for this… like controlling the DVD player using a light sensor or something similar… If you use it send me some feedback

This is part 1 or a bigger app I’m writing that maps a lot of events on the mac with a number of actions…

stay tuned

Download the app here

PS: It’s worth mentioning that we’re available to customise this application for your needs or build something new based on this  :)

Massimo

As many AVR users might know, the AVR microprocessors we’re using for Arduino prototyping or just as bare µC’s to play with, have a limited amount of RAM memory.
This ranges between 512 Bytes to 4 KBytes for the more advanced ATmega128.
Arduino, at present time, has its core in an ATmega168, which has 1 KB SRAM memory for code execution.

While I was reading through the C++ code of the Nokia LCD library for AVR, I found out that a modifier was used when defining the Arrays containing LCD fonts and Bitmaps: PROGMEM.
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