High Tech at Bistrotheque

Daniel held another full day of learning and making. From wiring, to soldering, to Physical Computing with Arduino (yes, hardware and software), it was a trial for the lovely participants, but they've made it. I was amazed to see people put so much effort, but it paid off. People with no prior knowledge of electronics or programming managed to get their Digital Creatures up and running.



I must admit assisting this event was easier than for the Kinetica Artfair, but the audience was different as well. At Kinetica we had a few kids too, and it's hard not to worry when there's a hot metal soldering iron involved.

Keep your eyes on the Technology Will Save Us news for more. By the way, there's another
in March on DIY Speakers. See you there!

Oh, and if you want to get started with Processing and Arduino, and you want it now, check out the OpenLab Workshops.

Kinetica Art Fair 2011

Kinetica Art Fair
is one of the biggest artist/maker fairs in the UK. There were a lot of great project, a lot of people and a wonderful vibe in general.

This year was a different for me, because I had the opportunity to participate, not just view the Art Fair this year. Daniel Hirscmann invited me to join Technology Will Save Us for the weekend to assist the workshop. There were multiple workshops including an awesome one on DMX Lighting with Arduino. DMX is a protocol somewhat similar to MIDI used in theatre/performances to control lights/smoke machines/etc. but can be used for light based responsive art installations or similar projects. The I helped with was a bit more basics: a soldering workshop, which allowed to people to learn how to solder, buy building one of these fun little toys Daniel and Mike designed, called the Lumiphone. The workshops were packed with people, young and old.

Here are Daniel's photos from the event:



and here are some random pieces from the show:




For more workshops be sure to check Technology Will Save Us

Arduino & Actionscript - The resources

Things are getting busy again, but finally managed to get a bit of time to put the materials together from my talk at LFPUG

You can download the resources here.
The zip contains the slides(pdf), a readme file with instructions on how to setup your files for Arduino and how to configure serproxy.

The video recording of the talk is available (thanks Influxis)




If you have any problems comment on this page or send me an email.

Thanks again to Tink for the opportunity to talk at LFPUG and big thanks to disturb media for supporting me
with the presentation. The slide design is crafted by Jason Turner.

Big thanks to Daniel Hirschmann
for the awesome course taught at Goldsmiths. Remember, there are lot of good resources on the Physical Computing Wiki . Feel free to make use of Daniel's mailing list([physcomp][at][lists.plankman.com]).

This post should be on the disturb blog, but at the moment, Jace is a bit busy making sandwiches.

Conrad's talk will be at Flash On the Beach.
Disturb have a few surprises for you there.

See y'all offline !

Arduino & Actionscript - The talk

Tink was kind enough to allow me to give a talk at the London Flash Platform User Group later this month.

I will be presenting an introduction to Arduino, sensors, actuators and all that geeky goodness.
There will be a few demos on how to communicate between Arduino and Actionscript, so hopefully,
is hardware doesn't fail, this will be pretty fun.

With years of experience in OOD, frameworks and TDD, Conrad Winchester will giving a talk before me on the Robotlegs micro-architecture.

If you're in London, do sign up and drop by RG/A's office in Clerkenwell as they will be hosting the talks this month.

Otherwise, stay tuned, video and slides will be posted here after the talk.