Just finished documenting the latest example project. The Light Switch XBee is a wireless wall switch that can control lamps, fans, motors or your homemade robot using Digi’s XBee radio. It’s a model for almost any digital input device you’d like to build. If it goes on and off, you can make it wireless using this example as your guide! The …
This Horsie Race project, developed for my recent workshops in Colorado, creates a carnival midway-style horse race using a wireless audio input with Arduino and XBee that transmits each player’s yells and cheers to a base station radio. This base station is connected to a computer where the noise advances their horse on the screen using the Processing graphical programming environment. Yell, cheer, chant or plaintively moan …
I just started a terrific new job! In July, Digi International invited me to join their R&D team as Collaborative Strategy Leader. My mandate is to forge stronger connections with the maker community, discover outstanding new work, help Digi contribute to those projects and support innovation in general. Some of my cool new role will include: building a thriving developer community …
Just launched a new talk called “Liking the Guests” at Sketching in Hardware 2011 at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. “Liking the Guests” tells the story of how holding your users in high esteem creates an unexpected and fundamental principle for good design. The talk has pirates, princesses, apes, and taxidermy, but essentially it’s about why I think we all make things. …
We’re tremendously excited that the Botanicalls project will be featured in MoMA’s upcoming “Talk to Me” Exhibition that opens July 24th in New York on the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art, continuing through November 7th, 2011. Here’s the official description: Talk to Me explores the communication between people and things. The exhibition focuses on objects that involve a direct interaction, …
I’m slated to teach two “Exciting XBee” classes for Sparkfun on the weekend of July 23rd. These will be hands-on workshops at Sparkfun’s headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Here’s the descriptions: Exciting XBee Series 1, Saturday July 23, 2011 Veteran wireless teachers including the author of Building Wireless Sensor Networks will lead you through the basics of radio networking and beyond, using …
ThingSpeak describes itself as “an open application platform designed to enable meaningful connections between things and people.” They just added a complete tutorial on how to use the XBee Internet Gateway to connect with their platform, including using iDigi to manage the device. So that’s two powerful platforms in one easy package! Suggested uses for the combo are getting an Arduino …
My living room is going public. A few months ago I became weary of looking at the same five framed photographs in my living room, so I purchased a digital photo frame. Another few months have gone by and I’ve became equally weary the new 30 photo cycle. Therefore I’ve decided to crowd-source my living room. Here’s how it works. All …
Writing, teaching and publishing all become worthwhile when they enable other creative minds. I met Ari Lacenski at the most recent ITP show and she told me about her new Anti-social Lights, fashioned in part by hacking my example code. She writes, “I thought about heaping small lights in a pile and tuning them to change when collected. Then I thought, ‘What …
This month’s Make Magazine has a new review of my book, generously calling it the “perfect guide”. The review continues, “Robert Faludi demystifies the confusing realm of ZigBee wireless mesh networking and walks you through basic examples that serve as great starting points for many fun wireless projects. …Building your own wireless sensor network will be a much less daunting task …
