Arduino Mega and Prototype Shield Assembly

I've had some Sunday afternoon fun and games with the assembly of a prototyping shield. It is the design from e-lioness and is for the new Arduino Mega board. The new Arduino Mega board is designed to wow, with 128 KB of Flash or program memory, 8KB of RAM, and 4 KB of EEPROM. The board has a massive 54 digital pins (14 of these offer PWM output), 16 analog io pins, 4 hardware serial ports, and I2C. It is compatible with most of the earlier shields designed for the standard Arduino. The firmware includes the now standard, auto-reset on upload, a pre-burned bootloader, and automatic power selection. It does need you to update your Arduino to at least Arduino version 0015 or later. Here is a little table comparing the latest hardware from the Arduino and a close mid capacity derivative from the RepRap project, the Sanguino.



The Arduino Mega is a very sweet option for installations and sensor heavy projects.

Here's the starting picture:


Here's how it ended up:


The process is visually documented in my Flickr images and doesn't really need any more documentation. I would possibly check around to see if other prototyping shields have a better track layout for the digital pins as this turned out to be a little messy.

An example of the fun you can have with the Arduino Mega is shown by Tom Igoe's post on ``8×8 LED matrix control on an Arduino Mega''. He has a great example using it to play Pong.

Sun, Sea, Sounds, and Arduino at SMC 2009

If you're interested in learning about the sounds of Porto and physical computing then consider participating in the upcoming SMC Summer School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds. It is going to be held in Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal from July 18-21. There is funding available from the COST Action ICO601 on Sonic Interaction Design, for third level students interested but the application deadline is approaching (24th of April). There is a whole range of interesting project proposals already online. Guest lecturers will be given by Marcelo Wanderley of McGill, Joel Chadabe of NYU (and EMF), and Xavier Serra from the Music Technology group in Barcelona. Tutors include Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Stephan Baumann, Bram de Jong, Luis Gustavo Martins, Rui Penha, Stefania Serafin, Federico Fontana and myself.

Check out the Summer School website for details and application forms.

CS4062 - Fourth Arduino Lecture

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Fourth Arduino Lecture - March 18th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents a short review and introduction to programming concepts relevant to Arduino. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 4 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

View more presentations from eoinbrazil.

CS4062 - First Arduino Tutorial - Talking to PureData and to Flash

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting PureData and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Tutorial Example 1 Arduino and PureData

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Notes Academic Work interactive media puredata

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash - March 18th 2009 - This is a simple worksheet example for a class tutorial on getting Flash and an Arduino to communicate. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Tutorial Example 2 Arduino and Flash

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Notes Academic Work interactive media digital media

CS4062 - Third Arduino Lecture

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Third Arduino Lecture - March 11th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to motors, LEDs and Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 3 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

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The slides with notes are available here.

CS4062 - Second Arduino Lecture

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - Second Arduino Lecture - March 6th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to communications and Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 2 - Interactive Media CS4062 Semester 2 2009

View more presentations from eoinbrazil. (tags: avr prototyping)

The slides with notes are available here.

CS4062 - First Arduino Lecture

CS4062 Masters in Interactive Media - First Arduino Lecture - March 4th 2009 - University of Limerick. This lecture presents an introduction to the Arduino with examples. This was aimed at a digital media / music technology masters student audience.

Arduino Lecture 1 - Introducing the Arduino

View more presentations from eoinbrazil. (tags: avr physical computing)

The slides with notes are available here.

IOTC 2008 Arduino Talk

As promised here are my slides and notes from yesterday's Irish Open Technology Conference (details).

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IOTC08 The Arduino Platform - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: IOTC08 The Arduino Platform

Arduino Lectures and Tutorial Roundup

Here's the collection of slides and notes from the set of lectures I've given on Physical Computing and the Arduino platform.

Lecture 1: Introduction (PDF with notes)

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Lecture 2: Electronics, LEDs, Communications, and Datasheets (PDF with notes)

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Lecture 3: Motors and AVR programming (PDF with notes)

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Here's the link for Tutorial 1 - Soldering: An introduction to stripboarding and to making a shield for an Arduino - PDF handout. This just keeps everything in one nice handy post.

CS4026 - Arduino Intro Lecture and Soldering Notes

Here are the links to the lecture and tutorial notes for last week's `Introduction to the Arduino' lecture and for the workshop on soldering. There are no lectures next week as it is not a teaching week but there may be another chance for all those who missed the soldering workshop to catch up.

Lecture 1 - Introducing the Arduino - PDF Slides

Tutorial 1 - Soldering: An introduction to stripboarding and to making a shield for an Arduino - PDF handout

Interactive Media Workshop - Arduino

My presentation to the Interactive Media Master's class is available here as a pdf.

Topics covered included:

An introduction to the Arduino - programming, capabilities, etc

Digital / Analog

Sensors and Actuators

A couple of simple Arduino sketches

Linking to Flash and to PD

Examples of Interactive Objects / Displays including a Spooky Skull by Tod E. Kurt, the e-textile construction kit by Leah Buechley, Wanderlust by Hector Ouilhet and my work on creating an Ambient Auditory Group Presence Display.

Monday - some work some play

Got the board done so now its time for finalising the coding for my little arduino app!

The O'Reilly Network has got some nice bits on MacFUSE and on Event Stream Processing.

I have been wondering about Social networking and rails (maybe Ning is a better alternative) as we might be doing a new IDC alumni site.

Getting back to my current auditory display seeing as the arduino stuff is done and it works with Skype, I was wondering about Twitter but its a mud pit when it comes to active vs. passive notification and also to ambient intimacy but there is already some growl-twitter (Quicksilver too!) work done so I'm between decisions as of yet... I'll probably add a mock object and see what the demand and usage is like for twitter in the lab.

Arduino Pressure Circuit Perfboard

Working on the latest design which includes an additional capacitor to help clear up the readings from the pressure sensors.


I've also moved the prototype from a breadboard to a perfboard.


The result, simplified to help bridge my understanding between the circuit diagram and perfboard goes something like this.


Thanks again to Mikael for the circuit design and some tips on soldering, simple electronics, etc, etc !