Liquidware has a great touch shield out for the Arduino. It’s a 128×128 OLED display with a resistive touch screen on top. It can hold up to 60 full screen images and only uses pins 3 and 4 on your Arduino. It may seem pricey at just over $100, but it’s worth every penny considering everything that’s packed onto that little shield (they even managed to squeeze in 16MB of on board video ram). You can pick one up here and you can look at the open source code here. If you end up getting one, let us know what you end up building with it… I’m off to buy one now!

One of my side projects I’ve been working on lately is a fully self-contained Arduino shield. I originally started making it for the arduino classes i’m teaching. Today, I finished up the design and did a sanity-check prototype by printing out the board on paper, putting it on foam, and sticking the major components into it.

The board itself is a whole bunch of cool inputs and outputs. It has 3 sliders (with integrated LED’s… each connected to PWM). It has a temperature sensor, a light sensor, and a piezo wired as a knock sensor. It has 3 buttons, 2 PWM leds, a 7 segment led hooked up via a shift register, and a piezo buzzer. I set out to max out every Arduino pin, and I did it! I ordered the boards today, and I’m getting super psyched about it. Not only will this be a fun board to learn on, but I’m excited about using it to do all sorts of fun stuff. The possibilities are really off the charts.

The manufacturer now has my design. More pix on flickr.

This weekend will be New York’s first Robotics Competition. It’s going to be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center @ 655 W. 34th St., New York, NY 10001 and will including a bunch of funny looking robots running around kicking soccer balls at each other.

Working in teams, students have just six weeks to create their robot. They get the opportunity to work with programmable radio controls, pneumatics, motors, electrical circuits, mechanics, machining, web design, computer animation, computer assisted design, and other technologies – just like professional engineers and technologists do. Following the six-week design and build phase, teams enter local and regional competitions.

We’re beginning at the beginning with a few beginner’s classes. To begin:

Electronics 101: Lets make electronics fun! This is a class for the completely uninitiated. Repeat: no experience necessary! We’ll cover how to make a circuit, how to use a circuit, and what a circuit actually is. By the end of the three hour session you will be able to make a wiggling blinking wonderblob of your own creation. There are two sessions available: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/102436390 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/105038172

Soldering 101: This is the place to start if you’re interested in making any kind of electronic project that you intend on making permanent, or that you intend on working at all in most cases. We’ll be making it easy for you. This class covers the practice and theory of good soldering, as well as safety. And as a bonus, there will be some super secret hints and tips that you can only get from a seasoned professional! There are three sessions available:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/102417333 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/105034160 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/105035163

Soldering 102: Freeform! This is a more artistic and sculptural application of the skills you will learn in the soldering 101 class. This is great for very cheap and rapid circuit building. It’s also great for wearable and toy circuitry! In this method, you will skip the circuit board completely and make working circuits that are held together by their own mechanical structure. You solder the parts directly to each other. Sounds difficult, but it will be old hat within an hour if you come give it a try! No need to take the 101 class first. There are two sessions available: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/102433381 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/105050208 http://www.eventbrite.com/event/105052214

Hope to see you there!

The Hacktory is an awesome hacker space starting up in Philly. Check out this article and video!

Then go check out their site! – Link