Planet Arduino

Interacting with objects in a new way has always been the main focus of Digital Habits, a design studio based in Milan.  Today we are proud to announce they’ve become a partner  of the Arduino At Heart program with their new project called Cromatica (it was exhibited at the coveted Fuorisalone Milan Design Week in the Superstudio Temporary Museum for New Design and started the crowdfunding campaign just some days ago!).

Cromatica is half speaker and half desk lamp: it can be controlled through a natural gestural interface, touch sensors or remotely via the Cromatica Android and iOS app. Designed to deliver both light and sound functions, Cromatica features wireless 4.0 Bluetooth connection for streaming music and a RGB lamp for multiple ambient effects.

Cromatica is embedded with an Arduino allowing for a highly digital, multi-sensory music and desktop working experience.  It blends  light and sound functionalities in unexpected ways, taking IoT products to a new level of quality.  For example you can download the app for natural awakening: light will rise and music streaming will start allowing you to wake up to your favourite playlist, perfect for early mornings.

Take a look at the video for the Natural Interaction:

In the video below you can see how you can create your favorite ambient  to match with your mood:

Innocenzo Rifino, Director of Digital Habits, told us:

“The Cromatica is a multi-purpose light-speaker but it is also our vision of the evolution of electronics, a vision that is moving in a more human and open direction. Crowdrooster have helped tremendously by opening our product up to a wider community whilst giving us the chance to generate enough funding to share our concepts more widely.”

The Cromatica is also true to its maker roots being Open Source and hackable, opening the doors for endless innovation from the maker community as it can be adapted to integrate with other tech and the Internet of Things. To enable this there will be a special ‘Maker Edition’ campaign reward complete with digital file to 3D print the shell.

Take a look at their campaign Crowdrooster and make your pledge!
Crowdrooster, the new ‘all tech’ crowdfunding site, introduced Cromatica as the first maker project available for funding on the site.

[Philippe Chrétien's] project makes it to our front page just based on its completeness. When you hear about a multicolored lamp which changes based on an RFID tag you might not get too excited. When you look at the refined electronics and the quality of the wooden enclosure it’s another story entirely.

As we’ve said many times before, coming up with the idea for a project is the hardest part… especially when you just want to start hacking. With his kids in mind [Philippe] figured this would be something fun for them to play around with, opening the door to discussing the electronics concepts behind it.

He prototyped on a breadboard using three N-type MOSFETs to drive the colors of an RGB LED strip. The proven circuit was laid out and etched at home to arrive at the clean-looking Arduino shield shown off above. The entire thing gets a custom enclosure cut using layered plywood, a paper template, and a bandsaw.

Need a use for this once the novelty has worn off? Why not mod it to use as a motion activated night light? Alas the actual project link for that one is dead, but you get the idea.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, led hacks

I am delighted to welcome Stefano Guglielmetti who, together with other Arduino friends/supporters, accepted to start experimenting with  Arduino Yun and write a blog post to present some hands-on results. Starting today we are going to host a series of guest bloggers exploring different unique features of our new board.

Stefano, has more than 16 years of experience in the Internet industry, working both with small companies and start-ups up to very big and complex environments. His post below was orginally published at this link.

————-

Finally!!! Finally I put my hands on a brand new  Arduino Yún. I’ve been waiting for this a long, loooong time. I’ve been playing with Arduino since the “diecimila” model came out and I, as a lot of people, always suffered the lack of connectivity and of real computing power. I tried to solve some of these problems using RaspberryPi and/or Electric Imp, but I always missed the Arduino approach… easy, lots of shields and Arduino ready parts, a lot of documentation, a strong community and the freedom of Open Source.

Now one of my dreams came true, and every time I go deeper into the discovery of the Yún’s capabilities, I find something amazing, very smart and very well done.

I won’t describe the platform itself, as many articles talking about that are already published and there will be many more to come. I’ll start directly with a real life example, in just a few hours I finally built something really, really useful to me, something I already built several times in various ways but none of which really satisfied me.

The task is pretty simple, and I believe it will be very useful to many people: I need to be alerted in real time when I receive some important emails. Not all the emails: we provide customer care for many clients, with different SLAs, and I need to be alerted only for the most important ones. Moreover, sometimes I look forward to receiving a precise email… a shipment confirmation, a mail from a special someone… I need something flexible, eye catching, that doesn’t depend on my computer or my cellphone (that always has only 1% battery)

So I decided to build a GMail Lamp and Arduino Yún was the perfect choice (and now that I built it, I can confirm that. It is perfect)

The working principle is very straightforward: On GMail, I defined a new label, so I can quickly change the rules for the messages that will go under it, then I tell to Arduino Yún which label to watch for (via REST APIs… amazing) and that’s it! The lamp (actually only just a led, the lamp will come in the future) turns on every time I get new messages under that label. It’s the bat-signal principle!

Okay, now let’s get a bit more technical… how did I do it?

The hardware

• An Arduino Yún, and it must be connected to the internet.

•  A LED (or a relay if you want to turn on a real lamp, as I will do in the future)

•  Optional: a MAX7219 based 7 segment LED Display, if you also want to know how many unread messages you got. I used this one,http://dx.com/p/8-segment-led-display-board-module-for-arduino-147814 that’s supercheap and works perfectly.

This is the connection scheme (supersimple)

The LED goes on Digital Pin 13
The LED Display uses pins 10,11,12 and, obviously, GND and +5V

Ok, the hardware is ready. When you will program the Yún for the first time, even if you can program it over the wifi network, I suggest you use the serial port via USB because it’s faster and I still use the serial port to debug (even if you have a brand new Console object . But it’s just a personal choice.

Now, the Code

Even if it’s short, I think it’s very interesting because I used many new features of the Yún. I’m not going to describe all the code, that you can freely download or fork from GitHub (https://github.com/amicojeko/Arduino-Yun-Gmail-Check). I’ll try to describe only the parts that involve brand new code and that are peculiar of the Yún

Let’s start from the beginning

#include <Process.h>

With the Process library, you can run some code on the Linux side of the Yún and catch the stdout on Arduino. It’s amazing because you can delegate to Linux all the dirty jobs and the heavy computing. In this case, I use the Linux “curl” command to get the ATOM feed of my label from GMail.

The Process library also includes the Bridge library, that allows you to pass information between the two sides of the Yún (Linux and Arduino) using a key/value pairing. And it gives you the power of REST APIs, I use it to configure the label to observe.

#include <FileIO.h>

With this library, you can use the inernal memory or a micro SD card/USB key for storage. All these features are native on the Yún!

#include "LedControl.h"  
/* Downloaded From http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/LedControl */

I use this library to control the 7 segment LED Display

const int ledPin = 13;

I’ve used the pin 13 for the led. As I told you before, you can replace the LED with a relay in order to turn on and off a real lamp!

const char* settings_file = "/root/gmail_settings\0"; 
/* This is the settings file */

I’m saving under “/root” cause /tmp and /var will be erased at every reboot.

Bridge.get("label", labelbuffer, 256);

This is a supercool line of code that uses an übercool Yún’s feature. I’m telling Arduino to listen for a REST call on the URL http://arduino.local/data/put/label/LABEL

When I get some data, it will put the value of LABEL in the localbuffer. The localbuffer was initialized like that

char labelbuffer[256];

That means that you can actually talk with your Arduino while it runs projects! You can get or put variables, you can finally make dynamic projects! I used it to tell Arduino which label to observe, but I can, and I will go further, I promise.

label = String(labelbuffer);
File settings = FileSystem.open(settings_file, FILE_WRITE);
settings.print(label);
settings.close();

This is cool too. Using the FileIO object, I save the label in a local file on the Linux side of Arduino, so when I will turn it off and on again, It will remember my settings.

File settings = FileSystem.open(settings_file, FILE_READ);
while (settings.available() > 0){
  char c = settings.read();
  label += c;
}
settings.close();

This is how I read a file from the filesystem.

Process p;

p.runShellCommand("curl -u " + username + ":" + password + " 
\"https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/" + label + "\" -k --silent |grep -o \"
<fullcount>[0-9]*</fullcount>\" |grep -o \"[0-9]*\"");

while(p.running()); // do nothing until the process finishes, so you get the whole output
int result = p.parseInt();

This is another bit of Yún’s magic. I run the curl command to get the ATOM feed of a specific label, and then I parse it with the grep command, and finally I get the number of unread messages for that label. Even if on the Yún’s Linux stack there are both Python and Lua, I thought that this solution was the most simple and stupid, and I love to KISS.

That’s it, now i just have to turn the LED on and to display the number of unread messages on the LED Display…

In a single day I learned how to use the Bridge library to get data from REST webservices, how to save and load data from the Linux filesystem, and how to run processes on the Linux side and get the STDOUT results. I already knew how to use the LED Display but I hope that someone learned something new even about that

Now I will build the actual lamp, improving both the Hardware and the Software sides, I will make it gorgeous and fully configurable, and I will keep you informed about that!
Cheers to everybody and happy hacking!

——

Text and pictures by Stefano Guglielmetti

 

I am delighted to welcome Stefano Guglielmetti who, together with other Arduino friends/supporters, accepted to start experimenting with  Arduino Yun and write a blog post to present some hands-on results. Starting today we are going to host a series of guest bloggers exploring different unique features of our new board.

Stefano, has more than 16 years of experience in the Internet industry, working both with small companies and start-ups up to very big and complex environments. His post below was orginally published at this link.

————-

Finally!!! Finally I put my hands on a brand new  Arduino Yún. I’ve been waiting for this a long, loooong time. I’ve been playing with Arduino since the “diecimila” model came out and I, as a lot of people, always suffered the lack of connectivity and of real computing power. I tried to solve some of these problems using RaspberryPi and/or Electric Imp, but I always missed the Arduino approach… easy, lots of shields and Arduino ready parts, a lot of documentation, a strong community and the freedom of Open Source.

Now one of my dreams came true, and every time I go deeper into the discovery of the Yún’s capabilities, I find something amazing, very smart and very well done.

I won’t describe the platform itself, as many articles talking about that are already published and there will be many more to come. I’ll start directly with a real life example, in just a few hours I finally built something really, really useful to me, something I already built several times in various ways but none of which really satisfied me.

The task is pretty simple, and I believe it will be very useful to many people: I need to be alerted in real time when I receive some important emails. Not all the emails: we provide customer care for many clients, with different SLAs, and I need to be alerted only for the most important ones. Moreover, sometimes I look forward to receiving a precise email… a shipment confirmation, a mail from a special someone… I need something flexible, eye catching, that doesn’t depend on my computer or my cellphone (that always has only 1% battery)

So I decided to build a GMail Lamp and Arduino Yún was the perfect choice (and now that I built it, I can confirm that. It is perfect)

The working principle is very straightforward: On GMail, I defined a new label, so I can quickly change the rules for the messages that will go under it, then I tell to Arduino Yún which label to watch for (via REST APIs… amazing) and that’s it! The lamp (actually only just a led, the lamp will come in the future) turns on every time I get new messages under that label. It’s the bat-signal principle!

Okay, now let’s get a bit more technical… how did I do it?

The hardware

• An Arduino Yún, and it must be connected to the internet.

•  A LED (or a relay if you want to turn on a real lamp, as I will do in the future)

•  Optional: a MAX7219 based 7 segment LED Display, if you also want to know how many unread messages you got. I used this one,http://dx.com/p/8-segment-led-display-board-module-for-arduino-147814 that’s supercheap and works perfectly.

This is the connection scheme (supersimple)

The LED goes on Digital Pin 13
The LED Display uses pins 10,11,12 and, obviously, GND and +5V

Ok, the hardware is ready. When you will program the Yún for the first time, even if you can program it over the wifi network, I suggest you use the serial port via USB because it’s faster and I still use the serial port to debug (even if you have a brand new Console object . But it’s just a personal choice.

Now, the Code

Even if it’s short, I think it’s very interesting because I used many new features of the Yún. I’m not going to describe all the code, that you can freely download or fork from GitHub (https://github.com/amicojeko/Arduino-Yun-Gmail-Check). I’ll try to describe only the parts that involve brand new code and that are peculiar of the Yún

Let’s start from the beginning

#include <Process.h>

With the Process library, you can run some code on the Linux side of the Yún and catch the stdout on Arduino. It’s amazing because you can delegate to Linux all the dirty jobs and the heavy computing. In this case, I use the Linux “curl” command to get the ATOM feed of my label from GMail.

The Process library also includes the Bridge library, that allows you to pass information between the two sides of the Yún (Linux and Arduino) using a key/value pairing. And it gives you the power of REST APIs, I use it to configure the label to observe.

#include <FileIO.h>

With this library, you can use the inernal memory or a micro SD card/USB key for storage. All these features are native on the Yún!

#include "LedControl.h"  
/* Downloaded From http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/LedControl */

I use this library to control the 7 segment LED Display

const int ledPin = 13;

I’ve used the pin 13 for the led. As I told you before, you can replace the LED with a relay in order to turn on and off a real lamp!

const char* settings_file = "/root/gmail_settings\0"; 
/* This is the settings file */

I’m saving under “/root” cause /tmp and /var will be erased at every reboot.

Bridge.get("label", labelbuffer, 256);

This is a supercool line of code that uses an übercool Yún’s feature. I’m telling Arduino to listen for a REST call on the URL http://arduino.local/data/put/label/LABEL

When I get some data, it will put the value of LABEL in the localbuffer. The localbuffer was initialized like that

char labelbuffer[256];

That means that you can actually talk with your Arduino while it runs projects! You can get or put variables, you can finally make dynamic projects! I used it to tell Arduino which label to observe, but I can, and I will go further, I promise.

label = String(labelbuffer);
File settings = FileSystem.open(settings_file, FILE_WRITE);
settings.print(label);
settings.close();

This is cool too. Using the FileIO object, I save the label in a local file on the Linux side of Arduino, so when I will turn it off and on again, It will remember my settings.

File settings = FileSystem.open(settings_file, FILE_READ);
while (settings.available() > 0){
  char c = settings.read();
  label += c;
}
settings.close();

This is how I read a file from the filesystem.

Process p;

p.runShellCommand("curl -u " + username + ":" + password + " 
\"https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/" + label + "\" -k --silent |grep -o \"
<fullcount>[0-9]*</fullcount>\" |grep -o \"[0-9]*\"");

while(p.running()); // do nothing until the process finishes, so you get the whole output
int result = p.parseInt();

This is another bit of Yún’s magic. I run the curl command to get the ATOM feed of a specific label, and then I parse it with the grep command, and finally I get the number of unread messages for that label. Even if on the Yún’s Linux stack there are both Python and Lua, I thought that this solution was the most simple and stupid, and I love to KISS.

That’s it, now i just have to turn the LED on and to display the number of unread messages on the LED Display…

In a single day I learned how to use the Bridge library to get data from REST webservices, how to save and load data from the Linux filesystem, and how to run processes on the Linux side and get the STDOUT results. I already knew how to use the LED Display but I hope that someone learned something new even about that

Now I will build the actual lamp, improving both the Hardware and the Software sides, I will make it gorgeous and fully configurable, and I will keep you informed about that!
Cheers to everybody and happy hacking!

——

Text and pictures by Stefano Guglielmetti

 

Sabato e domenica prossimi presso la Fondazione Achille Castiglioni a Milano, Massimo Banzi terrà un workshop dal titolo “Arduino e la luce” in cui i partecipanti realizzeranno la Tinker Lamp (nelle foto) fabbricata digitalmente e disegnata dallo studio Habits, resa interattiva tramite Arduino.

Il ricavato del workshop andrà alla Fondazione Achille Castiglioni.

Ci sono ancora alcuni posti disponibili! Prenotatevi qui entro venerdì 14 alle 14.

The Mood Lamp project by Vittorio Cuculo, is a system using interactions to communicate an emotional state to a physical object and receive back  a coherent response. In particular, through your facial expression you communicate your emotional state to an RGB color lamp . The lamp, at this point, will respond to the interaction by changing the color of the light emitted in accordance with the emotional state inferred.

The aim of the systems is to remove the mediation between human and machine typical of classic interfaces. Among the modes of natural interaction we usually have gestures, gaze tracking and facial expressions. The latter are particularly relevant because they play a fundamental role in nonverbal communication between human beings.

Regarding the man-machine interaction, the ability to recognize and synthesize facial expressions allows the machine to gain more communication skills, on the one hand by interpreting the emotions on the face of a subject, and on the other by translating their communicative intent through an output, such as movement, sound response or color change.

An IKEA lamp becomes a Natural Interaction system which senses human emotional states through facial expression. It uses OpenCV for image processing and analysis to identify emotional state through the movements of face’s fiducial points. The lamp, made with an Arduino Duemilanove, changes its color to represent the user’s current emotion.
In particular, it receives via serial communication, the values of pleasure, arousal and dominance, following the PAD emotional state model, as inferred from the facial expression and changes accordingly the color of the RGB LEDs.

On his blog, Miguel presents one of his latest projects:

This project shows the operation of an RGB lamp using a digital LED strip. After activating the bluetooth connection, the user can open the GUI on the PC to control the lamp. The program shows a hue palette divided into 30 rods, one for each LED of the strip.
By clicking & dragging the mouse cursor it is possible to make your own patterns,. To remove a color, the user can simply click on a rod while pressing the spacebar, which switches off the selected LED.

Part list: wooden support, RGB digitally-addressable LED strip, microcontroller (Arduino Pro Mini, for example), Bluetooth or USB wire.

More information on this project can be found on Miguel’s blog, while a brief video about its operation can be found here; the code of the project can be found on Github. The project’s page on Thingiverse can be found here.

[Via: Miguel's blog]

 

LED(Lamp) is an advanced bluetooth lighting system made with arduino, has been realized using a very cheap bluetooth module.

The cool part is the control app for Android device that allows you to control the lighting system.
The firmware for Arduino is open source. The app for android offers: brightness control, color, 8 memories, save favorite color on start.
You can find more on the official [website]

I’ve been busy since I last spoke about my lamp.  I’ve added code to put the lamp into various modes – so far I’ve implemented modes for ‘white’ (needs some calibration), randomly changing colours, randomly fading in and out with random colours, and of course just off. Modes are changed by sending characters to the …