Tackling your creative minds
by Dima on July 3, 2009
in random, technology
I really need to tackle your creative minds with a techy/geeky question.
Veronica received a basic Arduino kit for her birthday. If you’ve never encountered it before, there are explanations in the link and here is also what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that uses the Wiring library to simplify writing C/C++ programs that run on the board. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software running on a computer (e.g., Adobe Flash, Processing, Max/MSP, Pure Data, SuperCollider).
Here is another interesting discussion of Arduino.
Basically it allows you to add interactivity to objects by hard-wiring and programing the board and adding to various sensors. We played with it a little bit and made various LEDs blinking in various fancy ways. But now, we would like to find a more interesting, creative and maybe even (but really not necessarily) useful project. This is where I need your help.
What would you do with Arduino?
To start the process, here are some interesting ideas we found on the internet:
- Taking pictures triggered by sound, movement, etc. – 1, 2 (super cool!).
- A couple of varieties of POV – 1 and 2.
- Twittering plants and fetuses.
And some claim that this can also be done using Arduino:
They even have a MySpace page, but this is slightly too much for us I think, at least at this point :)
So, what do you suggest we should build?


There is a full course at my faculty where they use Arduino for “Critical Making” (http://criticalmaking.com)
On the website you can read about some cool project such as the Rommlizer: http://criticalmaking.com/?p=363
We also had an Studio Open Show, you can see some of the projects – http://criticalmaking.com/?p=379
Enjoy and Mazal Tov,
Dor