Day 349 / Starting With Arduino

February 18th, 2011
 
Not a bad day.  I had a shoot around 3pm and I got out by 8pm.  Pretty sweet!  I wish I could tell you more about my shoot because I really felt like I was witnessing a small slice of film history being made this evening.  All I can say is that I was filming b-roll on the set of a miniature shoot.  I was totally blown away by the skills and know-how that these guys have.  There is so much calculation and engineering that goes into a total of 11-seconds of film.  Anyways, I don’t want to tease it too much and I may be a little over-zealous about it.  I just felt lucky to be in the room at the time.
 
When I got home I was delighted to see that my Arduino Starter Kit had arrived in the mail today.
 
The arduino board is a versatile micro-controller board that is designed with user-friendliness in mind.  It’s something that I’ve wanted to get into for a long time, before even starting this blog.
 
It’s a shame that it took me this long to finally get one.  I have been intimidated in the past by the possible math skills and electronics knowledge that I might need to have to really get it to work.
 
On the box for the kit there was a link to some tutorials online.  I decided to run through those tutorials as my creative thing for the day.  As I did the tutorials I found myself getting very excited about this little device.  It was a breeze to get started.  Because I have had some experience with the Processing program language I was very excited to discover that the arduino language (called “Wiring”) is virtually the same.  The syntax is as well as the look and feel of the program is exactly the same.
 
Even though all I did this evening was make a few leds flash at various rates it was refreshing to get to know the process of uploading a program to the board and seeing it work.  I’m sure I will be playing with this stuff well beyond the end of this blog.  I’m not sure what my first project will be for it but I’m excited to see the possibilities as I read more on the language.