(continued from Arduino & Flash AS3 (part 1)). It’s time to test your Arduino board. Install the Arduino IDE. Unzip and place the Arduino IDE into your Applications folder. Install the FTDI serial driver for your platform. Connect your Arduino board via USB to your computer and open up the Arduino IDE. Go to Tools->Serial Port. On the Mac, choose the entry that reads /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXXXXXX. If...

At my last interactive exhibition, I was asked how would a Flash engineer get started with tinkering with the Arduino. Well, it’s fairly simple, their are a few caveats to overcome, but for the most part all you have to do is acquire the hardware and install some open source software, and oh yeah own a copy of flash or an ActionScript compiler. This post will be covered in 5 parts to help you get Flash...

A while ago I took my two existing Arduino board’s and upgraded them to the Atmega328 chips. I purchased them preprogrammed from Adafruit.com. I then went on to create an interactive talk box for an art show using Adafruit’s wave shield. It was a great learning experience and an awesome introduction into physical computing. Now, I’m on a mission to take my existing flash skills and leverage...

The fellas over at BleepLaps have released a new and improved DIY analog synthesizer. I’m a fan of Bleep Labs ever since I purchased and built a Thingamakit. The ThingamaKIT is a DIY analog synthesizer that you control in a different way. The amount of light falling on its photocell eyes change the pitch and modulation, allowing to you use it LEDacles, or any changing light source, to created audio madness! It...

I just purchased 2 of these Arduino boards ($30 US dollars), including a preprogrammed Atmega328 chip: More than TWICE the flash memory for your sketches (30K available instead of 14K), TWICE the RAM (2K instead of 1K) and TWICE the EEPROM (1K instead of 512b) from Ada Fruit Industries. The Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board and a development environment. It implements...

I attended the UC BERKELEY CNMAT (Center for New Music & Audio Technology) sensor Workshop. The workshop offered a hands-on survey of sensors, sensor interfaces and integration software and hardware for use in musical performance, dance, video, sound and art installations. We built our own sensors from raw materials including conductive fabric, piezoresistive fabric, conductive elastomers, conductive thread,...

I bit the bullet and purchased a Make Controller Kit. I was especially excited about the fact that Flash can communicate with the Make Controller via a OSC protocol. The Make Controller Kit is an open source hardware platform for projects requiring high performance control/feedback, connectivity, and ease of use. It can be programmed and run autonomously or used as a peripheral to desktop/laptop applications....