Planet Arduino

The Torino Mini Maker Faire - Saturday 31st of May – is the event dedicated to both digital and non digital manual creativity. Organized by Officine Arduino, Toolbox Coworking and Fablab Torino, it’s the first maker faire in the town of Mole Antonelliana and will be an event open to all: curious, newbies, kids, inventors of all shapes and sizes. Created in the United States in 2006, the Maker Faires over the years have become a not-to-be-missed event for anyone looking for a way to have quick picture of creative projects and innovative ideas of the moment.

Massimo Banzi and Bruce Sterling will close the day of talks with a keynote starting at 6pm and titled: “Arduino, the future and the internet of things”. If you live around the Piemonte area, it’s an event you won’t want to miss!

Arduino has a little (yet effective) bit in Turin, and that’s Officine Arduino. We opened this place two years ago to offer a shelter to the Arduinians in northern Italy and host a makerspace, for their creations. We witnessed (and joined) the foundation of the Torino Fablab, an association offering the very same machines to anybody interested about the maker movement in Turin. On top of that, the all ardu-maker-fab-co-creative space is hosted in Toolbox Coworking.

It’s tough to weight all the efforts and failures and successes we reached in these two years. We’ve seen the birth of Verkstad Arduino, the Swedish Arduino Office which is sharing the same principles we’ve been looking for in conceiving this place: mixing the company approach and the horizontal, informal one of makerspaces and coworking spaces (aka collaboration spaces).

I love the way Arduino Team dealt with the growing of the project: create different little places rather than having a huge one.

On top of that, Officine Arduino wouldn’t have been so without the help of Smartprojects (one of the main producers of Arduino). A selfless and generous helping hand towards us and towards italian makers in general. They lended us their lasercutter for 2 years, now that we are setted up they are going to lend the very same lasercut to another newborn fablab! This is the picture I took when I broght the lasercut back last week.

Last year we celebrated our birthday with Josef Prusa and the building of ten reprap 3d printers. This year we want to dedicate our birthday to education, so we are going to host and build Interactive digital writeboards during the week end, following the Wiildos opensource project, with Pietro Pilolli (project host with Matteo Ruffoni e Massimo Bosetti).

Friday is important for yet another reason: Toolbox is going to host the press conference of the newborn italian maker association, inwhich Massimo plays the role of president: Make in Italy Cdb Onlus. If you are a journalist or maker you can enroll here to join the press conference.

tl;dr: we are partying this upcoming friday, if you pass by let us know, FB Event. Interested in building your own Interactive Open Source Digital Writeboard? Join the Make In Italy Cdb Onlus Press conference here.

Some days ago Makertour was in Torino to join the Arduino Camp organized by Officine Arduino and hosted by  Fablab Torino. Enrico Bassi, president of the Fablab, was interviewed by Makerfaire Rome crew around his experience in the “maker movement” and in the creation of the first  fablab in the city.

During the same trip the video-crew visited the factory where Arduino is manufactured and Davide Gomba reveals where does the “Arduino” name comes from! Watch it now:

Last saturday we had a great day celebrating the Arduino Camp, hosting the traditional hackaton inside Officine Arduino and Fablab Torino spaces and the huge courtyard of Toolbox Coworking. Many people, cool projects, and a theme: “Reinventing interfaces of home appliances” (… interpreted in a very wide way, though).

We had three winners and a special nomination, check yourself among the amazing shoots by Cosimo Maffione on our Flickr set.

First prize – “No friends No air”:  an air system based on computer vision

Second prize – “Rombot“: the alarm clock that you have to drive back to turn it off

Third prize – “InterVintage“: a domestic communication tool based on vintage stuff

Special Mention – “Coffee or Die“: a special interface for a flame

So far we’ve been organizing  three Arduino Camps, and we have many requests of people willing to join or organize such an event all over the world to celebrate Arduino users’ community. That’s why for the next years’ edition we are planning to offer to community-based groups the possibility to organize their own hackaton on the same day in different locations. Same theme, a variety of approaches to solve a problem. Stay tuned!

Si prepara un fine settimana denso di eventi: a partire dall ‘Arduino Day a Roma, ospitato nella bellissima cornice del Cinema Palazzo, per permettere a chiunque fosse interessato di muovere i primi passi nel mondo di Arduino.  Se invece sabato rimanete tra Torino-Milano-Genova non potete non prendere in considerazione di fare un salto al Festival di Toolbox , vera celebrazione delle tre anime che popolano questo spazio di coworking: la ricchezza della condivisione, l’intraprendenza delle startup e la creatività dei maker e del DIY.

Tante le attività per festeggiare il terzo compleanno del coworking che ospita Fablab Torino: dal workshop di realizzazione di gioielli elettronici del FablabTorino, alla presentazione di Arduino , dai Big Data (Topix)  a come creare la propria campagna di crowdfunding.

Vi aspettiamo tutti lì sabato 6 aprile dalle 10 alle 10!

Un anno fa Massimo raccontava su questo blog di come una serie di eventi avevano portato alla nascita delle Officine Arduino di Torino. A distanza di un anno non riesco ad immaginare ad una cosa sola rimasta ferma. Officine ed il Fablab Torino sono cresciuti – anche grazie alla preziosissima ospitalità di Toolbox – , si sono aggiunti tanti amici ed alcuni se ne sono andati. Anche in Italia ormai si é cominciato a parlare di Makers e verso la fine di quest’anno, grazie agli sforzi di Riccardo Luna e Massimo – oltre che alla lungimiranza di Asset Camera e Tecnopolo – Roma ospiterà la prima Maker Faire Europe.

Venerdì prossimo avrete l’occasione di partecipare al nostro compleanno. Saranno presenti alcuni amici stranieri come Josef Prusa, che il giorno successivo assemblerà 10 stampanti con noi, e Priya Kuber, una maker indiana che scrive su questo blog da tempo (*). Ci saranno tutti gli amici del Fablab Torino(*), con alcune delle loro invenzioni(*).

per partecipare, prego compilare il form.

(*) = surprise