Arduino, open-source electronics prototyping platform | Hacker News Reader

Arduino, open-source electronics prototyping platform

arduino.cc

39 pointsbearwithclaws17 comments

... Okay, you linked to Arduino.

(I like Arduino - I use Arduino when I want to start messing around with a new bit of hardware, because it's practically like programming from the console; dead simple and as 'rapid' as hardware prototyping gets. I got into AVR as well, mucking about and seeing what interesting stuff I could output to video.

Hardware prototyping is one of the most enjoyable ways to sandblast your free time that I know of. ;)

But, what's the story? Why did you submit this?

Perhaps we need a Hacker Canon to accompany our Hacker News; whenever you try to submit something in the canon it could just redirect you to the canonical discussion.

I'm always amazed how many not-so-random people I meet are into Arduino, and how many of them began interested in programming because they cut and pasted a few sketches which they then tweaked.

Got any current projects? My non-existent free time is devoted to a track driven, maze solving robot.

I plan on using one in a EE senior design course, making an IR tracker using Wiimote camera with some servos for full pan and tilt control. Also going to interface a nunchuck for a manual control mode.

Sounds great - hope you keep a diary blog of your progress.

B/c it's been on Metafilter all day.

I got into AVR programming before hearing all about the Arduino. I don't really understand the appeal since an AVR development platform is quite simple to put together for a lot less money than an Arduino board. I also prefer Freeduino since it's open source:

http://www.freeduino.org/

You know, all the cool conceptual new media artists use Arduino. It's marketing baby!

More seriously, Arduino is open source too.

Yes it's great - but what exactly is the news part? It has been widely available for several years.

Time to tweak this little baby:

(= gravity* 1.4 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1)

  (def frontpage-rank (s (o gravity gravity*))
    (/ (- (realscore s) 1)
       (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity)))

  (def realscore (i) (- i!score i!sockvotes))

  (def item-age (i) (hours-since i!time))

I just discovered this today (and yes, on mefi). And I don't see what's wrong to share it with the fellow hackers here.

One of the major problems with HN is that is is an old, established community. That means that lots of stuff that is new to newcomers is old hat to the old hands here and they do not tire of telling people that.

In deference to the 'old hats', they do make this community in to what it is, a place where some pretty cool stuff gets posted and discussed at a fairly high level.

I personally see absolutely nothing wrong in people posting stuff that is new to them, for every 'poster' there must be 10's if not 100's of people to who it is news as well.

Just because you already know everything there is to know doesn't mean that that goes for everybody else too.

One way around this is to have a karma threshold for displaying submissions, that way the 'old hands' if they so choose could blind themselves to whatever the newcomers to on 'their' view of HN without any interference.

And it would stop people from taking 'revenge' on the submitter of this story the way it is being done right now, which I really think is not becoming of HN.

Have some room for each other please, and do not kick people for doing the same thing that you did yourself in the not so distant past.

Does anyone here have any cool projects to show off? I would love to see what people here have put together...

I'm working on an alarm clock that requires me to do some math in order to turn it off. Thinking about extending it with an automated french press with heating element to have a cup of coffee ready for me.

Not Arduino (I use mainly PICs at the moment 'cos they're cheap and simple) but my current hardware project is working with my friend Felix on his Machines (music making sound art machines):

http://felixsmachines.com/

I do the electronics & programming stuff, it's an awful lot of fun. Plus I got to go to TEDGlobal for a day :)

That's pretty sweet! I thought this video was great: http://felixsmachines.com/video.html

I made a Gmail checker based on a project I did with my local hackerspace, step by step guide is below,

http://www.matthewforr.com/index.php/how_to_make_an_led_ardu...

An "Ambient Orb" clone I call "orbison": http://code.google.com/p/orbison/ And here's a video about it recorded at a Chicago Python meeting a few months ago: http://blip.tv/file/1773285

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