Book Description

Ready to create rich interactive experiences with your artwork, designs, or prototypes? This is the ideal place to start. With this hands-on guide, you’ll explore several themes in interactive art and design—including 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, computer vision, and geolocation—and learn the basic programming and electronics concepts you need to implement them. No previous experience is necessary.

You’ll get a complete introduction to three free tools created specifically for artists and designers: the Processing programming language, the Arduino microcontroller, and the openFrameworks toolkit. You’ll also find working code samples you can use right away, along with the background and technical information you need to design, program, and build your own projects.

• Learn cutting-edge techniques for interaction design from leading artists and designers
• Let users provide input through buttons, dials, and other physical controls
• Produce graphics and animation, including 3D images with OpenGL
• Use sounds to interact with users by providing feedback, input, or an element they can control
• Work with motors, servos, and appliances to provide physical feedback
• Turn a user’s gestures and movements into meaningful input, using Open CV

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introducing Interaction Design
Chapter 2. Programming Basics Download Now »

Book Description

Arduino Projects to Save the World shows that it takes little more than a few tools, a few wires and sensors, an Arduino board, and a bit of gumption to build devices that lower energy bills, help you grow our own food, monitor pollution in the air and in the ground, even warn you about earth tremors.

Arduino Projects to Save the World introduces the types of sensors needed to collect environmental data—from temperature sensors to motion sensors. You’ll see projects that deal with energy sources—from building your own power strip to running your Arduino board on solar panels so you can actually proceed to build systems that help, for example, to lower your energy bills. Once you have some data, it’s time to put it to good use by publishing it online as you collect it; this book shows you how.

The core of this book deals with the Arduino projects themselves:

• Account for heat loss using a heat loss temperature sensor array that sends probes into every corner of your house for maximum measurement.
• Monitor local seismic activity with your own seismic monitor.
• Keep your Arduino devices alive in the field with a solar powered device that uses a smart, power-saving design.
• Monitor your data and devices with a wireless radio device; place your sensors where you like without worrying about wires.
• Keep an eye on your power consumption with a sophisticated power monitor Download Now »

Book Description

Build a robot that responds to electrical activity in your brain—it’s easy and fun. If you’re familiar with Arduino and have basic mechanical building skills, this book will show you how to construct a robot that plays sounds, blinks lights, and reacts to signals from an affordable electroencephalography (EEG) headband. Concentrate and the robot will move. Focus more and it will go faster. Let your mind wander and the robot will slow down.

You’ll find complete instructions for building a simple robot chassis with servos, wheels, sensors, LEDs, and a speaker. You also get the code to program the Arduino microcontroller to receive wireless signals from the EEG. Your robot will astound anyone who wears the EEG headband.

This book will help you:

• Connect an inexpensive EEG device to Arduino
• Build a robot platform on wheels
• Calculate a percentage value from a potentiometer reading
• Mix colors with an RGB LED
• Play tones with a piezo speaker
• Write a program that makes the robot avoid boundaries
• Create simple movement routines

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Building the Chassis Download Now »

Book Description

Want to create devices that interact with the physical world? This cookbook is perfect for anyone who wants to experiment with the popular Arduino microcontroller and programming environment. You’ll find more than 200 tips and techniques for building a variety of objects and prototypes such as toys, detectors, robots, and interactive clothing that can sense and respond to touch, sound, position, heat, and light.

You don’t need experience with Arduino or programming to get started. Updated for the Arduino 1.0 release, the recipes in this second edition include practical examples and guidance to help you begin, expand, and enhance your projects right away—whether you’re an artist, designer, hobbyist, student, or engineer.

• Get up to speed on the Arduino board and essential software concepts quickly
• Learn basic techniques for reading digital and analog signals
• Use Arduino with a variety of popular input devices and sensors
• Drive visual displays, generate sound, and control several types of motors
• Interact with devices that use remote controls, including TVs and appliances
• Learn techniques for handling time delays and time measurement
• Apply advanced coding and memory handling techniques

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Getting Started
Chapter 2. Making the Sketch Do Your Bidding Download Now »

Book Description

Arduino Internals guides you to the heart of the Arduino board. Author Dale Wheat shares his intimate knowledge of the Arduino board—its secrets, its strengths and possible alternatives to its constituent parts are laid open to scrutiny in this book. You’ll learn to build new, improved Arduino boards and peripherals, while conforming to the Arduino reference design.

Arduino Internals begins by reviewing the current Arduino hardware and software landscape. In particular, it offers a clear analysis of how the ATmega8 board works and when and where to use its derivatives. The chapter on the “hardware heart” is vital for the rest of the book and should be studied in some detail.

Furthermore, Arduino Internals offers important information about the CPU running the Arduino board, the memory contained within it and the peripherals mounted on it. To be able to write software that runs optimally on what is a fairly small embedded board, one must understand how the different parts interact. Later in the book, you’ll learn how to replace certain parts with more powerful alternatives and how to design Arduino peripherals and shields.

Since Arduino Internals addresses both sides of the Arduino hardware-software boundary, the author analyzes the compiler toolchain and again provides suggestions on how to replace it with something more suitable for your own purposes. You’ll also learn about how libraries enable you to change the way Arduino and software interact, and how to write your own library implementing algorithms you’ve devised yourself. Download Now »

Book Description

Arduino boards have impressed both hackers and professional engineers. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional, it isn’t just a breadboard and a hazy idea that keeps you going. It’s essential to institute a proper design, device instrumentation and, indeed, test your project thoroughly before committing to a particular prototype.

Practical Arduino Engineering begins by outlining the engineering process, from the basic requirements and preliminary design to prototyping and testing. Each and every chapter exemplifies this process and demonstrates how you can profit from the implementation solid engineering principles—regardless of whether you just play in your basement or you want to publicize and sell your devices.

Arduino is a brilliant prototyping platform that allows users to test and iterate design ideas. Imitation by other Arduino makers, hackers and engineers often proves your design’s popularity. Practical Arduino Engineering will teach you to follow the engineering process carefully; over time, you will be able to review and improve this process, and even extend its scope.

Practical Arduino Engineering is not purely theoretical. In addition, you’ll learn the process of hardware engineering as applicable to Arduino projects, and the importance of the process in each and every project presented in this book.

To set the stage, Practical Arduino Engineering begins by reviewing the Arduino software landscape, then shows how to set up an Arduino project for testing. Download Now »