Vibrobot Family Workshop at the AVA Lebanon

Oct. 17th 2009 - Vibrobot workshop at Lebanon's AVA Gallery and Art Center.

The kids with help from their parents made some really cool Vibrobot creatures. Vibrobots are little robots made from recycled materials and powered by tiny cell phone or pager motors.

The kids brought their imagination to the table full of 3v batteries, pager motors, wire, solder, sticky table and a lot of hot melt glue.

Arduino + Processing - Serial Communication

It's surprisingly easy to get Arduino talking to Processing via Serial Communication. You can send sensor readings to Processing and make things happen there or send data from Processing to Arduino.

A good start is the Virtual Color Mixer project. Very simple and quick. Just remember after loading the sketch to the Arduino to shut down the software on your computer before running the Processing sketch otherwise the Arduino holds on to the port and won't let go!

Next step is I want to get a couple of sensors on the Arduino to represent the x,y cords. of a mouse. I'm going to start here: Lucky Larry's Arduino + Processing

Arduino Wave Shield

I recently built and have been playing around with a Adafruit Wave Shield for the Arduino. Basically you are building your own iPod type device although it plays low quality wave files and not MP3s but it's an iPod that can respond to sensors and provide outputs.

Couple of handy links:

Interface class for the Arduino Wave Shield

Free sound samples

Mistake of the Week

I was building a Wave Shield for Arduino (available from Adafruit ) and of course nothing worked the first time.

I checked all the solder joints, went online looking for software problems, checked the sound files, formatting of the SD card etc. I looked at the serial output of the program and everything there checked out. Finally I starred at my board and the picture of a completed board on the website and DUH! I saw the problem. I had put one of the capacitors in a spot where an LED was suppose to go! I was so busy trying to make sure I had the polarization right that I wasn't paying attention to the component description.

In any project a zillion things could go wrong. Best advice is to take your time and double check everything.

Amazing Yard Sale Find!

Lego Mars Rover - found at a yard sale for $5. What an incredible find! My son was focused on building this all day!

Got some spare time and a bunch of Legos?

Spelling Fun with IPod Touch

We've been having fun with our new Ipod Touch. Its an amazingly simple to use device. This has to be the future of computing. Maybe Microsoft will get a clue and realize that the Iphone type of operating system is what people would like to see computers do. That is start up instantly, provide quick and easy to applications.

The Ipod Touch has all the capabilities that probably 80% of the computer users out there use. If it had a bigger screen, a real keyboard and Quicken it would be perfect for most household computing tasks.

I wait for the day when one of these things is mounted in every room of the house in the place of wall switches. Networked music, light controls, security, access to information from where ever you are etc.

Anyway, one unexpected plus for our household has been access to some neat educational apps. We've been playing with some spelling games and math games to give our fifth grader a little boast in those areas. Its certainly more fun than the worksheets that have been coming home as homework.