Thursday, December 11, 2008

The Arduino class is over.

What a great class.
I really appreciate that these busy people were able to come in on Tuesday nights and still be creative.

On reflection the whole "tear apart an ink jet and build something" goal might have been a little bit too ambitious. In the end only one person ended up using the parts to make their project.
Perhaps a straight up motor control class without the recycle/reuse bit would have been better.

The stand out project was the bell ringer that Scott Nance is working on.
He built an amazing set up with the arduino running out to multiple shift registers with transistors on the register output pins to switch an external power supply through the solenoids. The mechanical quality (I did not even get any pictures of the beutiful little spring returned hammers he fabricated) plus the electronics just blew me away.
I think he might have done this before.

Everyone seemed to learn something, and they all managed to get their projects at least started.
I think perhaps that two solid nights just for project construction would have made things easier.

The good people at 911 media arts center tell me that they already have 5 people on a wait list for the next class. This means I get to experiment on a new group of students some time this spring.

In the mean time I need to make some projects of my own!

Here are some little videos I shot of the things that folks were working on.


My thanks to 911 Media Arts Center and the class.