Stuart Childs

Howduino is a meetup group organised by Adrian McEwen and Tom Shannon – along with lots of help from other lovely people. It’s all based around Arduino boards – little (usually USB equipped) circuit boards with inputs and outputs allowing you to either connect your PC to the outside world, or program the onboard microprocessor chip to function as a standalone ‘computer’.

There is an already brilliant community based around the Arduino boards, as well as many offshoots and board clones. Many people share their Arduino code and help others out with their projects – one of the amazing aspects of the internet. Howduino’s strength however is the physical meeting up and spending time in a room with people playing with, programming and hacking about with the Arduinos. The Howduino events that I have attended have always had a good mix of beginners right through to hardened computer scientists and programmers, Arduino nuts and artists with craft skills. There was even a physics teacher at the Newcastle event!

By remaining open to all who wish to attend the atmosphere is brilliant. A real hot pot of – stuff happening.

Howduino Newcastle was hosted at the Newcastle Centre for Life – home to lots of other events, including Maker Faire UK. I had never been to Newcastle before Maker Faire UK 2009 and now I’ve got a bit of an addiction to going back as the Centre for Life always seems to have cool stuff going on.

[ Short and fairly quiet AudioBoo of the introduction from Adrian and Thom ]

Held on the 24th and 25th of July, we had two days to crack on with projects, working alone or with others if desired. A nice relaxed atmosphere and sense of community built very quickly – if you had a problem or needed something, you could just shout across the room and most of the time someone would be able to help out or pass you what you needed. Bags and toolboxes full of computers, electronic components and hackable bits were definitely the order of the weekend.

There is a Howduino community online but the site(s) don’t quite portray the full experience of attending one of the events. It is all too easy to show up, do some soldering and go home and not get your results up online. There were some amazing projects made over the 2 days – I just hope that they all get documented or put up eventually as the code and skill sharing is one of the most valuable parts of the whole thing.

I worked alongside Oli @coldclimate of The Approachable Geek [amongst other things] and we both built ping pong ball LED matrix screens. He had brought along his first (old and messy) prototype and a load of ping pong balls and I had wanted to make an LED matrix screen for a while so, with sort of inspiration from each other we decided to work together. With a little help from @oomlout we managed to get a screen working each, well proud. We got the screens (super high def at 6×9 ‘ping pong pixels’) to display different patterns and even ‘howduino’ in individual text characters.

Worth a mention is local ish electronics shop ESR – a wonderfully old school shop with a wall of drawers filled with different electronic components. Oli and I both needed 54 LEDs of the same colour. ESR price – around 13 – 19p compared to Maplins’ 70-80p. Nothing like a good electronics shop, sadly not a common sight any more.

Fingers crossed the team can get another one going, there have already been Howduinos in Liverpool, Poole, Birmingham and Newcastle. Where next? The event relies upon super minimal funding and lots of for-the-love-of-it people so costs can be kept down.

Check out the Howduino Flickr Group for more photos from the Howduino events.

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Does charging for your conference affect who attends and ultimately the quality of your event?

I went along to the Breakfast with AudioBoo event at Marshall’s Mill in Leeds – part of Digital Week 09 [Twitter: #DW09] recently and was very impressed by the material presented and the discussion that followed. A thought has since occurred to me that I thought was worth discussing with others – readers and people that stumble across my site.

I have been to plenty of techy/digital/web/art/etc. conferences in the past year – many of them free events – and often find a number of things:

- lots of name badges never collected from the main desk

- large numbers of attendees with varying degrees of interest in the topics being discussed or presented

- jam packed venues with very short Q+A / discussion time after talks

From past experience I have found this leads to relatively poor questions and discussion in the conference space, meaning you have to go and seek out the speaker at the end of their talk if you have a particular point or question to ask them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes quite difficult when a) several other people have the same idea and b) everyone else is battling for the coffee and cakes in the short break time before the conference continues.

In contrast, the DW09 event I attended (Listed ticket price £10) seemed to have a slightly different feel to it:

- small amount of people (perhaps 10-15)

- relatively intimate presentation space with opportunity for audience to ask speaker questions throughout without disrupting the flow of the presentation

- relevant and interesting Q+A session that answered many of my questions as well as providing food for thought for those present.

Now, it is hasty to come to a conlclusion after one such event but it did get me thinking – does introducing a relatively small registration fee to conferences make a difference, and if so, how and why? Another priced event I attended was the Never Dive Alone conference organised by Full Circle Arts in Manchester – £50 per ticket, a bigger crowd of attendees this time, perhaps 100 or so – but still great discussions and degree of interest and knowledge shown by all.

There are plenty of free conferences that I have really enjoyed – including the ‘Art of Digital‘ series and I have gleaned plenty of valuable information from these as well as making a whole host of contacts to work with or whom I have kept in touch since. I will definitely be attending more free conferences next year but will also make the effort to go to more paid events to see how they compare.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

From 20th-24th July Full Circle Arts, a Manchester-based arts organisation is hosting Remix – a project providing a week of creative activities for young disabled people. I recently met the Full Circle Arts staff and will be at the Remix festival with our FriiSpray virtual painting interface and also covering the event on Twitter.

I am looking forward to providing FriiSpray as a creative tool for the people that come along to this event. In the past we have seen encouraging results – from club environments to school workshops and each time we take the setup to an event we gain useful feedback and feature requests. By sharing our project as open source and free to download we have seen people using the software in ways we had not considered – something that has fascinated me. It seems that being open and engaging with peers both in the online and real world has paid off for us, and many others before us.

EDIT – I have blurred the screen grabs in this post as it’s prohibited to post ‘screen dumps’ by the Beta Agreement. You’ll have to give the service a go if you want to be able to see the features properly…

According to their website, “Spotify is a new way to enjoy music.”

Spotify is currently in public beta stage [since Oct 08], works on Mac OSX [10.4.0 on], Windows XP/Vista, Linux under Wine and currently has three levels of service:

- Free: if you have an invite from another user [with audio + visual adverts]

- 0.99p / day: if you have already been invited to use Spotify and would like an advert-free service

- £9.99 / month: If you want to use the service without an invitation and without adverts

Using Spotify

I was invited to use Spotify by The Hodge and was a little unsure what to expect – was this internet radio? Not quite. Would it replace iTunes as a music player? Not sure. I guess the closest comparison I can make to Spotify is Last.fm and similar streaming websites. One of the first things I noticed about Spotify was it’s speed – it is almost as good as just using a normal mp3 player such as iTunes or Winamp if you are on a cable / DSL connection. Spotify’s FAQ section recommends at least 256kbps speed.

Spotify seems fairly robust – I have seen the audio stream drop out a couple of times during use but not enough to annoy me / want me to stop using the program. I have been listening to it whilst working at my desk and it is a great way of finding out about new music / listening to fresh content without having to download the files / update your mp3 collection.

Adverts, you say?

I was intrigued at Spotify’s business model at first and impressed that they have managed to gain support from major record labels such as EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG amongst others. Spotify’s site describes the service as “an unparalleled user experience and a compelling legal alternative to piracy.” I was apprehensive about how intrusive the adverts would be and was pleasantly surprised – it’s nowhere near as bad as commercial radio stations in the UK.

I made a log of the adverts I heard during the course of a full day and found that for roughly every 30 mins of listening Spotify played one advert of approx. 30 seconds in length. As you may expect, you can’t skip through these adverts as you can the music [you can stop them but have to play in full before listening to more music]. These adverts are for all sorts of things from direct.gov talking about tax returns to travel agents and film promo trailers.

These adverts are a very small price to pay for what is essentially a very good service – if you have a decent net conneciton it really can be comparable to using iTunes. I’m not sure that I would pay for the ad-free services yet as they don’t quite annoy me enough to do so.

The Music

Don’t expect to find every single artist you’ve ever heard of on Spotify. Searching for more obscure artists will sometimes return zero results. However – I am very impressed with the amount of content that is up there [and still growing]. I have found electronica and dance music producers that I wouldn’t consider ‘mainstream’ on there, as well as a whole host of new artists and music that I haven’t heard of before.

I guess that is the killer feature of Spotify for me – it’s like when Napster first came around and suddenly I had access to all sorts of music that I might not have otherwise experienced. Only with Spotify it’s legal and less hassle – it’s not like trying to fish for high quality downloads in amongst all the rubbish people tend to have in their shared folders.

Radio, search or browse

I began using Spotify by searching for specific artists which worked fine and led to finding other music in a similar vein / style to the stuff I was searching for. I then tried out the ‘radio’ stations – you can choose from a number of ‘genres’ to include in the random radio playlist and just let it play. I found the results to be good – despite a few rogue genres slipping through the net – [Got some country coming through the 'techno' genre...]. You can also define a time frame in decades from which to search.

Spotify allows you to click through links to find new music – the artist / title / album all lead to more information. In this way it is possible to find similar music styles, compilation albums that artists appear on, cover art, album reviews and so on.

You can also share the music you are listening to with other Spotify users – simply right click the track you are listening to and you can either send them a link to that particular track, or create a playlist for sharing later. This is all very easy and intuitive within the pleasant interface. There is a ‘Buy From’ option that is greyed out  in the above screenshot – apparently the option is available on some tracks and will become more widespread as Spotify arrange deals with more retailers.

Conclusion

I spoke to Zia George from Spotify today and asked her a few questions about the service. According to her, “it’s about access rather than ownership” – and that appeals to me. Why do we feel the need to acquire as much data as possible when many of us have access to a high speed data connection that can feed our needs on demand? In a similar fashion to the concept of cloud computing, Spotify is evidence of a shift in data trends where we use more steamlined terminals to access data from a remote source.

I have found Spotify very easy to use and definitely something I will continue to use every day:

Good points:

- The software integrates with my MacBook’s Play/Pause/Next+Prev Track buttons – this is a big thing for me + usability.

- The service is relatively bug-free and easy to use.

- I have found out about new artists that I might not have otherwise come across.

- I have been able to listen to music I haven’t heard in ages / used to own + have since lost.

Bad points:

- It would be nice if I could make the player smaller, akin to the iTunes player.

- There are [very occasional] dropouts in the audio – sometimes particular tracks get stuck / can’t play properly but I must emphasise that this is only for the minority of tracks I have come across during my use of Spotify and isn’t a massive down point for me – just something that comes with streaming audio services.

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Spotify have made a really great service that will no doubt improve over time as uptake increases. I expect to see it appearing on more people’s computers this year – mainstream media is starting to pick up on it with reviews in the Guardian and the Independent. Spotify has certainly been spread around Twitter: check out the screenshot above to see it ranking in between iPhone + Gaza as a search term! Distribution is limited at the moment and I think that can only be a good thing whilst they iron out any issues with the service and work on developments.

Word is that a mobile service is on the cards.. although I reckon you’d have to have a fairly hefty data allowance + good signal strength for it to be worth it. For now, my iPod is fine when I’m on the move, and Spotify suits my desk work.

I do wonder how many people will subscribe to the £9.99 per month ‘Premium’ service though – it seems a little steep to me for now. Then again, I guess it depends on how annoying or frequent the adverts on the free service become.

I have recently been looking at mobile broadband packages available in the UK – USB sticks with a 3g connection and a heavy data restriction – starting at 3gig/month. Most of these contracts require you to sign up for 12, 18 or even 24 months to get a decent deal.There are a number of sites to ‘help’ you compare deals available and choose [/spend your cash] – I mainly looked at http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/ and http://mobile.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ – I found them all to be much the same really

One question I have here is, just how different will available services be in 2 years’ time? I am certainly hesitant to sign up for a 24 month contract. Starting at about £15/month, this is also not a particularly cheap ‘punt’.

Another question I have asked myself is, how much will I really use mobile broadband? I mean, I have wifi at home, at work, at most of my friends’ houses, and I can usually find free wifi of sorts in town, even if it involves buying a coffee. When I’m not in any of these places, I’m usually walking/skating/riding somewhere – I don’t need to be online 60/60/24/7/52/365 – not at the moment anyway.

The only time I really notice a hankering for the internet regularly is when I travel by train. The train station is rubbish for free wifi, the establishments that supposedly offer the service can’t help when it doesn’t work, and options with The Cloud or T Mobile are wayy too expensive for me! I have been on a train from Leeds – London that had free wifi onboard which, despite being a little sketchy in places (as to be expected) was a godsend – I was amazed when I found it.

One possible solution I’ve come up with is using my n95 as a bluetooth modem with my Macbook. I have searched and searched for a decent data plan with my current carrier Orange UK and it doesn’t really look like a viable replacement for mobile broadband, as the speeds are dismal (~0.3 mbps when I tested) and the cost of data is high. However, if I don’t need to use the service much, it should be fine for emergencies. Apparently, I can ring Orange CS and arrange for a capped fee of £1 for 30mb of data in a day. That should cover emergency emails / web browsing for train times/maps/vital info searching, which is really all I need mobile interwebs for now.

So, to conclude, I couldn’t really justify the luxury of mobile broadband yet. I’m going to see how my n95 setup serves me, and wait for prices to come down / my income to go up / UK wide free wifi to be installed!

My mobile contract is also due for renewal soon, finding one with unlimited data could well be the way forward.

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Had a hectic morning but things are starting to slot together for the business. It’s satisfying seeing the hard work starting to produce results. Despite getting soaked by the rain on the way into work, I’ve been cheerful all day!

Just found out that our sonic art installation, Junction is now running for an extra week – with guided sound walks happening tomorrow (Saturday). Great! Met another artist today – Julie Kaye (http://www.cannedcreative.com/) who has some very exciting ideas about some potential upcoming work.

Had a bit of a play on the office Wii at lunchtime – good for a bit of a break from the keyboard, and to have some banter based bonding with other members of the co-working community. Took part in a 4-way bowling game – came 2nd, not too bad

I am really enjoying the atmosphere in the Old Broadcasting House now: it seems to be filling up most days – sometimes a pain if you can’t find a desk, but a really buzzing environment with lots of ideas being shared / work being done. It’s nice to be able to come here as a seperate environment form home – although I do enjoy working from home too.

Got my new Moo.com cards throught today too – only sent off the designs on Wednesday! Very impressed with the service, although they seem to have messed up my design a little bit. Time for a complaint email / discount request!

Carriageworks again tonight, looking forward to it.

So i started my new job today. Working as stage tech / ‘casual’ technician at the Carriageworks theatre, Leeds. The Leeds International Film Festival is on, and tonight I was helping op some of the video gear, and the sound + lighting in the main venue.

The people there seem friendly and I am really anjoying getting back into theatre tech. Once the pantomimes come about next month, then I’ll have some fun rigging lights and sorting out sets, props etc!

In other news, Outpost seems to be going ok, meeting some clients on Friday, and seen a call for work with a tight deadline on. It’s interesting setting up your own business, and trying to juggle it with other sources of income whilst you’re trying to get everything up to speed, and, hopefully be able to survive solely from the income of the business. We’ll see how the next year goes!

It’s all good fun – one thing that did strike me today though is, just how long I spend sorting emails out! Yes, email makes our world easier, things can be sent quicker, and we are more connected with each other. But where does this advanced connectivity start to affect our productivity? I think it’s definitely something to be careful of. Also, email is one thing – now we have twitter, with people updating from their phones, their netbooks, sometimes giving minute by minute accounts. I even have a routine now – of thinking, ‘ooh, should tweet about this’, etc. – after only a few weeks.

I’m not complaining about this technology / ways of interacting with the web and each other – quite the opposite. I am however very interested in seeing how it changes the way we interact, and ultimately lead our lives.

It’s been a nice day so far getting stuff together for several new projects I’m working on at the moment. Firstly, a new Outpost website [current one is here] which will be ready soon, once content is all ready and layout finalised. I am currently looking into various wordpress plugins to help me out, it seems to be a decent way of managing our content.

Saw a funny Obama video today on obey too – here.