Archive for the ‘workshops’ Category
Gyroscopes and accelerometers are the primary sensors at the heart of an IMU, also known as an inertial measurement unit — an electronic sensor device that measures the orientation, gravitational forces and velocity of a multicopter, and help you keep it in the air using Arduino.
Two videos made by Joop Brokking, a Maker with passion for RC model ‘copters, clearly explain how to program your own IMU so that it can be used for self-balancing your drone without Kalman filters, libraries, or complex calculations. (more…)
It’s time to introduce you to another great tutorial made for Intel Edison. Mimic Monster is a project allowing you to record soundbites and playing them back manipulated.
In this step-by-step project, everyone who is interested in audio features and mods , can find useful information on how to manipulate audio files and create amazing effects from your voice. (more…)
Arduino boards are able to control small motors very easily and it’s just as easy when you have to deal with controlling large motors. In the following video tutorial by NYC CNC you’ll see two examples. In the first you’ll learn how to get up and running, to start, stop, control direction and speed of a large motor with Arduino Uno. In the second example, how to use two proximity sensors as limit switches and two potentiometers to allow on-the-fly speed adjustment.
A week ago we were in London for an introductory workshop on the Arduino Yún. The participants were mainly beginners, knew the basics about Arduino and had the chance to learn about the Bridge library, how to control the board locally through the browser and to use Temboo to connect the plant to Twitter. See the pictures on the our Flickr account.
Arduino history is tied to the city of London: the first Arduino workshops ever took place right there. (more…)
Some days ago RS Components published the 5th and last video in a series of 5 video tutorials about Arduino Robot. After learning how to get started, to remotely control the robot, avoid obstacles and follow lines, you can now learn how to use the TFT screen to deal with images and how to make music and listen to it with the Robot.
In the video below David and Xun show examples and give your tips on how to navigate through these features: (more…)
RS Components released the second video focused on the first steps with the Arduino Robot with Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles and Xun Yang:
In this video you will see where to find code examples on the IDE. The robot library comes with two folders named “learn” and “explore” with examples on how to use the software to program the top board – this is the board you will mainly interact with while the motor board runs its original firmware.
One of the first examples of coding on the Arduino Robot is called “LOGO” which is very similar to an early educational programming language that controlled a virtual turtle moving across the screen with simple instructions. This time however, instead of having a small virtual turtle running on a screen, we have a robot that can respond to commands demonstrating a basic example of movement.
“LOGO” invites users to interact with the robot using the keypad to tell the robot whether to move forwards/backwards or to turn left/right. The program can store a series of commands that will then be executed one at a time. (more…)
Dario Buzzini and I have been friends since we met at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea several years ago. Ever since, we have worked together on interaction design projects for different clients. While visiting NYC for World Maker Faire last month, we organized a free open workshop for 25 participants at the IDEO NYC office (where Dario works) focused on creating sounds and music.
“Make Some Noise” was a short, one-day workshop about Arduino where we explored the topic of sound and it was aimed at complete beginners with no experience. To simplify the structure of the workshop we started with hands-on experiments composed by a quick set of exercises to enable the participants to understand the basics and, later on, to start exploring pitch, frequency, tone, and multiple effects—with quite curious results (see videos below)!
Last year, Arduino and RS Components, collaborated in the creation of 10 video tutorials focused on the Arduino Starter Kit. Some months ago they were released in Creative Commons and are available also on our Youtube channel.
During Maker Faire Rome, at the beginning of October, RS Components together with Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles, unveiled the release of other five exclusive video tutorials introducing the Arduino Robot and exploring various characteristics of this new open-source hardware on wheels.
Dominick Lee is a programmer, inventor who created the “LifeBeam Flight Simulator“, a pneumatic-powered dual-axis motion flight simulator using Arduino Duemilanove. After a few months of diligent work and the help of some generous collaborators he was able to mix physics, robotic and aviation into a motion platform that can make full rotations tilting at about 40 degrees.
The LifeBeam Flight Simulator is a full setup of equipment that runs simultaneously and collaboratively. The data is first sent from the Graphics or “Gaming PC” through a custom software program that acquires game data. The game data is scaled and converted into specific coordinates for the roll and pitch (X and Y) axis. The program sends out the final signal which is received by an Arduino (Duemilanove). The Arduino has a complex program on it that combines the serial commands and parses certain values to calculate a voltage which is then converted into PWM and sent to a low-pass filter which smoothes the PWM into analog voltage. The analog voltage is connected to a Pneumatic Valve Amplifier which controls the pneumatic cylinders to make the platform move accordingly.
After watching the video below you can read the whole documentation on Instructables and make one yourself!