Silly Machines – Basic electronics and hardware prototyping
What happened in the workshop?
Participants learned basic concepts of programming actuators and sensors, prototyped simple mechanisms and machines using those elements.
Who was the target audience of the workshop?
The workshop was oriented towards physical computing beginners with small or zero experience with prototyping using the Arduino platform and or ESP8266.
What did attendees of the workshop learn?
In this workshop, we gave a basic tool set of hardware and software to receive sensor feedback and control basic actuators. Together we learned how to program sensors and actuators and put them together into a machine with a feedback loop, creating a system that works based on designed behaviors and interactions rather that direct human control (ex: don’t build a remote control robot, build one that drives around by itself avoiding obstacles).
The workshop was focusing on the first ‘quick and dirty’ stages of prototyping process techniques using cheap basic materials and fabrication methods. Further stages of development were discussed but not covered during the workshop.
Topics introduced in this workshop
- Basic electronics: How to build a circuit, which components to use and how to choose them, power supply and regulation.
- Programming: basic programming with Arduino, logic, programming concepts, how to make sense of sensor data and use it.
- Mechanics: How to design movable parts, tricks for creating robust prototypes, iterative prototyping, open source software for design.
