Planet Arduino

For those living in a high-rise, have you ever wondered what was going on behind the closed blinds of your neighbor’s home directly across from you?

Caretaker is a concept project that explores just that. It consists of a custom-made switch board with which you can control the lights of the flats opposite of yours, providing active entertainment that stimulates your senses better than passive media consumption.

If you want one of your own, simply take a picture of the building that you see from your window and Caretaker will design a laser-cut scale model of it for your use. The prototype runs on an Arduino and is battery-powered, allowing you to freely move it around.

The project is the work of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME) student, Máté Varga, in collaboration with Barbara Sterk, Miklos Erhardt, Adam Polhodzik, and FabLab Budapest.

You can see it in action below!

This year the  international event for digital manufacturing comes to Barcelona to celebrate 10 years of sharing experiences and the evolution of the project. Ever since the first meeting of digital manufacturing experts was held in 2004, in Boston, until FAB10 today, these meetings have been travelling around the world spreading ideas and receiving support.

FAB10 is organised by the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC). Hábitat Urbano from Barcelona City Council, the Center for Bits and Atoms, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Fab Foundation, both in Boston, have worked in close collaboration.

Fab 10 is divided in 3 main areas and Arduino will participate to the event with different talks and workshops:

- Fab Conference – From the 2nd to the 4th of July every day the international Fab Labs will meet up to exchange experiences in small-scale conferences and workshops. Check the complete schedule here.

- Fab Festival – during the weekend on the 5th and 6th adults and children are invited to enjoy the conferences, workshops and activities open to the public. Book your workshop and attend a talk.

- Fab City Symposium – On 7 July there will be a meeting of international experts in digital manufacturing, with the presence of Neil Gershenfeld, Bill McDonough, Ellen MacArthur, Bruce Sterling and many more. Massimo Banzi’s keynote “Making Maker Communities” is scheduled at 11am.

FAB10 in Barcelona is going to focus on the subject From Fab Labs to Fab Cities, thus initiating the worldwide project for productive cities, cities that have used sustainability to reindustrialise themselves. The activities of this event will be based on three main issues: Emerging Communities, Digital Manufacturing and Productive Cities. The specialists will discuss what a city with Fab Labs in every district, where people can produce anything they want, could be like. Will the city of the future be self-sufficient? Will it reuse materials? Will buildings be capable of managing their own energy? All these issues will be discussed during FAB10 and we’ll be happy to meet you there!

Arduino Workshops at FabFestival:

Saturday
- Arduino Basic Arduino – Serena Cangiano
WORKSHOP @ 17:00 – 20:00 SAT, 5 JUL
Smart Lighting, make an Arduino intelligent lamp! This basic workshop will introduce participants to Arduino’s world : you’ll learn to write a code, then with a board, a led and few sensor you’ll build your interactive lamp.

- Arduino and Wearables – Zoe Romano, Costantino Bongiorno
WORKSHOP @ 17:30 – 19:30 SAT, 5 JUL
Arduino goes wearable! Fashion and geek victims will learn how to cut, sew and connect sensors with Arduino!

Sunday
- Arduino IOT Arduino – Mirco Piccin, Davide Gomba
WORKSHOP @ 10:00 – 13:00 SUN, 6 JUL
can plants tweet? Yes, with Internet of Things! In this workshop participants will connect a plant with an Arduino Yùn, some sensors and Twitter!

 - Lasercut race! – Enrico Bassi

WORKSHOP @ 13:00 – 15:30 SUN, 6 JUL
Build something is usually pretty fun, but if we’re talking about lasercut race cars, it’s impossible to not enjoy it! what could be better? tune them after all and challange the other racer!

- Arduino. Sketch your sketch – Pietro Leoni
WORKSHOP @ 17:00 – 19:00 SUN, 6 JUL
do you know how to talk to machines? it’s like being in a foreign country: you just have to know the right language. Everybody will see how to talk to a DIY plotter that will write on a sheet of paper, what you code on a PC.

- E-jewels Arduino – Maicol, Luca Berardi
WORKSHOP @ 17:00 – 19:00 SUN, 6 JUL
Jewels are not just for girls and electronics not just for boys. during this brief workshop you will learn how to solder and make your first electronic jewel.

- Make ideas Fly – Enrico Bassi
WORKSHOP @ 17:00 – 19:00 SUN, 6 JUL
How is going to be the king of the sky? Who can win all the ability and distance competitions? Let’s make together the paper airplane, test them with the automatic launchpads and improve the projects. then it’s time to make your ideas fly! build the most precise, the quicker or the one flying further away, to win the 3D printed prizes!

Recent declines in honey bee populations raised attention of many scientists and now makers started activating swell.

The Open Source Beehives (OSBH) project is a collaborative response to the threat faced by Bee populations in industrialised nations around the world.
They’ve just launched a campaign on Indiegogo and are waiting for your contribution.

The campaign will help to build new sensors to understand the behaviour of the bees and the pollutants that are killing them. Also the production of the hives relies on the Fab Lab Network, which makes it able to be produced anywhere in the world. The project is proudly powered by the Arduino At Heart Smart Citizen Kit.

Jonathan Minchin, the bee-man in the lab , told us:

The development team is made up of makers, technologists, entomologists and is being led by a wide ranging community of beekeepers. The OSBH team came together in 2013 from the Fab Lab Barcelona, OKNO in Brussels and the Open Tech Collaborative in Denver with the shared objective of designing hives that can support Bee colonies in a sustainable way. To monitor and track the health and behaviour of a colony as it develops and to engage an active and diverse community to respond to the threats faced by Bees.

Work began to design our Internet-connected beehives and to put them into backyards everywhere. The aim is to grow a citizen-led beehive network that both strengthens bee populations and generates insightful hive data, ultimately we want to help discover what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The Smart Citizen platform and (SCK) sensor kit with Arduino at heart provides a perfect fit with the aims of the project in that it allows us to quickly and efficiently develop a powerful and specialised sensor shield adapted for use within a Beehive. The data we produce can also be published openly to the Smart Citizen online platform and shared with the community.

The data from the hives will help beekeepers and scientists monitor the temperature, humidity and relevant sound frequencies coming from within the hives in a non-intrusive way. This data helps them to understand what the colony is doing and how it reacts to environmental changes. We are also working with sensors that can measure the weight of the hive and monitor air born pollutants that might affect the bees. The data collected from each hive is published together with geolocations, allowing for a further comparison and analysis between the hives.

These sensor enhanced hive designs as well as the electronic schematics are being published openly and can be downloaded and made locally at a Fab Labs or any other maker space. The hives along with different options to support the project can be ordered through our current crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

Now watch the video to look at some visual details and meet the other collaborators:

Holger from Fablab Düsseldorf writes in about a small robot they prototyped with Arduino Uno, helping them  raise some funds for their local space:

We created the idea in our non-commerical FabLab in Düsseldorf, Germany to create a small robot, who makes our vistors and guests aware of placing a small money donation. This robot was required to be transportable, robust and to draw as much attention as possible.
Thus, we included LED-Stripes, servos, sensors and sound to the project. Packed in a very old german vacuum cleaner. The work took about 1 year to construct, print and integrate all 3D-printed parts, wiring and software development with the Arduino Uno. But software development was the minor part, although parallel processing on the Arduino in order to run every component simultaneously required a small trick.

These are the components in action:

• Controller: Arduino Uno R3
• Software: Standard Processing and standard libraries
• Audio: VLSI VS1000 Audio Module incl. our own firmware that lets the Arduino control the board
• Distancesensor: HC-SR04 embedded in a modelled nose of FIMO
• 4 LED stripes (2 RGB on the backside)
• 6 power-LEDs for the top
• 1 servo for moving the top
• 1 Servo for moving the bill-mouth
• 3 distance sensors for bill and coin detection
• 1 switch for muting the audio module and 1 reset button

Take a look at the video below, learn the details on their blog and visit them during the Arduino Day (yes, they are organising an event in their space)!

The Arduino Yún has been used by IAAC‘s  Open Thesis Fabrication student Marisa Charusilawong to make an interactive toolkit for developing interactive facade elements using shape-memory alloy. During the 16-week intensive research program based in Barcelona:

We developed a modular system where several Arduino Uno’s can be networked over I2C and finally connect them to an Arduino Yun where a simple REST API is exposed allowing application to interface the system to manually actuate on the structure and to set the different behavior modes. Because Yun’s rich API capabilities we will be able to connect to other API’s to retrieve real time weather and environmental data on a near future.

The electronics were assisted by Physical Computing expert Guillem Camprodon based at IAAC – Fab Lab Barcelona who also wrote us:

 It was amazing how easy and nice it is to connect things to the internet with Yún. We are planning a workshop on IoT at Fab Lab Barcelona by mid-winter and Yun will be the default platform. For the first time we will be able to teach IoT projects to non Arduino experts.

Stay tuned on FablabBCN website for news about the workshop and now take a look at the code published on Github and  pictures with some more details about this project:

Il primo appuntamento con l’Arduino Tour per quest’autunno ci porta a Udine:

• Venerdì 22 novembre 6 dicembre alle 19.00: presentazione pubblica di Arduino nella sede di Confartigianato Udine in Via del Pozzo 8

• Sabato e Domenica 23 e 24 novembre  7 e 8 dicembre dalle 10 alle 18: workshop Base di Arduino ospitato nella sede del Temporary FabLab: via Stringher 12, sempre a Udine

Come ogni tappa, anche questa volta  l’appuntamento si snoda su 3 giorni. Il venerdì presentazione pubblica serale e i due giorni successivi, sabato e domenica, li dedicheremo a esplorare come compiere i primi passi con Arduino e permettere agli iscritti di realizzare un piccolo progetto. I partecipanti lasceranno il corso con una serie di strumenti per orientarsi, di  materiali base per realizzare progetti interattivi e per continuare ad imparare online in modalità autonoma.

Come in ogni tappa del Tour utilizzeremo come base l’Arduino Starter Kit che da qualche settimana è disponibile anche nella versione italiana!

I posti sono limitati quindi potete approfondire e  prenotare la vostra partecipazione cliccando su questo link.

This week I’m going to introduce George Koulouris who loves playing, testing, making with others  especially at the ‘Petit Fablab de Paris’ where he thinks is a  great place to do exactly that!  He’s been experimenting with the Arduino Yún focusing on his main interest: the integration of technology to everyday objects. The following post was originally posted on his blog.  Read  other guest posts on Arduino Yún.

——————
The Motivation
I have two small problems in my house. An ever-increasing electricity consumption bill and a girlfriend which likes to take hot baths at unpredictable times during the day.

Until recently, we left our water heater switched on, 24/7. But then we took a look at our electricity counter readings. Needless to say, we switched it off immediately! An old water heater can indeed make the electricity counter wheel spin fast, very fast…!

So we started switching it on and off whenever we needed to take a bath. The problem was that we weren’t always at home and the water took almost an hour to heat-up! So I decided to connect it to the internet!

The Configuration

The SmartBoiler is contained in a small box and placed on top of the house’s main electricity board. A mechanical arm extends out of the box. Its bottom end is clipped to the heater’s switch whereas its top end is attached to a motor in the SmartBoiler.

The arm can be displaced vertically.

The box contains a motor and an Arduino Yún. The latter checks, at regular time intervals, a .txt file on a web-server to see whether me (or my girlfriend!) have turned on the heater. If yes, it launches the motor and the switch is turned on!

The user interface is a simple website. You can view it here.

Do it Yourself

To do this project you need 5 things:

• A web-server hosting service
• An arduino Yun
• A servo motor (I chose the Towerpro MG995)
• A laser cutter (or excellent wood-crafting skills!)
• A bit of mdf

Then you can

• Download the laser cutter files
• Find all the code (documented of course!) in my github repository
• Check the dimensions of the mechanical parts in Thingiverse

Check out the images

What next?
Although I created this to control my water heater, this project can be used to control any mechanical switch. Simply dimension the box correctly and you can control everything via the internet. Your lights, your house’s main electricity switch… Hell, the possibilities are limitless!

On the 11th of August a team composed by researchers from FabLab Pisa and University of Pisa’s Center for Bioengineering and Robotics “E.Piaggio” will start a great adventure with a Summer School on the project called OS4BME (Open Source for Biomedical Engineering).

The aim of the project is to bring the DIY&Makers approach in the developing of simple, low cost/high impact biomedical devices, precisely, in this particular case, a neonatal Baby Monitor.

The course will take place at Kenyatta University (Nairobi) and it will involve setting up a 3D printing system, developing a neonatal monitoring device, using open source, electronics based on the Arduino platform and powered by solar panels.

Participants will play an active role in the identification of components, design, assembling and testing of the device and in the discussion of regulatory issues in its development. Close attention will also be paid to safety, ergonomic aspects and regulatory  standards for biomedical devices.

The medical device industry in Africa is largely absent and there is an over reliance on foreign companies to repair and design biomedical instrumentation and resolve technical problems … More importantly, at present there are no specific engines or platforms focused on the sharing of biomedical instrumentation and devices. This is because, by their very nature, biomedical devices possess stringent performance requirements to comply with regulatory standards to ensure patient safety.

OS4BME is a project created by Prof. Arti Ahluwalia (Univ. Pisa), Daniele Mazzei and Carmelo De Maria (both from Fablab Pisa but also post-doc researchers at Centro E.Piaggio). The summer school is an initiative organized by a consortium of nine African universities with the objective of creating a sustainable health-care system, developing a network of academic excellence for Biomedical Engineering in Africa with the support of the ‘United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

 Arduino is supporting the project and  we sent to the team a bunch of Arduino UNO boards, Wi-Fi and GSM Shields to be used during the course and then will be donated to the Kenyatta University and Fablab Nairobi.

In the next week  we’ll keep in touch with the team and receive updates directly from the summer school. Stay Tuned on this blog and on the work in progress of their WIKI!

Venerdì 14 e sabato 15 giugno 2013 si terrà a Torino il tradizionale Arduino Camp Italia, evento completamente gratuito ideato per coinvolgere la community e organizzato da Officine Arduino in collaborazione con Toolbox.

L’evento di due giorni prevede un incontro dedicato alle idee e alle persone che stanno cambiando il mondo dal titolo “L’Innovazione dal Basso”, che ospiterà

• Riccardo Luna, primo direttore di Wired Italia, con il suo nuovo libro “Cambiamo Tutto”,
• Massimo Banzi, fondatore di Arduino,
• Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino, tra i promotori dell’Agenda Digitale
• Leonardo Camiciotti, responsabile del programma per la creazione di imprese innovative di TOP-IX.

(tutti i dettagli e le iscrizioni sul sito di Toolbox)

Il giorno successivo, sabato 15, dalle 10 di mattina fino alle  20.30 presso il Fablab Torino si svolgerà invece un vero e proprio Hackaton. I partecipanti divisi in gruppi si sfideranno all’ultimo circuito, creando ognuno un progetto e cercando di rispondere al meglio al tema proposto la mattina stessa.
Ospite d’eccezione sarà il nuovo Arduino Robot!

Entrambi i giorni  prevedono un ingresso gratuito ma i posti saranno limitati dalla capienza del luogo dell’incontro. Per partecipare all’evento di venerdì, fatelo a questo link, invece per  l’Hackaton, iscrivetevi qui.

Se vi interessa cerchiamo anche 5 volontari per l’Hackaton di sabato che ci aiutino a fare accoglienza, diano supporto logistico e informativo ai team. Vi interessa? Attivatevi qui!

Neil Gershenfeld, fondatore del Center for Bits and Atoms che ha dato vita all’idea di FABLAB, incontra i makers italiani all’Acquario Romano. In occasione di Atoms, Bits & People ci saranno anche Massimo Banzi, Riccardo Luna.  Per partecipare bisogna registrarsi gratuitamente, ma affrettatevi perchè i posti sono limitati e i makers sono tanti e molto interessati a partecipare.

L’evento è organizzato dall’Ambasciata degli Stati Uniti d’America e dal Global Shapers Hub di Roma in collaborazione con World Wide Rome e  Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition

Dove: Roma, Italia
Quando: venerdì 24 maggio ore 18