NYC Resistor

Isn’t she pretty. It’s the Arduino Nano.

You see, when 2 Arduino’s get together (in private) and exchange their currents, a little robotstork brings you an Arduino Nano! Here’s a description from Trossen Robotics:

Arduino Nano is a surface mount breadboard embedded version with integrated USB. It is a smallest, complete, and breadboard friendly. The Nano was designed and is being produced by Gravitech. It has everything that Diecimila has (electrically) with more analog input pins and onboard +5V AREF jumper. Physically, it is missing power jack and power select jumper.

It’s a similar size to the Arduino Wee from Spark Fun but it’s a little different in size and features. It comes with the typical 6 analog pins, 14 digital pins (6 of which can do Pulse Width Modulation), 16 KB of Flash Memory (of which 2KB used by bootloader) and a 16 Mhz clock. What more could you ask for? And, it’s so cute!

This past week I had the opportunity to attend FOO Camp in Sabastapol, CA. It was an amazing experience and I’m still trying to digest it all. Sessions I attended included ‘Hacking Bacteria’, ‘The History of Internet Art’, ‘Better Data Visualizations’, ‘Open Source Hardware’ and on and on… I also gave a talk on ‘The Future of News’ with John Markoff, Steven Levy and Monica Guzman and I participated in a 5 min Ignite talk titled ‘NYCResistor and Hardware Hacking in Brookland’. I could go on and on about the prodigious experiences at FOO Camp (not to mention playing werewolf until 4:30 am.) but one versatility it really affirmed for me is that the individuals that make up this global hacker, tinker and open source world are a truly altruistic, talented and generous community. You can see more photos here.

Gian Pablo, maker of this sweet algorithmic synth forces Wall-E to rock out. Gian Pablo has been known to teach synth making classes at NYCR so keep your eyes on the upcoming classes page if you’re interested.

Wall•E and the Rhythmic Synth from Gian Pablo Villamil on Vimeo.

Check out some of our brand-spanking-new classes for July!

PHP for Beginners

Learn the basics of PHP, one of the most popular languages for creating dynamic web pages and web applications. We’ll cover variables, functions, constants, handy tricks to make things easier, and what you’ll need to get your first script up and running. No programming experience required. Taught by Kelly.

Etching Your Own PCBs

Use common materials to etch your own printed circuit boards. The class will cover a few different methods of transferring your design, and use ferric chloride to etch. Bring your own circuit layout if you like (not required), no larger than 3″x5″. Taught by Kelly.

Beginning Csound

Csound is the most powerful computer music language in the world, with a direct lineage to Max Mathews’ original Music-N languages. The focus of this class will be a synthesis of three topics: The Csound language, synthesizer theory, and composing weird alien music.
Together, we will demystify the assembly-like syntax of the Csound language. We will cover the fundamentals of synthesizer theory, including: oscillators, filters, envelopes, amplifiers and modulation. Finally, we’ll tie it all together by composing sounds in the vein of classic Sci-Fi movies. Taught by Jacob.

Zach is also reprising his Arduino series, so if you missed it the first time around here’s your chance to get in on the Arduino action. There are three classes, Arduino 101: Hello World, Arduino Programming: If Funky Get Loopy, and Arduino Programming: Sensory Overload.

As always, you can see the full list of classes here.

I was on a photography lightning kick for a little while… whenever a storm struck in Brooklyn I ran to my deck, set up the camera on a tripod and opened the timer for 30 seconds, hoping that luck was on my side (in every respect) and that everything was pointing in the right direction to capture a bolt or 2 in my lens. This process usually takes about 20 minutes, involves me getting soaked, and scares the absolute %^$# out of me when the storm gets closer. Needless to say, I’ve lucked out every once in a while and captured the odd picture like this:

Well, as I was slouched my laptop last night I came across Maruice Ribble’s website (what a cool name!): Glacial Wanderer. The site has some very cool and simple projects with Miss Arduino and her trusty friends (XPORT, etc.). But he also has a great program/hack to detect lightning and set off a camera trigger to fire your shutter, all in 67ms, while lighting sticks around for a 100ms.

In the Robotics section of his site there are other super simple projects that are really well documented and tremendiously useful. The code is all there for you, diagrams, circuits and photos. It’s a nice little resource for some camera and sensor hacks.

Have you ever wanted your electronics projects to make sound? Are you interested in making your own electronic musical instruments? Do you love the sound of lo-fi electronics and 8-bit music? If so, have I got news for you!

I’ll be teaching a class on Arduino Audio in a couple of weeks, June 18th to be exact. The focus is very much on generating sound using the Arduino microcontroller, and a smattering of inexpensive parts.

I’ll be covering:

• Basics of sound generation with a microcontroller
• Making sound by toggling digital pins under software control (and why it’s limited)
• Introduction to R/C (resistor capacitor) oscillator circuits
• Using digipots to control R/C oscillators
• Advanced digipot control: scheduling, polyphony and ADSR envelopes
• Other approaches (Note: I won’t be covering sample playback - my focus will be on synthesis. Lady Ada’s excellent WaveShield for Arduino is a great way to achieve sample playback instead.)

You’ll come out of the two hour class with a working, breadboard-mounted circuit using AD5206 digipots to play back 3 (or 6) voices of modulated square wave sound!

You’ll need to bring your own laptop computer and Arduino board. Please bring your favorite sensors and interface devices - we can work on interfacing them during the class. The class price includes a parts kit, with digipots, stereo jacks, oscillator chip, breadboard, and various assorted components.

You can read about my previous experiments and projects on my Arduino Audio blog pages.

If you’re interested, sign up using this Eventbrite link.

Play or Die

So here’s a quick preview of the LED Array Jacket. I’m pretty excited it’s managed to light. Currently I am redesigning the driver circuit and boarduino to work with non-solid core wiring and to be more elegant and clean. But I thought this might wet your appetites.

This is a 256 LED matrix connected to Max7219 display drivers and programmed with an Arduino. Essentially, the Arduino is the brain behind the operation and the Max chip is the translator that speaks to the LEDs telling them when to turn on and off. The grid is separated into 8×8 quadrants and uses 4 Max7219 chips to drive a total of 16×16 rows and columns. The Arduino gives the Max7219 chip random numbers 0-8 to the digit and segment pins and lights up a single LED in its quadrant. By programming (with LOTS of help from Dino Dai Zovi) the display at 8000 one LED per grid lights up individually at a slow rate. Since computers don’t have opposable thumbs, this is where the human comes in. You get to put the legos where the computer instructs you to if you’re obedient. Once the computer has created its sculpture you can set the display to 3 or 4 and make it blink really fast turning it into a mesmerizing machine! Or a chandelier if you turn it upside down. You can also program patterns in the code rather than randomizing it, imitating lego instructions to build an object or map out visual data. The clear lego plates and bricks were found on ebay. The grid was built by Alicia Gibb and Becky Brauer. Look for upcoming LED Matrix building classes at NYCR.

My friend Becky made me an Arduino birthday cake this year! There was a fight over the AVR chip (dark chocolate) which involved memory loss and a cake knife. Candles became wire sticking out of the pins. Seriously awesome. Next task: to make LED candles that you have to short out instead of blow out.

Zach Smith tells us about his Danger Shield for Arduino.

Want to learn how to use an Arduino and get one of these awesome shields? Sign up for Zach’s Arduino classes at the space.

In this video: Zach ‘Hoeken’ Smith, Eric Skiff (behind the camera / CC-BY music), and Raphael Abrams and Nick Bilton in the background.
With apologies to Kenny Loggins “High-way-to-the…Danger Shield!”