Planet Arduino

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of the Genuino Starter Kits in both German and Spanish–now on our online store (outside of the US)! What’s more, you can take advantage of our ongoing promotion and save 10% on your kit throughout the entire month of July using the code below!

Each box consists of an Uno board, 150 components, and a Projects Book which provides step-by-step instructions for 15 different creations. Most of these projects also come with cardboard cutouts to make your projects even more fun.

The kit will help you control the physical world with sensor and actuators, as you make your way from the basics of electronics to more complex gadgets. Projects include musical instruments, a temperature-sensing Love-O-Meter, a spaceship interface panel, a motorized pinwheel, and a magic crystal ball that answers all your questions.

Get your Starter Kit in German >>
Get your Starter Kit in Spanish >>

For the first month, the German version of the Starter Kit is also exclusively on Watterott store, our board manufacturer!

We are happy to announce that the new Genuino Starter Kit is now available on store.arduino.cc (customers from the USA will be redirected to the US-based store and will be able to purchase the Arduino Starter Kit from there).

Genuino Starter Kit, like the Arduino Starter Kit, is a great way to get started with making, coding and electronics!

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.
This brand is used for boards and products sold outside the US and the Genuino Starter Kit is the first product of the series!

The Starter Kit is based on lessons Arduino’s founders have learned teaching their own classes: if you start with the assumption that learning to make digital technologies is simple and accessible, you can really make it so.

The package includes a Genuino Uno board and the components you need to make 15 fun projects following the step-by-step tutorials on the Project Book. The book walks you through the basics in a hands-on way, with creative projects you build by learning. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll have a palette of software and circuits that you can use to create something beautiful, and useful!

Genuino Starter Kit will also be available for purchase during Maker Faire Rome! Come and visit us, we’ll be happy to show you demos and projects based on Arduino and Genuino boards.

A few months ago we introduced Genuino, Arduino’s sister brand for products sold outside the US. TODO, the design agency that developed the Arduino branding language since its early beginnings, created the new Genuino look & feel and signature elements. This new branding language is going to be applied to all Genuino and Arduino products in the near future.

Giorgio Olivero, one of TODO co-founder, studied at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where Arduino was conceived. Giorgio and later on his team (among others Vanessa Poli and Alessandro Argenio) have been taking care of Arduino’s brand identity since then. We have asked Giorgio to tell us the reasons behind the original Arduino branding language, and the Arduino/Genuino design language refresh. Here is the story in his own words:

‘When we began developing Arduino’s identity in late 2009 we wanted the project to feature an accessible, pop, and clear communication language for the new community that was growing around DIY electronics. Something that wouldn’t compare to the technical-macho look of the engineer-oriented platforms and products: a testosterone-free positioning that could speak to everyone and not only to experts and hard-core enthusiasts.

Arduino’s original visual language had to stand out and define a yet uncharted market, its goal was to ‘declare, define, simplify’ without scaring people away with overly technical details. Arduino’s identity had to be true to its community values, not too polished but still elegant and accessible. It was basic, technical and playful. The message was: Arduino is a modular system open to anybody and in constant evolution.

As the electronics market keeps evolving at an incredible rate, it’s about time to refresh both the Arduino and the Genuino brand with an updated system. The new design keeps a strong continuity with the previous one, we see it as an evolution rather than a revolution. We want people to recognize that the core values and the ‘personality’ haven’t changed. The new recipe is spicier and less technical though, it has a sort of circus-like feeling: it’s about the joyful interplay of the Arduino ecosystem and community. You could see these colourful squares as different components, circuits, and modules of an electronics system. Or rather as the interlocking building blocks of the maker movement itself, that recipe of openness that makes Arduino so unique.

The new visual language evokes empathy, joy, and playfulness. Collaboration is its core value. It introduces a series of characters based on the electronics components with a playful personality, that will enable new outlets for the visual identity.

We have always enjoyed working with Arduino, our ongoing collaborations (and long friendship) surely requires very fast design iterations, because the Arduino ecosystem keeps evolving, but hopefully we are making the brand stronger and very well equipped for the new challenges ahead.’

Learn more about Todo on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s going to be a great weekend in London in mid January. Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder will be at the Somerset House in London for three days. The program starts with a talk followed by a Q&A, on Friday January 16th in the Screening Room, South Wing at Somerset House. (book your ticket here)

On Saturday 17th, and Sunday January 18th you can take part to two 8 hours sessions that will be held at Makerversity, in the New Wing of Somerset House. The workshop is suitable for beginners, designers, teachers, artists, hackers, and everyone interested in Arduino (no prerequisites needed). At the end of the two sessions each participant will be able to prototype autonomously a simple project with Arduino. The participation is available for a max of 20 people: you can check details and book your ticket here. The presentation taking place on Friday is free for workshop participants.

This holiday season we have a special package for you. Arduino Xmas Pack contains all you need to make the perfect gift for anybody willing to get into the Arduino world and put their hands on official gadgets and the widely appreciated Arduino Starter Kit.

The Starter Kit walks you through the basics of Arduino and electronics in a hands-on way through 15 projects to build, hack and share something great every day.

Xmas Pack includes (see pic above):

• Arduino Starter Kit in Italian or English
• Arduino T-Shirt (you can choose your size)
• Arduino Mug
• 6 Pins

Arduino Xmas Pack is sold only on the Arduino Store at 100€/124 $ and ships for FREE in US and Europe.

If you want to be sure to receive it for Christmas, check the timing to place orders on this page.

Make it yours for Christmas >> English edition or Italian Edition

Martin sent us this fun project called TweetSweets, inspired by Labby’s twitter-enabled candy machine

How does it work? Easily explained:

- User1 sends a tweet with #givejacksweets
• Processing searches for the hashtag, sends a tweet thanking them and passes ‘sweets’ to Arduino
• Arduino activates sweet dispenser for 0.5 seconds
• Photoresistor detects when User2 collects them, and passes to Processing
• Processing takes a photo of User2 and tweets this to the User1
• User1 and User2 both smile

I’ve also cobbled together bits of code from other sources, including:

• a bit of Scott Fitzgerald’s PhotoResistor code from the Arduino Starter Kit book
• Twitter Processing sketch based on RobotGrrl ‘Just a simple Processing and Twitter thingy majiggy‘ that I used for ‘I Am Iron Man’
• Webcam code from Samuel Cox’s WeddingBooth
• Yonas Sandbak’s PostToWeb class

Funny thing is that this project didn’t start out involving sweets at all. Originally, I had planned to use NFC cards to allow people to quickly tap in, have a picture taken and then manipulate that image once it was on the server. Somewhere along the line I must have gotten hungry!

 

Last year to celebrate the launch of the new Arduino Starter Kit,  RS Components in collaboration with Arduino,  produced  10 video tutorials featuring Massimo Banzi showing how to create cool projects with the redesigned release of the Kit and all its components.
 

Today RS Components announced on their Twitter and Google+ that the Arduino video tutorials are now marked with a Creative Commons license, that means that you can remix and reuse them as you like.

We created a Playlist on Arduino official Channel and soon we’ll add also German and French subtitles.

When we released the Arduino Kit, we knew that we are equiping the closet-wannabe-makers to start planning for world domination. Now it has the stamp of approval from MakerLab too!

Make Noise With The New Arduino Kit is a project by Alessandro Contini (@CNTLSN) and Alberto Massa (@nkint)

The above video explores the basic components of the kit and things that a new-maker would want to start with, including a light controlled theramin, and by theramin, I really mean exploring every possibe way to make impressive noises from one simple experiment.

Sounds fun? Do write to us, what you made out of your starter kit. We may feature you next

Via:[MakerLab]

[Robotgrrl] made a nice project with the Arduino Starter Kit: The Eye Robot.

It reacts differently when you ‘pet’ it and ‘poke’ it. Beware when it ruffles its brow! It enjoys singing short jingles. Rumour has it that the light up googely eye can peer into your soul.

source [Robotgrrl]