Day 2 and 3 were get-dirty days with Dzl and illutron member Christian Liljedahl as they tore into scrap electronics, toys and other 'junk' to help students identify components and their properties, and create intriguing projects that were displayed for family, friends, and the public in an exhibition the next day.
An introduction to rapid prototyping as a concept and as a practice, both in the quick and dirty sense (using available materials to achieve proof of concept) and through awareness of tools available such as the CNC machine, the Rep Rap machine, and use and knowledge of materials, processes and communities. Part lecture, part hands-on prototyping complete with proof of concept from each group.
We helped participants to explore different sensors and experiences to create the ability to play with the real world, and to get outside their computer screens. Our participants were mainly professors who learned some new skills, methods and 'toys' they could show their students. We were proud to host our first blind participant and we were able to learn how he explored tangible computing, by creating movement and interactivity from his computer screen into the world around him.
We provided them with a pre-made program to control a servo motor and taught them how to read the program and adjust values to move the servo. In addition, they learned the basics of electronics and how to connect a servo to an Arduino board.
There are methods and sneaky ways of tricking that clever little chip into listening to your every whim, and we taught these in our advanced workshop. We focused on time-critical computing, making the most of every nano-second spent running your program. Time is wasted waiting for Arduino to complete its loops, to run through all its processes, so we explained how to run processes in parallel.
Robots consisted of servo motors, one small and one big, glued to each other with the smaller on top. The smaller motor had a stick glued to it which could be used to pick up objects. Participants were taught using Pure Data and the pduino interface so they could easily associate the programming with what they were doing.
Our workshops are for the young, the young-at-heart, the corporate, the artist, the explorer, the inventor, and the thinker.
We believe everyone can benefit from learning something new and applying it to their learning processes and their everyday lives.
We can create a memorable workshop for you, check out our brochure below to see our workshop offerings.
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