Our brand new XBee Examples project site just went live! Check out the first tutorials that Matt Richardson and I’ve published on Digi’s instructional library site: examples.digi.com. Right now I’ve got a big pile of different sensors, lights, motors, scent emitters and more on my desk. We’re going to demonstrate XBee hookups for ’em all, then show how they can be linked to one another, …
Yesterday Jordan Husney, Jared Hofhiens, Liz Presson and I hosted the first-ever online XBee Knowledge Forum. We talked about XBee radio history, features, projects and plans. Kicking yourself that you missed it? You can still watch the magic right now on video.
We just announced the winners for the 2012 Core77 Design Awards DIY category. The jury, which included Becky Stern of Adafruit, Hackett of Madagascar Institute, Yuri Glitman of Banana Design and myself spent 20 minutes chatting about the projects. You can watch the video and view the winners online. They include: Winner: Brian Chan’s Laser-cut Folding Ukulele, a musical instrument you can make and play …
Here’s a rundown of the final projects from my Fundamentals of Physical Computing class at the MFA in Interaction Design at SVA this spring. Keep an eye on these students for more masterful interactive works! Curious Rotary, by Joonseo Bae & Myn Kang: A Pig, a Bird and a Mailbox by Min Seung Song, ShanShan Gao, Nikki Sylianteng & Minnie Choi: Soundscapes by Sana Rao, Prachi Pundeer, Guri …
Jordan Husney and I created an electrically-operated scale model garage to demonstrate the XBee-iDigi Garage Door Opener for one of the projects we’ll be featuring at the Digi booth for Bay Area Maker Faire 2012 this weekend. It’s an example of building the “12,000-Mile Universal remote” project from Make Vol. 30. With this project you can push any button in your …
Say hello to Troy and Abed! They’re Digi International’s brand-new XBee-enabled SumoBots and they’re ready to begin training for their debut at Bay Area Maker Faire 2012. They’ll be battling it out in the Digi booth May 19th and 20th, so prepare yourself for a wireless robotic sumo showdown! Here’s a first look: Thanks to Andy Lindsay at Parallax for designs …
Clay Shirky talks learning creativity using some terrific examples, including our Botanicalls project (@9:45), in this video from PSFK: Other favorites include Mud Tub, RapidFTR and Strings. Great to see my fellow ITP alumni and current colleague’s projects getting new lives as teaching tools!
There’s a terrific new article (login required) in New Scientist featuring my friend and colleague Ted Hays. Back in 2009, Ted created an Internet-enabled bubble gun in the Networked Objects class I taught at ITP. His Bubble Gun announces incoming email with a stream of soapy spheres. It’s a whimsical demonstration of how simple devices can join the Internet, transforming data from …
New Scientist: Amateurs Create Internet of Things Read more »
A new configuration utility for Digi International’s XBee radios is available for Macintosh, Windows and Linux platforms from Moltosenso in Italy, and it’s free. According to their web site, Moltosenso Network Manager™ IRON enables the following tasks: full support to any API Operation mode (with and without escaped characters) get/set of the parameters of Digi International® modules plugged to the PC, both in API and AT mode get/set …
My Sensitive Buildings class was covered in the latest issue of MAKE Magazine in a short piece by Michael Colombo. He writes: At NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, students in Rob Faludi’s “Sensitive Buildings” course were given access to a 28-story apartment building in Manhattan. Using XBee radio modules, students created a variety of projects utilizing both the building’s existing systems and a …
