http://kits.sparklelabs.com/

Sparkle Labs is not only a beautiful and stylish  web site, is an educational platform: in the weblog as in the learn and projects sections you can find some affordables and funny tutorials,  perfects if you are a beginner and you want make something easy and “usable”- I think I’m going to put myself to the test of the Christmas tree-  I believe that for beginner as me easy tutorials are the best choice to do not abandon hope and that’s a crucial point if you think that probabilities of abandon are higher at the start.

Sparkle Labs is also a product: paying about 50 dollars (34,88 euros) you can receive the ‘Discover Electronics kit’ good both for beginners and advanced users, with all the basic components (briefly presented) and a manual for start to work immediately on your new project.

50 dollars or 34,88 is  not a bad price so I hope that someone at my university will read this post and will order 20 kits (or at least one for me) in the name of the sacred institution of education.

Last but not least Sparkle Labs supports the DIY philosophy and of course that makes me happy, cause we need more DIY in our life, moreover I think we’re a kind  basically scared about the electronics and that’s keep  us far from the way of learning to use electricity or on approaching a part of the DIY.

I like how the Sparkle Lab communicate the funny side of hacking, to me, something taken too serious sometimes.

I want  suggest you a pair of other sites related to the topic, useful but less cool:
Open Circuits it’s a wiki about circuits, probably there you can find a solution to any doubt about circuits, it’s divided in sections  .

All About Circuits It’s a big and opened online textbook about electricity and electronics divided in six volumes.

at the Electronics Club I found something basic but extremely effective: a short explanation of Circuit Diagrams, I had some problems in reading the diagrams but now things are  more clear. but honestly the need a good web designer to move the site from web 0.1 to 2.0

Graphical Resistance Calculator a simple and visual way to calculate resistance value, chose the color and the value will appear. fast and intuitive.

that’s all.

ps.printed circuit business cards

http://www.docjax.com

I’m in the rank of those slaves to the glasses ( cough cough beautiful Persol cough cough) and that’s makes me usually not so enthusiastic about pdf, ebooks or nooks and my enthusiasm is even less when I have to sign up for the service that is going to make me blind in the attempt to read its contents or get mad in the attempt to find something useful and I don’t want to give you any names cause I know we all use Slideshare and Scribd

I cannot enjoy a walking in the rain without risk my life (who is in my same situation knows what I’m talking about, the rain on your glasses is like having a windscreen without wipers) and at the same level I cannot spend hours reading a paper on a computer screen without losing my eyes.

But for you normal people docjax could be good ,’cause, is good to me too.

First of all you don’t have to sign up to  preview or download the papers or the ebooks that you’re looking for, they’re just there, just one step further the seach  box in the main page.  All the contents come directly from the web, from sites as such as Google or universities’ webpages.

what you have to do is just choose a title, look at the preview and download it.

Much more  simpler than wearing glasses.

The handbook is simple and well illustrate with good reproduction of circuits and projects.
I don’t know exactly where it comes from and I cannot remember where I found it (damned information overload), but the illustrations reminds me the Fritzing software , good for beginners since is very basic and  low-fi.

Good starting point  for practice and anyway guides are always welcome.

You can also have a look at Dailyduino a website a step further from my level, but a good place for resources.

I just love Daniel Andrade and his blog, he is an Arduino’s amateur and in his blog you can find a good section dedicated to Arduino, but if you have the time, please check out the other posts about electrical circuits, hacking,Linux and more!
I used one of his tutorial for the code for the temperature sensor and the background of my desktop right now is the wallpaper he made, you can see it at Arduino wallpaper

And the article about Arduino on Make:.

http://www.nycresistor.com/

you can immediately image they’re cool . Not simply because they’re from Brooklyn – New York.

Not simply because they’re good guys hackers.

Not simply because they’re pro DIY philosophy.

Not simply because they call themself ‘resistors’.

But because they’re all of them PLUS a deep sense of community and the believe that only sharing our knowledge we can improve ourself and the way we live  things.

On one issue I’m really  upset about and is the access to the culture and barriers built up by laziness between “equals”.

I mean what’s makes you different from me? Basically knowledge.

I think that there are  huge holes behind the hacking: false believes, superficial virtues,terminology, accessibility.

I think there are a lot of false believes around the ‘hacking’ ( I talk by myself with the emotions I feel day after day) as the fact that you must be “inclined to” hack. If when you were a kid you did not crash toys to see what there was inside..well ,sorry, you’re not “inclined” to hack and you’ll never be.

..and if when I was a kid I used to colour the wall and the furniture of my home what should I be now? an Interior designer?

This is stupid. Hacking is not something you learn from a day to another, it takes time and is never simple as everything in this world.

it’s a problem of superficial virtues: I’m very good in reading, it’s banal isn’t it? I love books and I like to read challenging books, I can read an entire book in few days, and I’m good in focus my attention on details, still banal, but I would never tell you that ‘Crime and Punishment’ is “too much” for you.

Hacking looks hard cause seems a virtue belonging to few elected but that’s not true. On the contrary a revision of values it’s good to make us more self-confident.

Terminology: if I’m following a tutorial or watching a video on you tube I’m able to understand the 90% of the first 5 minutes and nearly the 30% of all the rest. What I’ve understood? Only the range of words that I can use also in a supermarket. All the rest are empty boxes on a crosswords. The problem about  tutorials is that usually they’re not made for  learning  but they’re perfect for  reproduction.

Hacking needs tutorials illustrated in a simple way, as an explanation to a friend who don’t know anything about circuits and stuff, speak for the ‘equals’=humans. I know it sounds boring but at the end it works.

Then accessibility: the big barrier or in other words the missed opportunity to bite the matter.

Or you are a super natural fan of hacking, so that you’ve spent your childhood and a big part of your adult years locked in your garage and searching on the web for every single website dedicated to your passion with the consequential sadness of your family and  losses of friends- a real self-made man- ..or..nothing! They’re there and you are here, there’s nothing left except the chance to think at yourself once more as a stupid, cause you’ll never get there.

My personal solution in this mess is the “strategy of analogies”, it’s became a part of myself thinking that there’s nothing simple, so, I’ve learned to build analogies with topics that I already know well.

I think this strategy is born from the necessity to  find out an everyday-life-utility for my bachelor in linguistics and semiotics.  All the things in this world are not so different from words (where they’re also represented), what you have to do is analyze them.

I mean analyze them in a different way, deeper, analyze the structure . How are they composed? And why?

If you completely understand the structures, the internal laws that regulate the processes and set positions, then grammatic and lexicon will be easier to learn, cause they’re branches of the structure’s roots.

Semiotics help me from the social point of you: why we feel the desire to do certain things, how and why we need to represent them .

So where is the semiotic hacking?

In this moment I’m asking myself what’s behind the real hacking, and the answer that I see is “demolish barriers”. I know it looks like a topic too big, but it’s so easy to see to me.

We don’t even need to ask to ourselves how it’s worth to make something instead of buy it, or if it’s worth to reassemble something new.

I don’t mind if it’s worth. I mind I can do it!

It’s the concept behind the entire DIY philosophy and hacking is DIY.

I’ve just light on a led in these weeks, but you should see my satisfaction!
In these days I’m feeling “equal”, I’m finally playing with the others, it took times but step by step I’m starting to express myself and I’m practice the language.

In my opinion that ‘s the Arduino’s ‘social power’ . The most democratic Usb in the entire world, if I only think at all the common  stuff that have the Usb as Arduino..telephone, cameras, mouses, i-pods and so on electronic seems less far from me.

I don’t need an interpreter anymore, none to explain what I want, why, and how, cause I’ve the tool to make what I want, playing with my creativity anytime I want, learning by myself with the help of others.

But the DIY is not for Europeans or at least not for Italians, it’s in the American culture of “the self-made man”, not something famous in this country.

We have pyramids  of  authority to climb, and knowledge is something to underline in a textbook, who has it is holding it tight under copyright.

Almost a perfect world, but Arduino is not immune from barriers and explain your ignorance without embarrassments is not easy.

When I’ve read what these guys from Brooklyn were doing I felt like we were on the same tune for all the beautiful approaches they have to sharing knowledge and DIY.

They, Good hackers, are concrete people, they meet each others, they discuss, they organize classes and courses, they have a wiki and I swear if I was  in New York I would already introduced myself, shaking hands and giving hugs.
I’m 24-year-old, 25 in the 2010, I’m italian and I don’t have a Mac.

Ideas for a creative reuse

Anyway, that’s Arduino’s fault- my new lover- to be honest are days that I don’t touch it, but I’m deep in the process to collect all the super-fast experiences-emotions-regrets-ideas-lessons of the workshop just passed and I lost myself several times in the attempt to orient myself in this jungle of kind-of- engineering knowledge.
During these endless internet journeys I’ve discovered a lot of bullshit and lot of diamonds and I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to spend words on both.

but I think that these diamonds need a new category where to stay.. let’s call it T.e.c.H. as acronym of This Empathy Calls Headache or The Electricity Can Hurt or The Educative (and) Cool Hacking or Thinker Easily Caught Hearts, all entries that could be a name for an indie Canadian band, whatever meaning you link to T.e.c.H. is just tech.

ps. The bullshit will be still publish in BlaBlaBla

Anyway, here I show you some of the stuff I made today , let’s start with the Led Fading:

//scopo dell'esercizio far fare il fade al led, ossia farlo illuminare fino al massimo della potenza e e poi farlo diminuire.
//come si fa?
// si impostano i valori:
int ledPin=11;// qua è da dove esce il filo verso la breadboard
int ledVal=10;//valore del led
int x=0;// in questo caso 0 equilvale al valore più basso che il led può avere, in questo caso spento. Il più alto valore a cui il led può arrivare è 255, quando si illumina al massimo.


void setup () {
pinMode (ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop () {
for (int x=0; x<255; x++){;//per ogni volta che x è uguale a 0 o minore di 255 aggiungi i valori analogWrite (ledPin,x); delay (5); } for (int x=255; x>0; x–)// al contrario: per ogni volta che x è uguale a 255 e maggiore di zero sottrai i valori
{ //
analogWrite (ledPin,x);
delay (5);
}

}
// quindi io comando al led di illuminarsi sempre di più (fino al massimo 255) e una volta raggiunto il massimo di illuminarsi sempremeno sottraendo i valori.

you can use also another code,using the variable “direction”:
int ledPin = 11;
int direction = 1;

void setup (){
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
int x=0;
void loop () {
for(int x=0;x<255;x++) {

if(direction==1){
analogWrite(ledPin,x);
}
if (direction==1){
analogWrite(ledPin,255-x);
delay (5);
}
direction*= -1;
}
}

Now move to the use of a potentiometer, you can find it in the arduino kit or go and buy it now.

int sensorPin = 2;
int ledPin =11;
int sensorValue = 0;
void setup () {

Serial.begin (9600);
}
void loop () {
sensorValue = analogRead (sensorPin);
int ledFadeValue = map (sensorValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255);
analogWrite (11, ledFadeValue);
Serial.println (sensorValue, DEC);
delay (20);
}

buzz and led with a button, you can use both them with the same code, change the name buzzPin-ledPin, ledState/buzzState:
int buttonPin = 2;
int buzzPin = 13;
int buttonState = 0;

void setup() {
pinMode (buzzPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (buttonPin, INPUT);
}
void loop () {
buttonState = digitalRead (buttonPin);
if (buttonState==HIGH){
//turn led on
digitalWrite (buzzPin, HIGH);

}
else{
digitalWrite(buzzPin, LOW);

}
}

it was easy, just push a button on the breadboard and make light up the led on arduino,when you release the button the led is switched off. But a blonde would say: “as a broke button! Cause when you turn a light on the light just stay on until you don’t switch it off”. Right and what a blonde would do once left alone reflecting on a way to modified the previous code and “make the button works correctly”?.

That’s the result:
int buttonPin = 2;
int ledPin = 13;
int buttonState = 0;

void setup() {
pinMode (ledPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode (buttonPin, INPUT);
}
void loop () {
buttonState = digitalRead (buttonPin);
if (buttonState==HIGH){
//turn led on
digitalWrite (ledPin, LOW);

}
else {
//turn led off:
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);

}
}

As a blonde I’ve just refused to understand the feelings of the led ordering to it to shut up its F* mouth when the button was pushed and to be delighted when the button was pushed again, so disorienting the led in a sort of internal fight.. worked out! yuppie!
but the real solution is different:

int LED =13 ;
int BUTTON =2;

int val = 0;
int old_val = 0;

int state = 0;
void setup () {
pinMode (LED, OUTPUT);
pinMode (BUTTON, INPUT);
}
void loop () {
val = digitalRead (BUTTON) ;
if ((val == HIGH) && (old_val == LOW)){
state = 1-state;
delay (10);
}
old_val = val;
if (state==1){
digitalWrite (LED,HIGH);
}else{
digitalWrite (LED, LOW);
}
}

advice for blondes: you don’t have necessarily  invest two days of your life to make the same sound sensor but just a bunch of minutes if you are well concentrated.

(If you want just see the tutorial and skip the story behind -and of course you’re a man if you don’t mind the story behind- go to Arduino for man| Tutorials)

day one: “Things are easy if you have an idea well scheduled!” - you have it, but that’s not always true.

Briefly the idea: take an old pair of earphones and convert them in a mic, so as a sort of sound sensor, then modulate the light of a led using the voice.

so I’ve transmitted my idea to my hands (blondes and few others as me require an extra dose of coffee for that) and I’ve start to work on my project.

That’s the plan:

• take the earphones and cut one of them, taking out the wire and divide it in two parts.

• make a circuit similar to the one we use to control a led by a button but replacing the button with the earphones.

• control if Arduino is receiving the signal through the check of the port using the following command:

• writing the codes and tell to Arduino to light up the led when there’s a sound input   and switch off the led when there’s no sound directly to the mic.

I’ve noticed a lot of difficulties during these apparently simple steps as:

the circuit: ‘a button circuit’ cannot correctly work with such a sound sensor, mic is different from a button even if both of them are analogic imputs, that could be immediate to someone but blondes are not just ‘someone’ they’re more and I’m with them so remember: YOU CANNOT ALWAYS USE THE SAME CIRCUIT  IN  SIMILAR PROJECTS, check online the features of the circuit you want to make and find out the right correspondence to your project.

When I saw that my sound sensor  was not working I ask myself why and right after I’ve ask it to Gorgio* (*Giorgio is the master of Arduino, the most similar person to McGyver  that I’ve ever seen,not  physically  and he has not that ridiculous haircut- I think that Giorgio himself would be glad of this specification-), he printed the port check and we just saw an endless series of zero , that’s mean that there is no signal passing through that port, so substantially there’s something wrong and of course it was the circuit.

Looking for a mic circuit online it’s not easy as it sound cause you will be in front of hundred of pages that explain you how to do a mic circuit, but you’ve to find out one the right one for your work, and even if is simple as a mic from an earphone will be not  immediately under your eyes.

Arduino is not just Arduino. Arduino is  puzzling.

I’ve found at http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/microphone_powering.html a circuit’s map suitable for the project:

caption for blonde: 

battery +ve= is the Arduino's 5 volt

output= is the Arduino's output- Analog in

GND,and battery -ve= don't mind at battery -ve, GND corresponds To GROUND in Arduino

CAPSULE + - = in this case + and - are the two wires we made out from the earphones but we don't know which is + or which is - what we know is that CAPSULE is the mic.

2k2-10k and 10uf = are resistors and capacitor, remember that you can compose a resistors riching the value by adding different resistors

reply the circuit on the bread board. As some of you can see and all the others can just image there are two resistors (2k2  R1-10K R2) and a capacitor (10uf) to plug in the circuit, 2K2 resistors between the 5 volt input and the mic (CAPSULE in the image) , the other by 10K between the ground and the output. Capacitor between the output and the mic.

Use the port to check if the signal works and so the circuit talking into the earphones. What I saw this time were numbers but the led was still off. The signal was too low to arrive to the led,  in fact the variation of numbers printed by the port was too small to have a visible effect.

day two: “Errors are the best way for learning”.And from the amount of your errors you should have learned a lot!

Day one ended with a fail, the earphone’s signal was too low to light up a led, so i looked for another mic, like the one from a telephone.

Marcello gave me his cell phone, well to be honest i was looking for a real phone, but trying doesn’t cost a thing, so i opened the phone looking for the mic.

I’ve spent half an hour trying to figure out which and where was the mic then I’ve understand that it was simply too small and it was impossible to work on it..well not with my trembling hand.

Next step:” A problem must have a solution. Otherwise is not a problem”.That’s it!

Wandering around at the university I’ve notice an unused red phone in room 306, so i ask to someone to go and ask the permission to destroy it – In Italy that’s how it works: if you need something you must have a lot of “friends”, with a lot of friends you can easily become first minister, if you are blonde  you can become one of the ministers of our current first minister -..well.. i had the permission so I smashed the red phone.

The telephone inside is something beautiful for a blonde: an explosion of bright colors and tiny and adorable pieces of plastic and metal, it looks like a futuristic city  from above, but what I was looking for it wasn’t in “the city” but in the periphery, so I smashed the handset too.

“The perfect mic!”, I though, so I started to work on that mic  soldering wires and extending them for a better plug into the bread board.

In the meanwhile Antonio join me in this adventure bringing with him a new revelation: a new circuit for the sound sensor discovered at http://lab.guilhermemartins.net/2009/05/03/sound-sensor/.

As you can see the new circuit is quite complicated for a blonde and requires some new stuff never met before to add.Operating both on the telephone’s circuit (taking off some parts) and on the telephone’s mic we have finally replied the circuit starting from a picture and as Giorgio said that’s “almost impossible”.

No signal.Nothing. Even with the new circuit.

Probably we made a mistake at some point, or all the items we put on the bread board weren’t just right, by the way the circuit was too complicated for us to understand when and where we got wrong.

That’s when we decided to get back at the previous circuit.

At the end of the day i was feeling miserable, because i was quite sure to have set everything at best, so i ask to Giorgio to give me a help.

He had simply got the multimeter and had tested if  there was electricity passing through the mic, the answer was easy NO! The wires were not connected in the right way and i felt as a stupid but happier than before.

After soldered the wires in the right way i made the program run using this code:

int sensorPin = 0;
int ledPin =11;
int sensorValue = 0;
void setup () {

Serial.begin (9600);
}
void loop () {
sensorValue = analogRead (sensorPin);
int ledPin = map (sensorValue, 0, 10, 0, 255);
analogWrite (11, ledPin);
Serial.println (sensorValue, DEC);
delay (5);
}

..and….ta taaaaaaaa:

it worked baby!

Now using a telephone’s handset you can light up a mic!

I don’t have an immediate solution to understand what a breadboard is and how it works.

take the breadboard in your hand, touch it and turn it, explore it until you feel confident with it and start to use it.

I can just suggest you  some slides I made (available on Slideshare )

breadboard for blondes

and a cool video on Youtube.

Hope this can help!