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!

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!

 

 

Announced over a year ago now during Maker Faire, the Arduino Zero is now finally available for purchase in the United States.

Read more on MAKE

The post The Arduino Zero is Now Shipping in the US appeared first on Make:.

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!

There’s an updated product page for the Arduino Zero, now called the Arduino Zero Pro, up on Arduino.org, one of the two dueling “Arduinos”.

We first covered the Arduino Zero in May 2014, and shortly thereafter even got to see a development prototype in the flesh. Based an Atmel’s ARM Cortex-M0+ chip, it’s built on a faster processor than the AVR Arduini, and it includes Atmel’s Embedded Debugger which serves as a USB-to-serial channel and on-chip debugging peripheral. But so far all we’ve seen is the prototype.

Now, there’s schematics and Eagle files available that are dated January 7, 2015. The Arduino.org site says that the Zero Pro is “Available now!” but we couldn’t see any in stock yet at any of our favorite online electronics distributors. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong places (unlikely) or maybe it’s just a matter of time.

Anyway, two things struck us in our casual perusal of the new Zero Pro info.

First of all, compared to (pictures of) the prototype versions, there’s more and larger decoupling capacitors scattered all over the board, from the power supply to the Embedded Debugger chip, to a really beefy 4.7uF tantalum capacitor buffering the analog reference voltage level. This suggests there’s been some real-world testing and a shakedown of some of the prototype’s design bugs. That’s all good, and we hope it’s a sign that it’s really coming to market soon.

Secondly, given the ongoing trademark dispute, even the annotations to the schematic for the Zero Pro become interesting. On opening up either the PDF schematic (PDF, naturally) or any of the Eagle files, there’s the usual “Do not finalize a design with this information” boilerplate. But where it used to read “Arduino is a registered trademark. Use of the ARDUINO name must be compliant with http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Policy ” it now reads:

“Arduino” name and logo are trademarks registered by Arduino S.r.l. in Italy, in the European Union and in other countries of the world.

(After noticing this change, we went back and compared the “rev3″ Uno schematics PDF on arduino.cc to the “rev3E” schematics on arduino.org. Yup, same change in the legal notice.)

We’re not lawyers, but one of the “other countries of the world” that’s conspicuously missing from the claim is the U.S. of A. where Arduino LLC presumably holds the trademark. We’re still trying to make sense of all this, but it’s funny to see the legal battle playing itself out in annotations of Eagle schematics, no?

Stay tuned for more coverage of the Arduino vs Arduino legal battle and, of course, reviews of new hardware as it comes out.

And thanks [Marc] for the tip to the new board release.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, news

If you want to get your hands on the new Arduino Zero months before everyone else, now is your opportunity as Arduino are offering a limited batch of 20 developer boards for beta testing.

Read more on MAKE

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!

A new development board has been released from the Arduino – Arduino Zero:

A new development board has been released from the Arduino stable of development products. This board has been developed jointly by Atmel and Arduino and targets ‘The next generation of IoT development’.

The Zero board contains an Atmel SAMD21 microcontroller, built around the 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ processor. The board also packs 256 KB of flash and 32 KB of SRAM. Shield connectors are Arduino R3 compatible at 3.3 V. The (EDBG) Atmel embedded software debugger is available to aid program development.

Acording to Massimo Banzi, co-founder and CEO at Arduino “The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel creativity of the Maker community. The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development”.

Arduino Zero Targets the IoT - [Link]

The Arduino Uno is the old standby of the Arduino world, with the Arduino Due picking up where the Mega left off. The Arduino Tre is a pretty cool piece of kit combining a Linux system with the Arduino pinout. Care to take a guess at what the next Arduino board will be called? The Arduino Zero, obviously.

The Arduino Zero uses an Atmel ARM Cortex-M0+ for 256kB of Flash and 32k of RAM. The board supports Atmel’s Embedded Debugger, finally giving the smaller Arduino boards debugging support.

The chip powering the Zero features six communications modules, configurable as a UART, I2C, or SPI. USB device and host are also implemented on the chip, but there’s no word in the official word if USB host will be available. There are two USB connectors on the board, though.

The Arduino folk will be demoing the Zero at the Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend. Hackaday will have boots on the ground there, so we’ll try to get a more detailed report including pricing and availability then.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks