arduino workshop

It’s been quite a week. ‘The Computational Beauty of Nature’ by G W Flake arrived in the post, and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. The chapter on genetic algorithms alone is ideal for my needs, and there’s so much more in the book that’s both fascinating and pitched at my level i.e. enthusiastic amateur.

Not only that, but this weekend I’m on an introductory Arduino course. It’s a two-day workshop, and from the programme I expected that the first day would cover material that I’ve already read about and explored, but I’d hoped that at least the second day, which involves group work to design and build simple projects would be useful. Even if it wasn’t particularly relevant, just the experience of participating in such a workshop would be helpful in deciding whether or not to organise one in connection with the digital art exhibition next year, so I made copious notes of the course structure and identified areas of potential difficulty.

As it turned out, though, the first day showed me things that I hadn’t already covered, such as getting Processing and Arduino to talk to each other using the serial port, and how to recognise and deal with thee limitations of this method. That’s great in itself, but it also opens up so many more possibilities as well because so many things understand serial communication (except Flash). There was also a brief explanation of different types of shields, which are things I’ve seen for sale and read about, but never understood how they work. Just having someone knowledgeable available to answer questions is great.

So here I am, sitting on a train to London early on a Sunday morning, tired after do-se-doeing and swinging my partner at a barn dance in St Neots last night, and enjoying the gentle warmth of what promises to be another glorious summer’s day, yet eagerly anticipating another day indoors tinkering with hardware and code.

Tags: arduino