Milwaukee Robotics Club

UPDATE: This class has already been held and is over, but look for more classes in the future!

I (Royce Pipkins) will lead a session on programming the Arduino microcontroller and interfacing it to a variety of outside devices.

Home Automation, Automotive Interfacing, Animatronics, Electronic Art, Hobby Robotics. At the heart of many of these sorts of technologies (and many more besides) is the diminutive yet powerful microcontroller. A microcontroller is a tiny computer system on a single chip that opens a vast world possibilities for those initiated in the art and science of microcontroller programming.

The Arduino is a very low power system-on-a-chip computer and code library that has made it easy for folks the world over to create their own automated electronic projects.

With heavy promotion from publisher O'Reilly's Make Magazine, the Arduino has gathered a large and loyal following. Besides easing the technical barrier to entry into the microcontroller world, Arduino derives a great deal of power just from its large and helpful community of experimenters.

Arduino Programming will be a 2-3 hr workshop where interested folks will get a helping hand into the world of Arduino programming and interfacing.

In the workshop you'll get an overview of programming with the Arduino library as well as an introduction on how to interface the Arduino to a number of common devices such as LEDs and Servos. You won't be an Arduino master at the end of the class, but you will have a good basic foundation upon which you can build your skill set.

It is assumed that most in the BarCamp crowd will have at least some programming experience, so the principles of programming will not be covered in any great depth. The software portion will focus on using the IDE and using the Arduino hardware interfacing libraries. 

Folks that particpate will get a Sintra cutout of the MilwaukeeBarCamp4 robot that they can optionally animate with their Arduino and associated hardware.

The course will be held at BarcampMilwaukee4. (Saturday is my goal)  In order to take the course you will need to bring a laptop or portable computer (Mac, Linux or Windows) with an available USB port. Please install the Arduino Software on your computer prior to the workshop to maximize the amount of learning versus installing.

Although most things at BarCamp are free, I was not able to get all the the hardware you'll need to participate in the workshop sponsored. As such I must ask that partipants purchase:

The hardware will be given to you on location at the time of the workshop. If you miss the session for any reason contact me, royce.pipkins@gmail.com , to pick up your hardware at a later time.