Mobile Physical Computing: Android + Arduino

Directed by Stuart O. Anderson and Moxie Marlinspike

3 hours, $195 ($75 plus $120 Materials Fee = $195).
Friday 6-Nov, 2pm-5pm OR Sunday 8-Nov, 2pm-5pm.
Workshop location TBA.
Programming experience is recommended.

Connect your physical computing projects to the cellular network! We'll show you how to get your Android phones talking to Arduinos using WiFi. Our focus will be on giving participants the ability to gather data from a wide selection of sensors, including the G1's accelerometers, GPS, touchscreen, and compass, plus a variety of biometric sensors and displays that we can connect to the Arduino. If you've been hesitant to use sensors requiring I2C, SPI, or the Maxim OneWire interface in your projects before, this is a great time to learn. If those aren't familiar terms, don't hesitate to take this workshop and learn. Using these sensors and displays, we'll build network applications to share, publish, broadcast, display, and perhaps play games with, biometric data.
Note: The additional materials fee provides you with a complete Arduino kit, including a variety of sensors and actuators, a WiShield attachment to the Arduiono for WiFi communications, a breadboard, and other components.

Your Skill Level:
This is a brisk hands-on workshop that combines software programming (of the Google Android phone), microcontroller programming (of the Arduino), and a bit of simple electronics (to read sensors and twiddle actuators). While the programming and circuitry will be easy, the tutorial will require you to get lots of little details right, in order for all the components to talk together. So, this workshop is ideal for Android owners who have good attention to detail, and have some experience both with programming in Java and in physical tinkering with the Arduino.

What You Should Bring
Bring your Android mobile phone, your phone's data cable, and your own laptop. If you have the Arduino development environment installed, and can confirm that you have successfully programmed Arduinos with it, that would be helpful. More details TBD.

More Information:
Android is a mobile operating system based on Linux. It was initially developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write Java code, which controls the device via Google-developed Java libraries.
Meanwhile...
Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform, used worldwide by artists, designers and hackers to create interactive objects, machines, robots and design prototypes. The goal of the Arduino project is to make tools available that are accessible, low-cost, low capital investment, flexible and easy-to-use for artists and hobbyists. Based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language, Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, Max/MSP). The free, open-source development environment is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

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