Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Phreaknic
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Johndoc and I are in Nashville, looking for a copy of make magazine and going to pick up a friend at the airport. We shave taken a bunch of video and are listening to biz marke.
Bionic Arduino
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
I am really late to the party but in 2007 Tod E. Kurt gave a class on the Arduino and has 4 great pdfs of lots of cool info. I just wanted to share them all with you.
http://todbot.com/blog/bionicarduino/

Hardware Failure
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
My laptop died late last night. It appears to have sustained heat damage to the motherboard. The wireless, sound and CD ROM are not detected. The GPU also appears to be damaged, as it is not rendering correctly. Luckily my data is still intact.
This was my only computer, so this will up a slight delay to future posting and projects for a while.
Just wanted to drop by and give a quick update. I can’t wait to get a replacement unit going and get back to the projects… I have a bunch of great ones in mind too!
Arduino High School Class
Monday, April 6th, 2009
What a short strange trip its been. I work at a small private military school with a really fun summer camp/school program. I asked the principal the other day if I could teach an Arduino class this summer, fully expecting to have to explain what it was and how I would do it, and he looked at the syllabus and said that it was cool.
I am teaching an Arduino class for High School Credit!
Then we went to Flourish ‘09 in Chicago and met Massimo, one of the founders of the Arduino project. (pics and video to come). He was excited about this class, saying that we needed more english language lesson plans for the Arduino. So not only am I teaching a really cool class, I am going to be helping with making lesson plans for teachers to use the world over.
So what about this class, what is it all about? It is an Innovation and Invention credit in 6 weeks, or half a credit in 3 weeks. I am going to guide the students in building what they want to create, which should be really fun.
Here is the class website and syllabus.
Now we just need a few students. My school prides itself in small classes (10/1 teacher ratio’s) which would be awesome for this type of class.
Arduino Interview
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Looks like Massimo Banzi, one of the co-founders of the Arduino was interviewed this week on FLOSS Weekly. A great interview, I highly recommend you jump over to the FLOSS Weekly site and give it a listen!
Go download the interview at FLOSS Weekly:
Wow
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Basic Processing to Arduino Communications: part 2
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Continuing from the last sketch, I’ve done the same thing but in a different manner. I still have Processing generate a square and when the mouse moves over the square it lights a LED on the Arduino, just as before. Although this time, the only code on the Arduino is the “Standard Firmata” sketch.
Processing interfaces with Firmata to control the pins as one would in the Arduino IDE. So instead of sending for “H” or “L” on the serial port, we send arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.HIGH) or arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.LOW) on the serial port. See the video below for examples, and code at the bottom.
Basic Processing to Arduino Communications part 02 from Morgellon on Vimeo.
My first impressions of Firmata and why one would use it:
- All code is stored in Processing, commands are sent via serial, an Arduino running Firmata interprets commands.
- With the Arduino running Firmata, Processing can change the different values, variables, or even “load” different “sketches”… this could eliminate the need to flash different sketches to the Arduino, and use Processing to “simulate” this when needed.
- Perhaps by keeping the code in Processing and sending commands via serial to be handled by the Firmata on the Arduino, would mean that one would not be restricted by the memory size of the Arduino chip. (This is just a guess on my part).
First impressions of Firmata and why one would NOT use it.
- To have functionality with the Arduino after unplugging it from USB, the code would need to be running on the Arduino. Once the Arduino is unplugged from USB, there is nothing for Firmata to interpret, so the Arduino will do nothing.
Processing Code
import processing.serial.*;
import cc.arduino.*;
Arduino arduino;
int ledPin = 12;
void setup()
{
println(Arduino.list());
arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[0]); // v2
//arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[0], 57600); // v1
arduino.pinMode(ledPin, Arduino.OUTPUT);
size(200, 200);
noStroke();
frameRate(10);
}
void draw()
{
background (255);
if (mouseOverRect() == true) { //if mouse over square
fill(242, 204, 47); //yellow color
arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.HIGH); //LED on
} else {
fill(0); //black color
arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.LOW); //LED off
}
rect(50, 50, 100, 100); //draws the square
}
boolean mouseOverRect() {
return ((mouseX >= 50) && (mouseX <= 150) && (mouseY >= 50) && (mouseY <= 150));
}
Playing with Photoresistors
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
Recently Phizone, Cynshard and I met up and did a little messing around with Arduinos. (who knew) This is some of the video that came out of that.
Phizone took the etch-a-sketch and the color selector processing code and used photo resistors (light sensors) to generate the values needed.
Phizones Light Sensor Experiment from droops on Vimeo.
xkcd Comic with Arduino
Monday, December 29th, 2008
Phreaknic
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Johndoc and I are in Nashville, looking for a copy of make magazine and going to pick up a friend at the airport. We shave taken a bunch of video and are listening to biz marke.
Bionic Arduino
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009I am really late to the party but in 2007 Tod E. Kurt gave a class on the Arduino and has 4 great pdfs of lots of cool info. I just wanted to share them all with you.
http://todbot.com/blog/bionicarduino/

Hardware Failure
Sunday, June 28th, 2009My laptop died late last night. It appears to have sustained heat damage to the motherboard. The wireless, sound and CD ROM are not detected. The GPU also appears to be damaged, as it is not rendering correctly. Luckily my data is still intact.
This was my only computer, so this will up a slight delay to future posting and projects for a while.
Just wanted to drop by and give a quick update. I can’t wait to get a replacement unit going and get back to the projects… I have a bunch of great ones in mind too!
Arduino High School Class
Monday, April 6th, 2009What a short strange trip its been. I work at a small private military school with a really fun summer camp/school program. I asked the principal the other day if I could teach an Arduino class this summer, fully expecting to have to explain what it was and how I would do it, and he looked at the syllabus and said that it was cool.
I am teaching an Arduino class for High School Credit!
Then we went to Flourish ‘09 in Chicago and met Massimo, one of the founders of the Arduino project. (pics and video to come). He was excited about this class, saying that we needed more english language lesson plans for the Arduino. So not only am I teaching a really cool class, I am going to be helping with making lesson plans for teachers to use the world over.
So what about this class, what is it all about? It is an Innovation and Invention credit in 6 weeks, or half a credit in 3 weeks. I am going to guide the students in building what they want to create, which should be really fun.
Here is the class website and syllabus.
Now we just need a few students. My school prides itself in small classes (10/1 teacher ratio’s) which would be awesome for this type of class.
Arduino Interview
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009Looks like Massimo Banzi, one of the co-founders of the Arduino was interviewed this week on FLOSS Weekly. A great interview, I highly recommend you jump over to the FLOSS Weekly site and give it a listen!
Go download the interview at FLOSS Weekly:
Wow
Thursday, March 12th, 2009Basic Processing to Arduino Communications: part 2
Monday, February 23rd, 2009Continuing from the last sketch, I’ve done the same thing but in a different manner. I still have Processing generate a square and when the mouse moves over the square it lights a LED on the Arduino, just as before. Although this time, the only code on the Arduino is the “Standard Firmata” sketch.
Processing interfaces with Firmata to control the pins as one would in the Arduino IDE. So instead of sending for “H” or “L” on the serial port, we send arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.HIGH) or arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.LOW) on the serial port. See the video below for examples, and code at the bottom.
Basic Processing to Arduino Communications part 02 from Morgellon on Vimeo.
My first impressions of Firmata and why one would use it:
- All code is stored in Processing, commands are sent via serial, an Arduino running Firmata interprets commands.
- With the Arduino running Firmata, Processing can change the different values, variables, or even “load” different “sketches”… this could eliminate the need to flash different sketches to the Arduino, and use Processing to “simulate” this when needed.
- Perhaps by keeping the code in Processing and sending commands via serial to be handled by the Firmata on the Arduino, would mean that one would not be restricted by the memory size of the Arduino chip. (This is just a guess on my part).
First impressions of Firmata and why one would NOT use it.
- To have functionality with the Arduino after unplugging it from USB, the code would need to be running on the Arduino. Once the Arduino is unplugged from USB, there is nothing for Firmata to interpret, so the Arduino will do nothing.
Processing Code
import processing.serial.*;
import cc.arduino.*;
Arduino arduino;
int ledPin = 12;
void setup()
{
println(Arduino.list());
arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[0]); // v2
//arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[0], 57600); // v1
arduino.pinMode(ledPin, Arduino.OUTPUT);
size(200, 200);
noStroke();
frameRate(10);
}
void draw()
{
background (255);
if (mouseOverRect() == true) { //if mouse over square
fill(242, 204, 47); //yellow color
arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.HIGH); //LED on
} else {
fill(0); //black color
arduino.digitalWrite(ledPin, Arduino.LOW); //LED off
}
rect(50, 50, 100, 100); //draws the square
}
boolean mouseOverRect() {
return ((mouseX >= 50) && (mouseX <= 150) && (mouseY >= 50) && (mouseY <= 150));
}
Playing with Photoresistors
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Recently Phizone, Cynshard and I met up and did a little messing around with Arduinos. (who knew) This is some of the video that came out of that.
Phizone took the etch-a-sketch and the color selector processing code and used photo resistors (light sensors) to generate the values needed.
Phizones Light Sensor Experiment from droops on Vimeo.

