Category Archives: Aggregated

The Mood Lamp recognizes your facial expressions and turns them into light

via Arduino Blog

Mood Lamp

The Mood Lamp project by Vittorio Cuculo, is a system using interactions to communicate an emotional state to a physical object and receive back  a coherent response. In particular, through your facial expression you communicate your emotional state to an RGB color lamp . The lamp, at this point, will respond to the interaction by changing the color of the light emitted in accordance with the emotional state inferred.

The aim of the systems is to remove the mediation between human and machine typical of classic interfaces. Among the modes of natural interaction we usually have gestures, gaze tracking and facial expressions. The latter are particularly relevant because they play a fundamental role in nonverbal communication between human beings.

Regarding the man-machine interaction, the ability to recognize and synthesize facial expressions allows the machine to gain more communication skills, on the one hand by interpreting the emotions on the face of a subject, and on the other by translating their communicative intent through an output, such as movement, sound response or color change.

An IKEA lamp becomes a Natural Interaction system which senses human emotional states through facial expression. It uses OpenCV for image processing and analysis to identify emotional state through the movements of face’s fiducial points. The lamp, made with an Arduino Duemilanove, changes its color to represent the user’s current emotion.
In particular, it receives via serial communication, the values of pleasure, arousal and dominance, following the PAD emotional state model, as inferred from the facial expression and changes accordingly the color of the RGB LEDs.

Mood Lamp

New in the Swag Shop: recycled CD case pencils!

via Raspberry Pi

These feel lovely when you sharpen them, have a beauteous Raspberry Pi logo at the end, and are made in solid colours from recycled CD cases. Buy some, look funky when you doodle, help fund computing education, and save the planet too – what could be better?

Amazingly, we have not yet sold out of our first batch of Babbage the Bear. (He has stayed on the shelves longer than the camera boards, which we find shocking and remarkable.) Get him while he’s snuggly!

Welcome Arduino Yún – the first member of a series of wifi products combining Arduino with Linux

via Arduino Blog

Arduino Yun - iso

 

Massimo Banzi announced it some minutes ago during his annual “The state of Arduino” presentation at Maker Faire Bay Area:  Arduino Yún  is the first of a revolutionary family of wifi products combining Arduino with Linux.

Yún means “cloud” in chinese language,  as the purpose of this board to make it simple to connect to complex web services directly from Arduino.

ArduinoYun - scheme

Designed in collaboration with Dog Hunter, a company with extensive experience with Linux, the board adopts the Linino distribution which provides signed packages to ensure the authenticity of the software installed on the device.

Historically, interfacing Arduino with complex web services has been quite a challenge due to the limited memory available and they tend to use verbose text based formats like XML that require quite a lot or ram to parse. On the Arduino Yún we have created the Bridge library which delegates all network connections and processing of HTTP transactions to the Linux machine.

Arduino Yún is the combination of a classic Arduino Leonardo (based on the Atmega32U4 processor) with a Wifi system-on-a-chip running Linino (a MIPS GNU/Linux based on OpenWRT). It’s based on the ATMega32u4 microcontroller and on the Atheros AR9331, a system on a chip running Linino, a customized version of OpenWRT, the most used Linux distribution for embedded devices.

Like a Leonardo, it has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 7 can be used as PWM outputs and 12 as analog inputs), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator and a micro USB connector.

Arduino_Yun
Like any modern computer, it’s Wi-Fi enabled, it has a Standard-A type USB connector to which you can connect your USB devices and it has a micro-SD card plug, for additional storage.

The Yún ATMega32u4 can be programmed as a standard Arduino board by plugging it to your computer with the micro USB connector. And you can also program it via Wi-Fi.

When the Yún is turned on for the first time, it becomes an Access Point, creating a Wi-Fi network named “Arduino”. Open your browser and go to the webpanel: configure the board by entering your Wi-Fi network name, type and password. Click the “Configure” button to restart the board and have it join your home network. Opening the IDE, you’ll see it listed in the “Port” sub menu with its IP address instead of the serial port name.

Using the Bridge library in your sketches, you can link the 32u4 to Linux, launching programs and scripts, passing them parameters (sensor readings for example) and reading their output, thus creating a strong integration between the creativity of your sketch and the power of Linux. The Yún supports Shell and Python scripts out-of-the-box but you can install a wide range of open source software and tools.

For the Linux geek in you, Yún can be reached with SSH:  that means you’ll be able to customize it in whatever way. And you’ll always be able to reset it to its factory settings.

On top of that to make it even simpler to create complex applications we’ve partnered with the innovative startup Temboo which provides normalized access to 100+ APIs from a single point of contact allowing developers to mix and match data coming from multiple platforms (for example Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare but even FedEx or PayPal).

Arduino Yún will be available at the end of June at the price of 69$ + taxes.

 

Filming light reflecting off objects

via Hack a Day» hardware

light

With high-speed cameras you’re able to see bullets passing through objects, explosions in process, and other high-speed phenomena. Rarely, though, are you able to see what happens when light shines on an object without hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. A group of researchers at The University of British Columbia are doing just that with hardware that is well within the range of any home tinkerer.

Making videos of light passing through and around objects has been done before (great animated gifs of that here), but the equipment required of previous similar projects cost $300,000 and couldn’t be used outside the controlled environment of a lab. [Matthias] and his team put together a similar system for about $1,000. The only hardware required is an off-the-shelf 3D time of flight camera and a custom driver powering six red laser diodes.

Aside from having a much less expensive setup than the previous experiments in recording the flight of a pulse of light, [Matthias] and his team are also able to take their and record the flight of light in non-labratory settings. They’ll be doing just that at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference, producing videos of light reflecting off attendee-produced objects in just a few minutes. You can check out the video for the project below.


Filed under: digital cameras hacks, hardware

Arduino IDE 1.0.5 is released!

via Arduino Blog

We’re happy to announce the release of a new version of the Arduino software, version 1.0.5. Barring any unexpected bugfixes, this is the final planned release of the 1.0 series of the IDE. Future releases will be from the 1.5 branch that has been in beta since last summer.

With that excitement out of the way, let’s get to the new features :

  •  New library import functionality to install libraries directly from a .zip file in the IDE. You can see more information about this on the installing 3rd party libraries page.
  • A Windows installer, which will hopefully streamline the process of setting up the IDE and drivers.
  • Windows signed drivers. This means Windows 8 will no longer prevent you from installing Arduino drivers.
  • The application is signed for OSX 10.8 (this was part of 1.0.4, but we thought it was so nice it deserved another mention).
  • Updated WiFi library with UDP support.
  • Support for the Arduino Robot and TFT screen. The TFT library is based on a number of Adafruit libraries, and the Robot library relies on many 3rd party libraries.
  • Various bugfixes and optimizations, look at the release notes for a complete description.

Special thanks to everyone who contributed on this release. You rock.

Future releases of the IDE will support multiple architectures (like the ARM used in the Due). There is also a new library and 3rd party board implementation being introduced. You can read more about these on the 1.5 library specification and 3rd party hardware support pages

You can download Arduino 1.0.5 from the software page.

 

Raspberry Pi for Dummies: sample chapter

via Raspberry Pi

If you’re wondering about introducing your kids to Scratch, but aren’t quite sure where to start, here’s a handy resource for you. Sean McManus, one of the authors of Raspberry Pi for Dummies, has sent me a link to a couple of sample chapters of the book, including the first chapter on Scratch. You’re welcome to download it to find out whether the book’s for you.

Raspberry Pi For Dummies PDF Sampler

 

New Product Friday: A List Products

via SparkFun Electronics News Posts

First off, a couple very important announcements. At our last Simon PTH class, there was significant interest in a Simon SMD workshop – so we added one to the schedule! Sign up today to reserve your spot!

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The other announcement is that this coming Monday (May 20th, 2013), we are holding the first ever SparkFun Donation Day. On this day, 10% of all sales will be donated to a non-profit organization.

This time around, we have chosen the Electronic Frontier Foundation – one of the very few non-profit legal entities out there which actively fights for our rights as consumers, geeks, makers, and hackers. If you’ve been holding out on a SparkFun purchase and want to support the EFF, Monday, May 20th would be a great day to pull the trigger! Now on to the product post…

We’ve been spoiled. The abilities of a $30 piece of hardware today is really amazing. I can’t even begin to think of what $30 will buy you in another 10 years from now. The Raspberry Pi, pcDuino, and others have really shown us what’s possible with single board computers.

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We now have the Raspberry Pi Model A in stock. It’s similar to the Model B, but only has one USB input (instead of 2), has 256MB of RAM (instead of 512mb) and doesn’t have onboard Ethernet. If you don’t need the the extra bits, the Model A is a great way to save a few bucks.

alt text

Last week we announced the new Sensor Kit, which included 1M ohm resistors. I noticed that we didn’t carry them separately on the site, however. So now we carry the 1M ohm resistor in singles, or in 20 packs. These are very useful for things like piezo elements which output very high voltage.

alt text

We’ve been out of stock of the MegaBrite for quite awhile. The manufacturer was unable to get us the standard version (with straight headers), so now we’re carrying the version with right-angle headers instead. Everything is the same except for the headers installed.

alt text

Lastly, we have a new version of the fabrickit Coin Cell Brick. This new version uses a new DC to DC converter, since the old one got discontinued on us for no real apparent reason. Oh, the joys of design, part sourcing, and manufacturing! This new version of the power brick is already included in the full fabrickit kit. As a side note, we have the older version on sale if you want to save a few bucks. We’re updating pictures this week.

Speaking of sale, we’re constantly adding products to our sale category, so be sure to check it often. We haven’t been using it as much in the past, but we plan to use it more often so new revisions come out more quickly. So be sure to check and see if there’s anything interesting! Thanks for reading. I’ll be back again next week with more new stuff. I have a lot more for next week, so be sure to check back then! See you next week.

Homebrew GPS gets ±1 meter resolution with a Raspberry Pi

via Hack a Day» hardware

GPS

We’ve been following the work of [Andrew Holme] and his homebrew GPS receiver for a while now. A few years ago, [Andrew] built a four-channel GPS receiver from scratch, but apparently that wasn’t enough for him. He expanded his build last year to track up to eight satellites, and this month added a Raspberry Pi for a 12-channel, battery-powered homebrew GPS receiver that has an accuracy of about 3 feet.

The Raspi is attached to an FPGA board that handles the local oscillator, real-time events, and tracks satellites automatically. The Pi handles the difficult but not time-critical math through an SPI interface. Because the Pi is attached to the FPGA through an SPI interface, it can also load up the FPGA with even more custom code, potentially turning this 12-channel receiver into a 16- or 18-channel one.

An LCD display attached to the FPGA board shows the current latitude, longitude, and other miscellaneous data like the number of satellites received. With a large Li-ion battery, the entire system can be powered for about 5 hours; an impressively portable GPS system that rivals the best commercial options out there.


Filed under: hardware, Raspberry Pi

Arduino is ready for Maker Faire Bay Area, and you?

via Arduino Blog

ArduinoRobot

The world’s most diverse showcase of creativity and innovation in technology, craft and science is starting tomorrow in San Mateo, California and the Arduino team will be there with more than a couple of new things to present.

First of all, finally and officially the Arduino Robot will be alive and running around the Arduino tent to bring you into the world of robotics. Designed with Complubot, the 4-time world champions in Robocup Junior robotics soccer, the robot allows for endless hours of experimentation and play. It is a self-contained platform allowing you to build interactive machines to explore the world. As all the other Arduino products you can use it as it is, modify its software and even add your own hardware on top of it: it is perfect for the novice but also for those looking for their next challenge.

As you may have read in the article published on MAKE some days ago, The Arduino Robot is the result of the collective effort from an international team looking at how science can be made fun to learn and we loved to share its story. Connected with this aim, David Cuartellies – head of Arduino Verkstad, the Arduino office in Malmö (Sweden) – during Maker Faire Bay Area will present the Castilla Education Project  aiming at evaluating the use of Arduino and other open source tools in the schools of Spain. He’ll especially focus on the way content was created and validated in an experiment involving 24 schools, 30 teachers, over 500 kids, and a 6-members design team.

On the topic of education also Michael Shiloh — Coordinator of Education materials for Arduino, will be on the Education stage on Sunday  at 4.30pm for a Q&A on how to use Arduino boards and how to prepare material for teaching.

 

Arduino tft - Esplora compatible

Then we’re happy to announce that Arduino is releasing the new version of the Arduino IDE and the new TFT screen. TCT LCD library relies on the Adafruit GFX and ST7735 libraries.   The Arduino specific library, named TFT, extends the Adafruit libraries to support more Processing-like methods. You can write text, draw shapes, and show bitmap images on the screen in a way that should be familiar to users of Processing.

If you want to hear all these news from the voice of Massimo Banzi, don’t miss the center stage of Maker Faire Bay Area, saturday 18th of May from 1.30 and come to visit us at the Arduino tent (see map below for directions).

MakerfaireMap

 

 

 

Frederik and Ernest’s Europe – Middle East – Africa roadtrip

via Raspberry Pi

Frederik and Ernest Lotter from Blue Horizon Embedded Systems in South Africa are driving from the UK to South Africa via Russia and the Middle East, taking in seventeen countries on their way.

They are making the journey in a Land Rover Defender which is fitted with a Raspberry Pi-based distributed light control system. The Raspberry Pi, and their lighting rig design, will be put to the test over 22000km of harsh conditions and rough terrain.

The Lotter brothers are experienced electronic engineers and are offering to meet up with groups of potential Raspberry Pi or ARM enthusiasts along the way. There may even be a Pi-themed reward available if you can find them using the live GPS tracking system they have installed.

You can track them live online, and if you want them to come and talk to your school, business or another group about Raspberry Pi and ARM processors while they’re in your country, they’re inviting you to email them - please get in touch as soon as possible if you’d like them to visit. Watch the video to learn more, and to find out what their route looks like. Thanks Fred and Ernest; we’re looking forward to tracking your progress!

OSHW Doc Jam Followups: Releasing the Format to the Community

via oshwa.org

Finally! I’m able to followup after the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam!

As many of you might know, at the end of April, I’ve been the facilitator of a Jam in New York city: it was the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam – OSHW Doc Jam (see http://www.opensourcewarehouse.org/ for details): the event has been sustained by many Sponsors and Supporters and OSHWA supported the event from the beginning.
We held the event with the objective to start a fruitful discussion about how to share more documentation regarding Open Source Hardware projects.

NYJAM-jpg

One of the Jam groups at work – thanks to Bilal Ghalib for this amazing picture.

We had almost 40 people working along the three days to think about possible strategies and solutions, prototype (some times) and sharing them with the public in real time.

Two parallel Jams in Berlin and Amsterdam were held and we are now opensourcing the format to share the lesson we learnt and allow others to use this format for this or other application fields.

I just want to give you a short comment on the content we discussed, even if the oshwa will be following up in the next weeks with the discussion (we are thinking to use public hangouts, and Social Media. There are a bunch of good places online to discuss about open hardware and we will be posting the news there (eg: OSHWA mailing list, Ouishare Factory Facebook Group, The Open Manufacturing google group, etc…)

My mission as Int’l Branches Chair here at OSHWA is to help OSHWA grow internationally: I’ve also created this Facebook group called Open Source Hardware Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/194351110718598/ to trigger a contextual discussion on building a stronger OSHW community of users and creators worldwide so…please join!

The Results

Coming back to the Jam; let’s focus a little bit on the documentation we are releasing today. The discussion at the Jam was mainly related to three separate threads:

1) Standardization: Having a more interchangeable format, a shared information *standard*, and interconnected data among the different portals, platforms, companies and projects producing and/or hosting OSHW documentation

2) Experience: Identify user experience issues, challenges and gaps in the documenting process so that we can create tools that make documentation creation easier

3) Movement / Organization: mostly related to how to replicate the event in itself and create more handy, easy to replicate formats.

We had actually run nine sessions as follows

Standardization

  • Remixing Derivatives Versions Components
  • Websites Interoperability
  • Taxonomy and Standards

Experience:

  • How to document your project while building
  • OSHW // OSS Parallels
  • Connecting Makers Socially
  • Accessibility of documentation

Movement / Organization

  • How to replicate the JAM
  • Ideas to create a Documentation Sprint

It’s not the objective of this post to going deep in the content since the discussion just started and we’ll keep you informed about the next steps and how to join. Here at this link you can find all the documentation available in a google docs directory https://drive.google.com/#folders/0BwJSOhVDu4bQSU1hZkhUc0cyMms. A zip file is also available. All documentaion is released in CC-BY. This will be hugely useful to anyone moving her steps in the OSHW industry with a product, a startup or even just a passion

The Metodology

Here’s a link to a PDF file describing the Jam Format so that you can use it on your own https://docs.google.com/file/d/1vFKpGmpyQGFEXrwxBk90AKIdRyIOowVPkONR9VPMtPLB0UDTI1gHdctLKzmde5ZD2xH9gy_mh0X_s66N/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s a Google Doc you can Download or Fork https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cxiXM7nl-ZsXUWCt-CPNwWZSeeMBdb2M-b2JCvOCqkU/edit#

Here Follows the methodology description in text.

Please get back to us for any comment or feedback!

How to organize a Jam Based on Open Space Technology (as implemented for the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam – OSHW Doc Jam, held in NY 26 to 28 of April 2013)

Version 1.0

Original Authors/Contributors: Simone Cicero, Catarina Mota, Marcin Jakubowski, Jay Cousins (with his unvaluable suggestions on destructuring the format)

License: Public Domain

How to organize a Jam Based on Open Space Technology (as implemented for the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam – OSHW Doc Jam, held in NY 26 to 28 of April 2013)

Pre – event activities

Infrastructure

To create the communication infrastructure, we used a wordpress theme dedicated to events. More in details we used eventor theme. You should take into account that your website features:

  • A blog

  • A page for Sponsors (paying to support the budget)

  • A page for Partners (providing support, sending participants, other non strictly monetary suppor)

  • A page for the Agenda

  • A page for a bunch of hosts if any

Some lesson learnt:

  • keep the message clear and explain to the people what is all about

  • keep the message clear and explain to the people what is going to happen

  • Put an evident call to action in the homepage for registration

Advertising the Event

Materials needed

  • a PR kit with Event short description, Press contacts, Website, Host description, Event description, images to use. All should fit into one page.

  • a blueprint for an Invitation letter people can use to invite communities. Imagine this being posted on a forum, mailing list, etc…

  • A general text that you can use to explain about the event on emails/contact requests

Advertising the event is a bit tricky. Our strategy worked pretty well and was basically made of:

  • Posting the information in relevant message boards and mailing lists (we did for OSHWA, OKFN, etc…)

  • Ask for relevant blogs to cover the news

  • Search for local meetups that could be interested and send the information to the meetup organizers

  • Search for relevant people on Linkedin (or other social media) and contact them directly

Event Execution

The Production team: you should have a basic team of no less than three people if you’re aiming at an event of medium to big size (50-100 registered attendees). We used the Trello web application to keep track of the activities. Trello is a simple KanBan board. To get familiar with Agile methodologies and KanBan you can check wikipedia resources.

You should keep it simple for people that wants to join the team and contribute with the smaller effort possible (communication, recruit, logistics, others).  This shall be the more open possible. We basically included anyone seriously willing to contribute. Even from remote. Their contribution was decisive for the event success.

How we included people? By providing them with access to the Trello board and by hosting alignment hangouts.

The main responsibilities / contributions of the production team are:

  • event design/adaptation

  • communication: help to create buzz, awareness, cover the news on blogs and journals

  • recruit: recruit people that could contribute with decisive contributions

  • logistics: help with the event organization (location, food, etc…)

Each of this contribution shall have an accountable person. The use of RACI Matrix is suggested.

 

The Inspiring Methodology

Our Jam format was inspired to the principles of Open Space Technology. En excellent review and links about the methodology are available on wikipedia and we suggest you to read about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-space_technology

How we actually implemented it

Our event spanned on three days, kicked off on Friday at 6 PM, closed on Sunday at 6 PM.

Setup

  • Session Proposals Wall: A piece of paper where you can hang proposed sessions (starting time – Ongoing/Closed)
  • Ongoing Sessions Wall: A piece of paper where you can hang sessions (starting time – Ongoing/Closed)
  • Closed Sessions Wall: A piece of paper where you can hang session reports in printed version
  • A prototyping table: A place that is dedicated to prototyping (may feature: Paper, Scissors, Cardboard, Colours, Big Sheets of paper, a 3D printer :) , etc…)

Sessions move between the boards as they progress.

We had our personal interpretation of the format and we ended up with a mixed one with:

  1. A first content focused phase in the form of short pitches. In our case it was about presenting initiatives dealing with OSHW Documentation. We planned it on Friday Evening

  2. A second phase where we held the Open Space discussion with all participants in a circle and asked people to submit topics to the discussion. Each topic that was relevantly shared was picked as a Session Proposal

  3. A short Session Agenda planning: we planned almost half of the proposed session session for saturday morning, afternoon or even sunday.


 

Here’s the detailed description of the phases

Start

Phase

Description and Activities

Friday 6 PM

Meetup

Welcome and Name Tags

Friday 6.30 PM

Meetup

The team introduces the background of the event and the resources we created.

Short Projects Presentations

Friday 7 PM

Tools and practices

A brief session about:

- Jam Methodology (OST)

- principles (such as session suggested duration, podcasting interviews, documenting)

- location facilities

- tools to use and best practices for documentation

is given by the hosts (short presentation)

Friday 7:10 PM

Meetup

We sit in a big circle of chairs

The host team will greet the people and briefly re-state the theme of the gathering.

All participants are invited identify issues or opportunities related to the theme and to their skills and ideas.

Participants willing to raise a topic will take the mike/stand and talk about the issue: people is encouraged to feedback.

At some point, the facilitator identifies the session, writes it on a sheet of paper and adds it to the proposals.

The session leader shall be identified at that very moment to enhance the possibility the session is actually run.

That person must make sure that a report of the discussion is done and posted on the Reports wall once the session is closed (so that any participant can access the content of the discussion at all times)

No limit exists on the number of items/sessions proposed.

We bring some drinks and some lite dinner snacks

A second open session is run, hoping that the discussion during the drink was fruitful

Before the event closure people are encouraged to gather around the proposal wall and discuss with the leaders. at the end of the day, every participant shall choose the session proposals she’s interested in joining from DAY2

Saturday 9:30 AM

Breakfast meeting and Ignite meetup

We serve breakfast there so that people meet and start to warm up

Saturday 10:00 AM

First Batch of Work: Solution Brainstorming

Session Leaders and interested folks gather around the proposal wall. As soon as a consistent interest is formed around a Session this session moves on Session Wall, picks a Table  and moves on.

We shall encourage that sessions are kept under 2hrs: then the documentation is shared. Follow-up sessions can be re-scheduled obviously.

This process is reiterated continuously during the day, as long as a session closes people can join others in running sessions or propose/start other ones.

Putting a Session in the proposals leaves people the possibility to express interest so that after few sessions the leader (or someone else) could decide to kick off.

Saturday 12:30 PM

Reporting / Cross fertilization Session

Session Leaders are asked to give a 5 minute report of all the sessions they coordinated during the morning.

Saturday 1 PM

Lunch

Lunch is served: it stays there with not specific lunch time. Work continues in the Background

Saturday

7 PM

Reporting / Cross fertilization Session

Session Leaders are asked to give a 5 minute report of all the sessions they coordinated during the day.

Sunday 10:00 AM

Breakfast meeting and Ignite meetup

We serve breakfast there so that people meet and start to warm up

Sunday 10:00 AM

First Batch of Work: Solution Brainstorming

Repeating saturday kick off.

Saturday 12:30 PM

Reporting / Cross fertilization Session

Session Leaders are asked to give a 5 minute report of all the sessions they coordinated during the morning.

Sunday 1 PM

Lunch

Lunch is served: it stays there with not specific lunch time. Work continues in the Background

Sunday

5 PM

Reporting / Next steps focus session

Session Leaders are asked to give a 5 minute report of all the sessions they coordinated during the day.

A very special focus is requested in Followups/What’s next

Sunday

6/7 PM

Wrap up

Participants are left to wrap up for next steps, finalize documentation.

A common drink outside the venue is encouraged to slow down and say bye.

 

People can join or leave sessions at any moment. Sessions could be close or even cancelled at any moment. The session leader is responsible of the quality of the documentation.

Opting for only Digital Documentation

Even if the principles of OST asked for having documentation readily available in paper or visual format, ee opted for having only digital documentation.

We setup a Google Folder and created a Session brief Template to be used at each session kickoff.

  • Session Leaders were asked to

  • Create a folder named after the session, create a Session Brief copy for the session

  • Add documents in the session folder

We also kept an excel file with ongoing session information and links to the session folder.

Ticketing

We used Eventbrite for ticketing, we priced the event at 10$ just to lower the no show rate respect a free to attend event. A slightly higher price may have helped with budget and lowering no shows rate.

 Video Documentation

Having a video operator to document the JAM will be a plus

 Food

Food is very depending on your budget, style and everything. Our lesson learnt on food is that you tend to underestimate no show rate (we had a no show rate, decreasing from almost 30% on day 1, to almost 50/60% on day 3) and overestimate people appetite. Whatever are you planning to cater for, divide by a three at least.

Requirements for the Location

  • KEY Time availability – You need the location for all the event timespan plus 4/6 hours in advance

  • KEY Possibility to attach Paper Sheets on the wall with tape

  • KEY A plenary room for the number of people you are looking for (ideally a place where we you can put up to a number of tables for eight people in line with expected attendance – no show rate)

  • KEY Chairs for all

  • KEY A projector

  • NICE2HAVE Amplified mike

  • KEY Many Plugs and cables (each table shall have at least 5/6 plugs available)

  • KEY Good Wi-Fi Network connectivity

  • NICE2HAVE A dedicated space for Lunch (not on the working tables)

Materials to be provided

  • NICE2HAVE Whiteboards with whiteboard markers

  • KEY Few Sharpie magic markers for white sheets

  • KEY Few Large white sheets for creating the session walls

  • KEY Post Its

  • NICE2HAVE Few sets of Coloured markers

  • NICE2HAVE A printer available

  • KEY Drafting Tape

Target Composition of the attendance before the event

Before the event, we had an attendee number and composition target. Ideal target was to have 75 participants with a composition made of:

  • 35% Stakeholders of open source hardware community (OSHWA, OSE, others).

  • 15% SW Developers (web/front end, backend/data, CAD programmers)

  • 20% participants from the UX / Design realm

  • 20% Facilitators, managers and reporters

  • 10% mixed participants

 

We created separate tickets on eventbrite, asking people to pick one specific role and we made some relevant invites, especially from the open source hardware community and this helped having relevant insiders at the table. You can actually follow the same approach.

Facilitation

It’s highly recommended to have at least one experienced facilitator (at least in workgroup facilitation, better if also familiar with service design) per each 8/10 persons. We had only one at the Jam and it was pretty tough

 

Preparation Work

The preparation work can be shared through a Blogpost and a direct Email to registered attendees:

The objective of the info will be to:

  1. Address potential ways for people to contribute

  2. Linking attendees to materials and references:

  1. Existing materials and definitions

  2. Relevant UX design materials for people who don’t know

  3. Great videos or articles

 

This should be published on the event blog at least a couple of weeks before and an extended version shall be sent via direct mailing one week before the event starts.

Lesson Learnt and Open Issues

  1. People can’t stay focused for three days: we suggest to keep the event shorter. A good Idea could be meeting up on Saturday morning. Another possibility is to close the event on late saturday night
  2. The subject should be broader/more loose: we had a bunch of good sessions but probably, a less focused epic would have helped to unleash more creativity and be more inclusive to non specialized attendees.

 

Engineer Thursday – Open-Bear Surgery at Olin College

via SparkFun Electronics News Posts

A couple weeks back, the infamous Pete Dokter and I got the opportunity to take a luxurious* trip to the Northeastern United States, visiting Brown University, MIT Media Lab, and Olin College.

While we were visiting, Amon Millner was kind enough to invite us to see first-hand what his students were up to in Olin’s Principles of Engineering class. We packed up some components, he mustered a big pile of homeless plush creatures, and members of his class and community gathered to see what we could make in a few hours.

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For the first half of the class, we kept it simple. Guests and students combined the LilyTwinkle with the Wake-on-Shake to create motion-sensitive light-up critters.

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Susan of Teach 2 Learn, Learn 2 Teach with her motion-sensitive frog!

One of the most popular projects, for obvious reasons, was a unicorn with a light-up horn. In addition to being a much-needed upgrade to what we’re told was an unloved surplus unicorn** in the household, it also became the most meme-worthy footage of the day!

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After the simpler projects were done, it was time to get down to business for the rest of the afternoon. A group of students from Amon’s Lifegraphs team showed us what they’ve been working on by hacking their animals further.

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It’s going to be okay, little guy!

With the addition of a little more equipment, including an Arduino board and one of our WiFly modules, they were able to use the system they’ve written to get their animals connected to Facebook before the anesthetic even wore off!

When one group’s penguin hugged itself (such that the conductive fabric patches added to the flippers touched), it posted an alarming message to the user’s Facebook wall:

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The ‘Notie Odie’ had an LED tongue piercing that lit up to alert the user that there were Facebook notifications to check.

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What these students are doing is definitely going to make it ever-easier to connect your projects (e-textiles and otherwise!) to your social media accounts. Seeing them at work was amazing, and I’m really excited to delve further into their tutorials for my own projects. Thanks again to Amon and Olin University for having us out to play, and we hope to see everyone again next year!

*We got to crash at Kipp’s house! There was pizza!
**We should all have such problems, no?

La tappa di Napoli dell’Arduino Tour: sperimentazioni su musica e internet delle cose

via Arduino Blog

Arduino Tour Napoli

Nel  weekend all’inizio di maggio  l’Arduino Tour ha fatto tappa a Napoli per una presentazione e un workshop di due giorni in cui i partecipanti hanno sperimentato principalmente su due fronti.

Nel primo, sfruttando della vernice conduttiva BareConductive, è stato creato un disegno su una tovaglia: uno pseudo logo di Riot, lo spazio che ospitava l’evento. Dopodichè questo circuito pitturato è stato collegato ad Arduino UNO, connesso a sua volta ad un pc su cui giravano il software di bridge Serial-Midi (già visto a Verona) e Ableton. In questo scenario, usando il disegno e il proprio corpo (e pure l’altrui!) come un unico circuito, è stato possibile generare una grande varietà di suoni.

A completare il tutto, un vecchio Stylophone hackerato a fare da sottofondo! Qui qualcuno si è dedicato alla progettazione e realizzazione della pittura, altri all’interfacciamento Arduino-Midi, altri alla musica, altri allo Stylophone.

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Il secondo fronte era dedicato al monitoraggio di consumi e all’Internet delle Cose. E’ stata realizzata una postazione per il monitoraggio di consumi, temperatura e luminosità e invio degli stessi a Emoncms (progetto OpenEnergyMonitor). In questo gruppo l’intenzione era di realizzare sensori di consumo a partire da materiale di recupero, anche se poi si è utilizzata una pinza amperometrica. Un altro gruppo ha invece utilizzato una nota centralina di monitoraggio wireless di consumi (CC-128), che debitamente hackerata è stata interfacciata ad Arduino. Anche in questo caso i dati recuperati venivano inviati a Emoncms Qui qualcuno si è dedicato al CC-128, altri alla configurazione standard, altri alla dashboard su Emoncms.

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Qui sotto potete vedere alcune foto dal nostro profilo di Flickr e nel caso vi venga voglia di partecipare al prossimo workshop, prenotatevi per la tappa di Alessandria il prossimo 1 e 2 giugno!

Welcome to the Swag Shop!

via Raspberry Pi

You may have noticed that a little while ago, we quietly withdrew Raspberry Pi branded t-shirts from sale. Since then, we’ve been working on a reboot of the store. Shirts have been totally redesigned, and are now screen-printed rather than transfer-printed, which gives a much higher-quality and tougher finish; we’ve also listened to your requests for more colours and thicker material. [Edit to add: a few of you have asked about the larger sizes. At the moment they're available in black (up to 3XL), and chocolate (Eben's favourite), red and sport grey (2XL). We'll add more if the demand's there, so please let us know what you want.]

Every purchase you make goes to fund the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s educational activities, so you’re not just making yourself look swanky; you’re directly helping kids.

T-shirts, just calling out for you to buy them so they can escape their cruel imprisonment in plastic crates.

So today we’re relaunching the shop, under a new name, with new management (things are being run by our friends at Pimoroni), and new goodies for you to buy.

Babbage the bear needs a home.

Shirts (for ladies, men and kids) aren’t the only thing we’ve got in stock: you can now buy your very own Babbage the bear, and we also have Raspberry Pi mugs, bags, and travelcard holders for you to sip from, carry things in, and wave at turnstiles proudly.

A holder for your Oyster card (or your library card, bus pass or ID). Thanks to TfL for allowing us to mess with their map, and to Paul Beech for the design.

A tough drawstring bag for your hacking tools, about twelve Babbages or your overnight gear.

It’s a mug. You put coffee in it.

We’ll be introducing more goodies to the store as time goes on, and announcing them here when we do. We hope you like it! Please get buying – every penny of profit we make goes straight back into the Raspberry Pi Foundation, where it’s used directly to help educate kids in computer science.