Planet Arduino

What can you do with items that are destined for the dump? As seen here, if you’re Neil Mendoza, you transform old furniture, TVs, computers, art, and even an Arduino Zero that somehow ended up in the trash into a musical installation.

His resulting “House Party” features decorations and control components that according to the project’s write-up are entirely salvaged. A MIDI interface, software written in openFrameworks, and a JSON file are used to coordinate sound and movements, which include spinning picture frames and flowers, tapping shoes, and a television that loops through a rather dreary weather report snippet. 

House Party is a musical installation that explores prized possessions in their native habitat. All the materials used to create this artwork, from the furniture to the computers, were scavenged from the discarded trash. The music is a mix of mechanical and synthesized sounds. The piece was created while an artist in residence at Recology SF.

The actuators in the installation are controlled by an Arduino Zero (also found in the trash) and each screen is connected to a computer running custom software written in openFrameworks (OF). Composition was done in Logic where a MIDI environment was set up to send MIDI data to the Arduino and an OF control program. The control program then sent the data to the other computers over ethernet as OSC. For the final installation, the control program read the data from a JSON file, triggered the screens and Arduino and played the synthesized parts of the music.

Be sure to see all the zany action in the video below!

As we promised last week, you can find on the Arduino Store a variety of Genuino products available for purchase. After Genuino Uno, Genuino Starter Kit (in Italian and English) and Genuino Mega, today we have 2 new entries: Genuino Micro (18.00€ + tax) and Genuino Zero (42.90€ + tax).

Genuino is Arduino.cc’s sister-brand created by Arduino co-founders Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, and David Mellis, the Arduino.cc team and community. While Arduino branded product are sold in the US only for now, Genuino brand is used for boards and products sold everywhere else in the world. Genuino and Arduino boards share the same components, characteristics and quality of manufacturing. They are actually the same boards under a different name, and you can purchase them depending on the area of the world where you live in.

Arduino ZERO (USA only) & Genuino ZERO (outside USA) are a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform established by the UNO. They provide a platform for innovative projects in smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, crazy robotics, and much more.

Arduino Micro (coming next in the USA) & Genuino Micro (already available outside USA) are the smallest of the family, easy to integrate in everyday objects to make them interactive. The Micro is based on the ATmega32U4 microcontroller featuring a built-in USB which makes the Micro recognisable as a mouse or keyboard. Looking for ideas on your next project with the Micro? Get inspired looking at these projects on the blog.

Omkar is a special 8 years old who created a wearable device called O Watch: an Arduino Zero-based smartwatch kit for kids. The project, recently kickstarted, allows young people to learn programming, 3D printing and a bit of craft while making their own smartwatch and customizing it. The kit will be released with a series of learning tools including a kid-friendly website with easy tutorials, examples and a community to share creations.

He’s not new to DIY tech and learning as he’s been doing a few workshops to teach Arduino to other kids and likes it when they get excited about making Arduino projects. Omkar told us:

I was first interested in robots. But my dad got me started with projects that light up LEDs that were easier to learn and code myself. (ps: my dad did not let me get a robot kit at first :).

I decided to do a wearable project because there were many of them I saw in the news and I thought they were cool. I wanted to make a smartwatch so that I could wear it myself and share my project with my friends in school.

If you are a kid and are new to making, O Watch could be a great starting point as you’ll learn about coding, 3d printing, craft and also sharing. The Arduino IDE will be your  primary programming tool for the watch, the case can be 3D printed in a color of your choice and you’ll experiment on how to knot yourself a cool band to wear it.

What are you waiting for? You have just a few days to back the project on Kickstarter and have an O Watch delivered to your home!

Hackster is a hardware creation community and since last february has been organizing Hardware Weekends with hackathons all over US. On Saturday and Sunday June 26th and 27th  it’s  coming back to New York City for the last time in 2015.  This hackathon is focused on open source hardware and the maker communities across America: all ages and skill levels are welcome (Children under 16 should be accompanied by an adult.)

Here’s a short video from their event taking place at Kickstarter offices last month and some pictures past events.

Hackster is providing all the food, tools, soldering stations, 3D printers, workshops and gear (Arduinos, Particle, LinkItOne, Intel Edison, Pebble, Smart Things, and software from Autodesk, Azure and more!)

$1000 Grand Prize from Microsoft and Arduino Zeros from Hackster!

Register your participation here.  It’s going to be a lot of fun!

One year ago Arduino and Atmel unveiled the new Arduino Zero. Today, after some months of beta-testing, we are happy to have the board finally available for purchase on the US Store.

Arduino Zero is a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the well-known Arduino UNO. It allows creative individuals to realize truly innovative ideas especially in areas like smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, and robotics. Arduino Zero acts also as a great educational tool for learning 32-bit application development.

Powered by Atmel SAMD21 MCU, Arduino Zero features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core. One of its “most wanted” features is the Atmel Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware.

Arduino Zero’s silk has an additional graphic element: the Genuino logo. Genuino is the Arduino sister brand from the Arduino founders (M. Banzi, D. Cuartielles, T. Igoe, D. Mellis), team and community. We added the Genuino logo to the Arduino Zero to stress its authenticity, and to make it easier for the Arduino community to spot original boards. We are going to include this logo to all genuine Arduino boards from now on.

To start using the board you need to download the latest version of the IDE (1.6.5), which comes with a set of great improvements:

• a new modern editor (thanks @ricardojlrufino)
• serial monitor stays open while you upload a new sketch (thanks @avishorp and @Wackerbarth)
• File > Open Recent menu shows the last 5 opened sketches
• Tons of fixes and improvements: the list is available here. They are 470 issues closed since previous version, 1.6.4: massive!

Learn more about the Arduino Zero and get started with it at the following links:

– Updated Arduino Zero product page

– Getting Started Page

– Github repository

– Interact in the Arduino Forum

And if you are one of the lucky ones and have Arduino Zero in your hands, start practicing its features with the following tutorials:

- Arduino Zero Low Power Overview

It shows the low power characteristics of the Arduino Zero thanks to a low power microcontroller using the 32 bit ARM Cortex M0+ architecture.

– Simple Audio Feature

It shows how to experiment with sound starting to play a wave file stored on the SD card.

We’ve been waiting for this moment for months and today we confirm that Arduino Zero will be available for purchase from the Arduino Store in US on Monday June 15th at  $49.90.

At the same time we are going to release Arduino IDE 1.6.5 with a bunch of new features and the support for the Arduino Zero. The new IDE keeps the serial monitor open while uploading, lists the last 5 opened sketches in the “Open Recent” menu, and many other features you’ll discover next week.

Our team stumbled upon a last minute software bug which moved the launch date by a bit  but everything is almost ready, they really worked hard to ensure the best experience of use.

We love this product as it shows our great collaboration with Atmel, and we know a lot of people in the Arduino community are looking forward to put their hands on it.

Stay tuned!

Last May at Maker Faire Bay Area Massimo Banzi introduced our new board to the open source community:

The Arduino Zero, developed in collaboration with Atmel, is a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform established by Arduino UNO. The Zero board aims to provide creative individuals with the potential to realize truly innovative ideas for smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, crazy robotics, and projects not yet imagined. The board is powered by Atmel’s SAMD21 MCU, which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core.

After the great experience we’ve been having with the beta-testing of the the Arduino TRE, we are happy to announce that starting today a limited batch of 20 Arduino ZERO is available for people wanting to join us in the process of beta-testing it..

The ideal beta-tester has time and interest in working on some specific issues we hope to accomplish with the beta-testing: we set up a list of tasks including writing examples, testing libraries and external hardware, and making projects that can be completed in a variety of timeframes.

Ultimately our goal is to make the ZERO welcoming to non-technical customers and useful for tech-savvy customers at the same time, like all of our products. To that end, we’d like feedback from you, as beta testers, about where we could simplify for beginners and explain or document better.

If you want to take part and feel you can spend some time on it, fill this application form by the 17th of August.

By the 21st of August we are going to contact 20 people out of those filling the application. They will receive a coupon to get the Arduino ZERO Developer Edition for free on the Arduino Store.

We will also send them an invite to a Basecamp project where they can get started with the program and sign up for tasks and projects according to their interests, skill-set and time availability.
The beta-testing phase is going to last 1 month (ending around the 20th of September).

Feel like joining us? Fill the form now!

Today and tomorrow you visit us at the Arduino booth (#204) right next to Atmel booth (#205) and have a look at our cool demos. You’ll find all the new boards: Arduino TRE Development Edition and Arduino ZERO, Arduino Yún together with Temboo and the freshly baked Arduino at Heart littleBits Module!

Massimo Banzi keynote is scheduled at 4.00PM and Michael Shiloh’s Getting Started with Arduino talks are waiting for you 2 times a day.

We are looking forward to see you all and we give a big “thank you”  to all our volunteers who are supporting us this weekend, talking with hundreds of people visiting our booth and showing their passion for Arduino!

It’s a pleasure to announce the latest development board, Arduino Zero, expanding the Arduino family by providing increased creative opportunities to the maker community.

Arduino and Atmel unveil the Arduino Zero, a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform established by Arduino UNO. It aims to provide creative individuals with the potential to realize truly innovative ideas especially for smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, crazy robotics, and projects not yet imagined.

The board is powered by Atmel’s SAMD21 MCU, which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core and one of its most important feature is Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware, significantly increasing the ease-of-use for software debugging. EDBG also supports a virtual COM port that can be used for device programming and traditional Arduino boot loader functionality.

Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO said:

“The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development.”

Reza Kazerounian, senior vice president and general manager, microcontroller business unit at Atmel added:

“Leveraging more than 15 years of experience since the inception of AVR, simplicity and ease-of-use have been at the core of Atmel’s technology, Atmel is pleased to see the continued growth of the global maker community stemming from the increasing access and availability to open source platforms such as Arduino. We enable makers, but the power lies within the makers themselves.”

The first prototypes of Arduino Zero will be on display at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 in San Mateo on May 17 and 18 at the following booths:
Arduino Booth: #204
Atmel Booth: #205
ARM Booth: #405

See you there!