How to make better use of Arduino Firmata with vvvv

When prototyping interactive physical computing projects you need easy-to-use hardware and software. The multipurpose toolkit vvvv and the popular open-source electronics platform Arduino is a powerful combination for those applications, as they go hand-in-hand perfectly.

What happened in the workshop?
Using Arduino Firmata saves a lot of time. But what happens when you would like to do something the StandardFirmata does not support? The transport Firmata offers is easy to make use of in Arduino code. We learned how to do this and get a better understanding of Firmata using the new Arduino/Firmata nodes available in latest vvvv versions.

Who was the target audience of the workshop?
Arduino (and other board) Users, Tinkerers, Physical Computers, Module Authors, Hardware People

What did attendees of the workshop learn?
How to use 3 lines of Arduino code and no special patching to connect the Arduino and VVVV in your own way.

How to use Firmata to transport values, simple and complex, from and to the Arduino. The details and motivations of the Firmata protocol and that there is more to the StandardFirmata than uploading it to the board.

We did this in multiple steps, from simple values to complex SySex messages. Participants got an understanding, which concepts Firmata offers and how to make use of them.

If you have an Arduino project, which needs to send data to vvvv, but it is getting out of hand, Firmata could be a solution.

About the workshop and software contributions
Jens A. Ewald held the Arduino & Firmata workshops the last two NODE Forum editions and wrote the second implementation of the VVVV plugin. Anton Mezhiborskiy made the VL rewrite, which implements the new node API, which should be introduced. Last time we had two beginner workshops, both overbooked.

This Workshop was supported by