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.
spot the techies
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.
Oli and Alistair showing their joy at reasonably priced LEDs
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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We also had a TV crew come to interview us for one of Portugal’s main channels:
Last night we were invited to David and Sabina’s nest for a nest warming party as they had just finished it off. It managed to hold quite a few of us for a quick drink!
Launch night tonight so I’m off to make some tea.
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After lunch we had a team meeting to discuss the schedule for the week – including TV crews turning up to cover the work as well as the arrival of the rest of the Platform 11+ group. Busy busy busy.
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Despite everybody having so much to do there is a lovely atmosphere of helping each other out – if somebody needs a hand carrying something heavy up the hill, there are people to lend a strong arm or two.
Sharing workshop space and working so closely with so many people has been very interesting so far – quite different to how a lot of people here are used to working.In addition to working together it is nice to be able to spend some social time relaxing and talking about things other than the work on the hillside. Each day we all have lunch together at O Bando and get chance to take a break and chat. Last night’s dinner at Fortuna was also a well deserved chance to do just that, with amazing food served on plates made on site!
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We then all decorated our own tiles that were made on site. These tiles will be fired and then put up at O Bando as a memory of the Platform 11+ residencies. When we first arrived at the beginning we all received our own Platform 11+ tiles that had also been made and painted at Fortuna. A nice tie to one of the local industries of the area.
Later tonight we shall return to Fortuna for dinner – just time for a bit more work on the hillside before then. @sc_r ]]>
It’s ace to be so engrossed in our work – but it does mean that I have a bit less to say!
The Platform team have asked us all to capture video footage of our activities on a few flip video cameras – they have now started some mobile guerilla projections around Palmela to generate some buzz ahead of the exhibition launch. Thought I’d put one up here:
Check back to the other posts for videos from days I’ve already written about. Have just got my mitts on them and post-post updating.
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We also had a visit from some of the school children that we met last week. They explored the hillside and got the opportunity to ask each artist about their installations and work. They then spent time with some of the artists doing small workshops – getting involved in some of the making and crafting. It was really nice to share our work with such inquisitive minds and to hear what they had to say.
More children are coming tomorrow to see our work and get involved in some more workshops. The Teatro O Bando way of open working and including young people in all aspects of a big project is fab.
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I also received a package from Mark Chester at http://www.chestersgarage.com/ – a power LED shield for Arduino to control my high powered LEDs. Looking forward to building that tonight.
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