Over the last few years you may have noticed a few of my Arduino tutorials, and during this time many people have mentioned that I should write a book. And now thanks to the team from No Starch Press this recommendation has morphed into my first book – “Arduino Workshop“:
Now into the fourth print run, “Arduino Workshop” is one of the few books on the market that can take the reader from zero knowledge to understanding the Arduino development platform, and working with a huge array of add-ons and technologies. You don’t need to buy any other preliminary book – this starts from the absolute beginning. And a huge “thank you” to all those who have purchased and supported the book so far – and it’s now available in Traditional Chinese, Korean, German and Polish.
“Arduino Workshop” offers a professionally edited and curated path for the beginner to learn with and have fun. It’s a hands-on introduction to Arduino with 65 projects – from simple LED use right through to RFID, Internet connection, wireless data, working with cellular communications, and much more. Plus the reader also learns about electronics, good coding and other interesting topics.
Each project is explained in detail, explaining how the hardware and Arduino code works together. Plus we teach you how to read and understand circuit schematics and use this clear method of describing circuits which prepares the read for further electronics learning.
The reader doesn’t need any expensive tools or workspaces, and all the parts used are available from almost any electronics retailer. Furthermore all of the projects can be finished without soldering, so it’s safe for readers of all ages.
The editing team at No Starch Press, our technical editor Marc Alexander and myself have worked hard to make the book perfect for those without any electronics or Arduino experience at all, and it makes a great gift for someone to get them started. After working through the 65 projects the reader will have gained enough knowledge and confidence to create many things – and to continue researching on their own.
Or if you’ve been enjoying the results of my thousands of hours of work here at tronixstuff, you can show your appreciation by ordering a copy for yourself or as a gift. If you’re still not sure, review the table of contents, index and download a sample chapter from the Arduino Workshop website.
Arduino Workshop is available from No Starch Press in printed or DRM-free eBook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub) formats. And the eBooks are also included with the printed orders from No Starch Press so you can get started immediately.
Furthermore for readers outside of the United States wishing to save on postage, Arduino Workshop is available from many stores in various countries, for example:
Like your store listed? Send link via Contact Page
And you can also find Arduino Workshop for sale from all the popular booksellers around the globe such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so on.
Have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column, or join our forum – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other – and we can all learn something.
Over the last few years you may have noticed a few of my Arduino tutorials, and during this time many people have mentioned that I should write a book. And now thanks to the team from No Starch Press this recommendation has morphed into my book – “Arduino Workshop“:
Now into the third print run, “Arduino Workshop” is one of the few books on the market that can take the reader from zero knowledge to understanding the Arduino development platform, and working with a huge array of add-ons and technologies. And a huge “thank you” to all those who have purchased and supported the book so far.
“Arduino Workshop” offers a professionally-edited and curated path for the beginner to learn with and have fun. It’s a hands-on introduction to Arduino with 65 projects – from simple LED use right through to RFID, Internet connection, wireless data, working with cellular communications, and much more. Plus the reader also learns about electronics, good coding and other interesting topics.
Each project is explained in detail, explaining how the hardware and Arduino code works together. Plus we teach you how to read and understand circuit schematics and use this clear method of describing circuits which prepares the read for further electronics learning.
The reader doesn’t need any expensive tools or workspaces, and all the parts used are available from almost any electronics retailer. Furthermore all of the projects can be finished without soldering, so it’s safe for readers of all ages.
The editing team at No Starch Press, our technical editor Marc Alexander and myself have worked hard to make the book perfect for those without any electronics or Arduino experience at all, and it makes a great gift for someone to get them started. After working through the 65 projects the reader will have gained enough knowledge and confidence to create many things – and to continue researching on their own. Or if you’ve been enjoying the results of my thousands of hours of work here at tronixstuff, you can show your appreciation by ordering a copy for yourself or as a gift. If you’re still not sure, review the table of contents, index and download a sample chapter from the Arduino Workshop website.
Finally – between now and the end of the year, you can get a 30% discount from No Starch by using the coupon code “tronixstuff” – and this still includes the DRM-free eBooks.
Arduino Workshop is available from No Starch Press in printed or DRM-free eBook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub) formats. And the eBooks are also included with the printed orders so you can get started immediately.
In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other – and we can all learn something.
Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica conducts a Q&A with Massimo Banzi as Arduino’s rise continues.
Most of the technology world is familiar with open source software and the reasons why, in some eyes, it’s more appealing than proprietary software. When software’s source code is available for anyone to inspect, it can be examined for security flaws, altered to suit user wishes, or used as the basis for a new product.
Less well-known is the concept behind open source hardware, such as Arduino. Massimo Banzi, co-creator of Arduino, spoke with Ars this month about the importance of open hardware and a variety of other topics related to Arduino. As an “open source electronic prototyping platform,” Arduino releases all of its hardware design files under a Creative Commons license, and the software needed to run Arduino systems is released under an open source software license. That includes an Arduino development environment that helps users create robots or any other sort of electronics project they can dream up.
So just like with open source software, people can and do make derivatives of Arduino boards or entirely new products powered by Arduino technology.
Why is openness important in hardware? “Because open hardware platforms become the platform where people start to develop their own products,” Banzi told Ars. “For us, it’s important that people can prototype on the BeagleBone [a similar product] or the Arduino, and if they decide to make a product out of it, they can go and buy the processors and use our design as a starting point and make their own product out of it.”
While Arduino has been around since 2005, the Raspberry Pi has been the hot platform for hobbyists over the past 18 months. But the Pi’s hardware isn’t open.
“With the Raspberry Pi you cannot even buy the processor,” Banzi said. “With the processor on the BeagleBone, you can go buy even one of them if you need to.” Raspberry Pi is “a PC designed for people to learn how to program. But we are a completely different philosophy. We believe in a full platform, so when we produce a piece of hardware, we also produce documentation and a development environment that fits all together with hardware.”
BeagleBone and Arduino, partners in open hardware
You may have noticed that Banzi spoke positively about the BeagleBone even though it’s ostensibly an Arduino competitor, made by the BeagleBoard.org foundation and CircuitCo. The platforms share the same open hardware philosophy, and they recently collaborated to build the Arduino Tre, scheduled to be released in spring 2014.
The Arduino Tre and BeagleBone Black both use a 1GHz Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instruments. BeagleBoard.org co-founders Gerald Coley and Jason Kridner helped the Arduino team design the hardware and software for the Tre, according to Senior Embedded Systems Engineer David Anders of CircuitCo. Like the BeagleBone, the Tre is manufactured by CircuitCo.
The collaboration “began as a discussion about how to introduce users (not just students, but also artists, designers, sociologists, and anyone who doesn’t come from a CS/EE background) to what embedded Linux offers without assuming that they know Linux,” Anders told Ars.
Software will also be portable between the two platforms. “The Arduino Tre does contain the essential core of a BeagleBone Black, and we are working to standardize the default distribution between the two platforms, which would provide easy transition between working on either platform,” Anders said.
In another development important for open source hardware, the creators of BeagleBoard andArduino have each developed platforms containing Intel processors for the first time.
At the LinuxCon conference, Intel CTO Dirk Hohndel told the crowd that CircuitCo’s Minnowboard is “specifically designed as the first open hardware board based on x86, and that allows you to build derivatives without an NDA. All the pieces are open and available, all the blueprints you need, all the source files you need. You can create your own embedded platforms without Intel, without any of the vendors involved.”
After the Minnowboard’s release, Intel teamed with Arduino to create the Intel Galileo, due out next month for $60 or less.
Intel’s embrace of open hardware came in response to customer demand. Banzi heard one story about Intel unsuccessfully trying to sell a customer a new processor. “The customer told them, ‘I’m not moving even if you give me the processor for free because I don’t want to lose the community,’” Banzi said. “For this person, it was very important to have a platform based on Arduino and the Arduino community behind it.”
An Arduino for every project
Banzi co-developed Arduino while teaching at a design school in northwest Italy, simply because there weren’t any good hardware options for his students. “We had to figure out something that would be simple, cheaper, USB plug and play, and you could program on Windows, Mac, and Linux,” he said.
“Arduino allows you to move your code across platforms so you can always choose the platform that fits with your project.”
Arduino was expected to be useful “in that particular tiny context,” but it morphed into something much bigger. “It sort of escaped the lab—let’s put it this way, you know like a virus—and started to touch all sorts of different other markets,” Banzi said. “Now if you go to the Maker Faire, you see that 80 percent of the projects are running on Arduino in one way or another.”
There are about a million official Arduino boards “out in the wild” and perhaps several million more of the unofficial variety, he said. Arduino is trademarked—even though it’s open hardware, makers of new products should “explicitly say that you’re not connected to Arduino and your product is a derivative,” the company says.
While some Arduino clones are made well and are compatible with Arduino software, there are many cheap knockoffs, Banzi said. “There is a problem that a number of people have started to use the ‘Arduino compatible’ words too much,” he said. “There’s no guarantee it’s going to be compatible or that you can use the official Arduino IDE [integrated development environment] to program it.”
A company called Seeed Studio has done a good job making products that are compatible and respectful of trademarks. But there are many bad apples, which Banzi has catalogued on his website.
Beyond that problem, pretty much everything is going great for Arduino. The new Intel- and ARM-based Arduinos take their place alongside existing boards like the Arduino Uno, based on the ATmega328 8-bit microcontroller.
“The Arduino Uno is the cornerstone of Arduino, that’s where everybody starts,” Banzi said. “You learn how to fly with the Arduino Uno and then you graduate to different boards.”
The Arduino partnership with Intel is going to yield more fruit, as the Intel Quark processor is designed in such a way that new versions with slightly different capabilities can be rolled out quickly, Banzi said. “We have a collaboration agreement where this is just the start.”
The Intel Galileo runs a stripped-down, custom version of Linux and is ideal for building 3D printers or applications that are part of the “Internet of things.” That includes home automation applications and wireless sensor networks.
It’s not clear whether the Intel Galileo or the Arduino Tre is more powerful, as Banzi said no benchmarks have been run to compare them. They have different capabilities and tradeoffs, though. The Tre can run a desktop and is thus suitable for applications where you need time-sensitive I/O operations and a graphical interface, such as Kinect-like sensors.
The Galileo opens Arduino up to the world of x86 applications, but it lacks a video card and is imagined as a platform for applications that don’t need a desktop interface, Banzi said.
Previous-generation Arduinos are not obsolete, either. Last year’s Arduino Due, for example, uses a 32-bit processor which is “good for those applications where timing is important,” like a 3D printer or stepper motor, Banzi said. “8-bit processors are starting to struggle on the more interesting printers.”
What’s significant is that Arduino has a piece of hardware for almost every use case.
“We are moving to a situation where you would be able to scale your code from an 8-bit microcontroller to a 32-bit microcontroller, to a 400MHz Intel chip, all the way up to a 1GHz ARMv7 computer with HDMI,” Banzi said. “Arduino allows you to move your code across platforms so you can always choose the platform that fits with your project.”
Last week Officine Arduino in Torino was visited by a crew of Designboom – according to Time magazine one of the top 100 design influencers in the world. Today, they published a report of the tour to the factory and the fablab with many pictures and videos:
who would ever imagine that global cultural and economic revolution would spring from the tranquil fields of piedmont, italy, in tiny towns nestled against the stunning backdrop of the alps? but that’s exactly where arduino, the system of microcontrollers revolutionzing the maker movement and pioneering the concept of opensource hardware, was born in 2005 and continues to make its home today.
arduino’s story is unusual to say the least. five colleagues, seeking to empower students with the tools to create, developed the platform in 2005. now distributors estimate that over one million arduinos have been sold, and the arduino community is among the most resilent and inventive on the internet. forums like instructables and arduino’s own scuola connect enthusiasts to learn from one another, and arduino users build on the platform to open up new creative possibilities.
we traveled to turin, italy, to see arduino’s first officina, before setting off north to visit the italian factories that continue to be the heart of arduino manufacturing for the entire world…
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”
Over the last few years I’ve been writing a few Arduino tutorials, and during this time many people have mentioned that I should write a book. And now thanks to the team from No Starch Press this recommendation has morphed into my new book – “Arduino Workshop“:
Although there are seemingly endless Arduino tutorials and articles on the Internet, Arduino Workshop offers a nicely edited and curated path for the beginner to learn from and have fun. It’s a hands-on introduction to Arduino with 65 projects – from simple LED use right through to RFID, Internet connection, working with cellular communications, and much more.
Each project is explained in detail, explaining how the hardware an Arduino code works together. The reader doesn’t need any expensive tools or workspaces, and all the parts used are available from almost any electronics retailer. Furthermore all of the projects can be finished without soldering, so it’s safe for readers of all ages.
The editing team and myself have worked hard to make the book perfect for those without any electronics or Arduino experience at all, and it makes a great gift for someone to get them started. After working through the 65 projects the reader will have gained enough knowledge and confidence to create many things – and to continue researching on their own. Or if you’ve been enjoying the results of my thousands of hours of work here at tronixstuff, you can show your appreciation by ordering a copy for yourself or as a gift
You can review the table of contents, index and download a sample chapter from the Arduino Workshop website.
Arduino Workshop is available from No Starch Press in printed or ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub) formats. Ebooks are also included with the printed orders so you can get started immediately.
04/07/2013 – (my fellow) Australians – currently the easiest way of getting a print version is from Little Bird Electronics.
In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other – and we can all learn something.
Over the last few years I’ve been writing a few Arduino tutorials, and during this time many people have mentioned that I should write a book. And now thanks to the team from No Starch Press this recommendation has morphed into my new book – “Arduino Workshop“:
Although there are seemingly endless Arduino tutorials and articles on the Internet, Arduino Workshop offers a nicely edited and curated path for the beginner to learn from and have fun. It’s a hands-on introduction to Arduino with 65 projects – from simple LED use right through to RFID, Internet connection, working with cellular communications, and much more.
Each project is explained in detail, explaining how the hardware an Arduino code works together. The reader doesn’t need any expensive tools or workspaces, and all the parts used are available from almost any electronics retailer. Furthermore all of the projects can be finished without soldering, so it’s safe for readers of all ages.
The editing team and myself have worked hard to make the book perfect for those without any electronics or Arduino experience at all, and it makes a great gift for someone to get them started. After working through the 65 projects the reader will have gained enough knowledge and confidence to create many things – and to continue researching on their own. Or if you’ve been enjoying the results of my thousands of hours of work here at tronixstuff, you can show your appreciation by ordering a copy for yourself or as a gift
You can review the table of contents, index and download a sample chapter from the Arduino Workshop website.
Arduino Workshop is available from No Starch Press in printed or ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub) formats. Ebooks are also included with the printed orders so you can get started immediately.
In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other – and we can all learn something.
We were invited by Eric Pan from Seeedstudio (thanks Eric for the good time!). The Maker Faire has been a priceless experience to get in touch with the chinese maker community, as well as networking with different Chinese and Chinese-based maker companies creating interesting contents & products.
The guys of Haxlr8r showed us their cool creations: Haxlr8r is a startup incubator taking cool ideas and startups from around the world and helping them developing and fine tuning their own product (solve all the puzzles in developing a project, 3 to 6 month) for production here in China. They are based closed to the world famous SEG Electronics Market, widely portrayed from Bunnie Wang in this post and from Evil Mad Scientist here.
On Sunday (totally drained out from the previous day) we teamed up with the Trasfabric “Hacked Better” workshop, we visited Chaihuo Makerspace in OCT where Tom Igoe, Zack Hoeken Smith, Gao Lei, Eric Pan (Seeedstudio) talked about maker movement and DIY culture in China, with Silvia Lindtner (ISTC & Fudan University) and Anna Greenspan (NYU Shanghai), organizers of the workshop.
I had the cool opportunity to sit back and listen to many interesting facts and odd metaphors, joining the informal panel. The main idea which came out is looking at the city of Shenzen like the place to be for producing (open) hardware right now, perfectly represented in a cool metaphor of Eric:
Shenzen is the Hollywood of hardware products, where big companies are just like the big Majors: that’s where independent, low-budget movies come out. (movies = products, boards).
Zack and Eric, as well as Tom, talked about the the value of Brand, both as Market Identity and Responsibility. Zack: It looks a bit like a recipe. Hambuger. Everybody makes an hamburger. You can go to McDonald / Burger King or in the finest place. You can make it yourself. What are you hungry for? Basically open sour(c)e hardware can get everybody be the very personal cook of themselves, or at least acknowledges, with different tools and know-hows, the audience (maker movement, kids, any of us).
What are you hungry for?
P.S. please keep an eye on the Transfabric blog to a more comprehensive and less informal sum-up of the workshop, I’m just the one who loves Cinema, Hamburger and Open Source Hardware.
Planet Arduino is, or at the moment is wishing to become, an aggregation of public weblogs from around the world written by people who develop, play, think on Arduino platform and his son. The opinions expressed in those weblogs and hence this aggregation are those of the original authors. Entries on this page are owned by their authors. We do not edit, endorse or vouch for the contents of individual posts. For more information about Arduino please visit www.arduino.cc
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