Arduino Workshops

Arduino workshops around the San Francisco Bay Area for beginners and advanced users.

Free introductory workshops are aimed at helping beginners enter the wonderful world to which Arduino(*) is the key.

For-pay workshops start with the basics, and rapidly teach advanced topics allowing complex reactive and interactive stand-alone, computer, or Internet connected projects.

Free Introductory Workshops
The first hour and a half, aimed at beginners, is a crash course in basic electronics, basic programming, and includes installing the Arduino IDE on your laptop. The goal at the end of this introduction is that everyone should have an LED blinking under Arduino control, and have some idea of why it is working.

The next hour or so presumes that everyone knows the basics, and explores a slightly more advanced topic, such as I2C communication between two Arduinos, interfacing to Processing and/or The Internet, or multitasking. Thus, people who already know the basics can simply show up for the second hour. Beginners should not expect to become experts in this topic, but to be exposed to some of the directions they might take.

Our workshops are very flexible. We welcome requests and feedback from our students before, during, and after our workshops. Our goal is to teach what you want.

Workshop Series
Workshops are 4 hours long and $25 each

Workshop 1:
Electronics, programming,  and Arduino IDE installation. The four basic interfaces of Arduino will be explained and explored: Inputs and Outputs; Analog and Digital.

Workshop 2:
Interfacing to and controlling motors: current, heat, how transistors help, and how to control the speed of a motor (or the brightness of a lamp) with PWM. Positional motors (hobby servo motors).

Workshop 3:
Arduino is not an island! Communication between your laptop and Arduino, and how programs on each can collaborate. Introduction to the Processing programming language.

Workshop 4:
Sensors! Light, sound, gas, bend, stretch, move, twist, magnet, heat, acceleration, direction, etc.
Sound! Making sounds with Arduino

Robotics workshop:
Combine sensors, motors, and other actuators to make a robot, and learn the fundamentals of robotic programming

Workshop 5:
Arduino Add-ons: Shields: Audio playback, wireless, Ethernet, extended motor control, prototyping, relays, screw connectors, clock, LCD, memory, etc.

Workshop 6:
Arduino is really not an island: Interfacing Arduino to the Internet.

Workshop 7:
Advanced topics: Timers, interrupts, and parallel processing

When and where are the next workshops?

Free introductory workshops:

Thursday, September 2, 2010
6:30PM to 9:00 PM
Noisebridge
2169 Mission St, San Francisco
Advanced Topic Taster: Counters and Timers

Workshop series:

Workshop 3: Arduino talks to other computers
Saturday, September 18, 2010
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
The Shipyard
1010 Murray Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
Register at our Eventbrite page

More workshops!
Want to hear about future workshops? Want a workshop at your school/club/workplace/home/party? Email us at
teachers AT teachmetomake DOT com

What to Bring:
If you want to perform the activities in the workshop, you will need the following:

• Your Arduino board, if you have one, or purchase one ($30) at the meeting.
• A USB cable for your Arduino
• A laptop on which to install and run the Arduino IDE. We can provide a few with advance notice.
• Any accessories (sensors, LEDs, motors, speakers, robots) you might have
• Curiosity and interest!

Before the meeting:
If you can, please install, or at least download, the Arduio IDE before the meeting. Thumbdrives with the Arduino IDE will be available at the meeting. The Arduino IDE is available here, is completely free, and runs on Mac OS, Linux, and Windows.

* What is Arduino?
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language and the Arduino development environment. Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).