Festival2012/Submit/Physical Computing The Easy Way

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  • Title of session: Physical Computing The Easy Way
  • Your name and affiliation: Martyn Eggleton . Waterbear contributor and Access Space Technical Projects Manager
  • Session format: Learning Lab

What will your session or activity allow people to make, learn or do?

The session will allow people to build an Arduino based gadget, probably a sweet dispenser using multiple sensors.

They will then write their own code to run the device using Waterbear for Arduino, this is a browser based drag and drop visual programming syntax for physical computing.

They should learn the skills to code for Arduino at home and teach their own arduino coding workshops without typing or knowing syntax.

How do you see that working?

I will bring along several arduinos and breadboards (I have access to 10 sets ) and the parts for the gadget and have 1 constructed to show what we are aiming at.

The group will each construct the first version of the gadget on the bread board, this will involve pressing a button so a sweet will drop out. (10 minutes)

I will lead the participants though getting on to the website and constructing a program for this super simple gadget (if there is a projector I will use it if not with warning I can do handouts). Waterbear for Arduino is browser based so participants should just be able to point their browsers at the website and start building code. It is a drag and drop environment for coding (like Scratch and 'Android App Inventor') but completely open standards based and it actually writes real code which can be learnt from. (10 minutes)

Then we will add more complex sensors and the code for them. (10 minutes)

And then we will get them to combine the different sensors and their code to construct their own physical passwords which will dispense the sweets only to them. (10 - 20minutes )

How will you deal with 5, 15, 50 participants?

I think I can bring all the parts for at least 10 devices (I will be running this workshop in October with a budget and hope to get more kit with that money).

1 - 10 people its one device and laptop (that they provide themselves) each

10 - 20 people will be able to work in pairs

20 - 40 can work around a table (a pair to each laptop and share the constructed gadget between them for testing their code)

How long within your session before someone else can teach this?

I hope 30 - 45 mins

What do you see as outcomes after the festival?

Participants should be able to easily create their own physical computing solutions without knowing arduino syntax. They then should be able to see what that code really looks like and learn from that so they can expand their code and skills towards classic text based coding. Participants should be able to teach this technique to kids and artists etc, as a workshop elsewhere Some may wish to join the Waterbear software project (www.waterbearlang.com) (either on the Arduino plugin or one of the others currently in development). Some may be inspired to develop Waterbear plugins for their own language interests