First project with the Arduino
While at the ’09 Maker Faire I picked up an Arduino Duemilanove. What is that you ask? From their site:
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).
Since I dabble in Processing, and the Arduino always seems to get spoken about in the ‘Processing circles’, I figured I should give it a shot. What I find ironic is the Arduino was about $35. The USB cable I picked up to hook it to my computer was also about… $35. Sigh…
Though once I downloaded the software and decided to give it a shot, it was surprisingly east to get going. Since the Arduino language is based on Wiring which is based on Processing, and they share the same IDE, at first glance the programs are a snap to understand (if… you know Processing that is). And if you have a few spare parts laying around (LEDs, resistors, etc), you can have some geeky-goodness running in no time.
The below images are from their ‘Loop‘ example. I have a movie of it blinking over on Flickr (can programming an Arduino, but still can’t figure out how to give video on my blog…). Click on the pics to be taken to pages that let you see bigger images.
