Sketching in Hardware 1 (Sketching06) was a very useful workshop. Hosted by Mike Kuniavsky at the Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan in June 2006, it was a meeting of a handful of microcontroller module developers, teachers, and hardware designers. There was much conversation about what makes good microcontroller hardware, how best to teach it, and what we can do to make some of the various platforms out there more interoperable. I won’t repeat everyone elses’s comments, but below are some of the links that have come up.
Technorati Tags: electronics, open source, pcomp, physical computing, puppy, sketching
From Dave Vondle, a good link to some sensors and actuators, including a seismic sensor, and anti-static resistor paper
Scott Minneman offered a link to the sunSPOT platform, and his notes on it:
“They’re a pretty trick piece of hardware, if you need a small, higher-end,
radio-enabled, sensor-(moderately)-rich, actuator-possible (not their strong
point, thus far), extensible, blob for an embedded project. They’re
programmed in Java. Not that cheap, but the (soon to be available, but
don’t hold your breath) developer’s kit gets you two SPOTS with sensor
boards and an additional stripper-SPOT to use as a base station from the
outset. I’ve seen additional daughtercards, although none are shown on the
site.”
Mike Kuniavsky’s blog post about the workshop, including his thoughts.
A History of the Button, nice meditation on the history of interaction design from Bill DeRouchey, via Mike. “Tracing the history of interaction design, software/web design and the future of environmental design through the humble button.”