June 1, 2011 • 30 mins
Most people have heard about open source software -- but what about open source hardware? Join Jonathan and Chris as they take a closer look at the open source phenomenon known as Arduino.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and
I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
(00:22):
here across from me, as always, his senior writer, Jonathan
Strickland binary solo that that was a short quote. Yeah,
it helps balance help the epic quote I did a
couple of episodes ago. That's true. That's true. Today, we
wanted to talk about a topic that a couple of
people have brought up to us in the past, and uh,
(00:44):
we just sort of tabled it for a while. Um,
but we're both sort of interested in it, and UM,
I think it's time we, uh we pulled this one
out and give it a give it a try. Yeah,
it's the ard we know, which is a an open
source platform, both of hardware and software. Yeah, that's uh,
that's kind of interesting to mention. When we talk about
(01:05):
open source a lot, we are often referring to software,
and by open source we mean uh, when they release
in this case, the software, Um, it's made public to everybody.
What the code is behind the software, so that other
people want to make contributions or look for vulnerabilities, or
find ways to improve it, ways to incorporate parts of
(01:29):
that software and other software. They're welcome to dig in
and get to work. But you don't often see that
with hardware. Yeah, it's a little trickier to do. For
one thing. Um Also, Yeah, if you're if you're looking
at your general kind of hardware, let's say a microprocessor,
you're looking at your your general microprocessor, you tend to
um to have a prop proprietary right like Intel doesn't
(01:53):
publish it's micro architecture and complete detail to the entire world.
That's that's for prietary knowledge, because that's that's what Intel's
business is built upon. To go open open sources to
kind of um uh, well, just to take the veil
away and say this is exactly how this is put together.
This is what each component of this thing. You know,
(02:16):
how it works and what it does. And if you
want to build your own you are more than welcome to.
Or if you want to take this and modify it
and and evolve it in some way, you're welcome to
do that too. There are a little there's some guidelines there,
but we can get into that. I mean, it's just
sort of very simple kindelines really. But in the case
(02:38):
of the the Art we know system, it's kind of
a a tool for people to get familiar with electronics
and to learn how electronics work and how to not
just design the hardware, but to to program electronics so
that they do what you want them to do. Yeah,
(02:58):
it's it's funny too. You may should Intel, because of
course they are. It's really not even arguably the leading
my microprocessor manufacturer in the world. UM. But you know,
when when somebody like Intel or Apple or Google or
somebody else who has a worldwide reach comes up with
(03:21):
a new product UM, in a lot of cases they
come up with focus groups and marketing efforts to try
to come up with cool names for this product because
they wanted to to sell UM an open source that
might be a little different. Actually, this this all came
about around two thousand five. I was reading UM, an
(03:41):
issue of Make magazine that came out a few months
ago UM from the time we're recording us UH. In
the piece by Dale Doherty, who who wrote the welcome
to that issue, said this all started in two thousand
five UM and it came from an Italian institute, the
Interaction Design Instant Toute Ivrea. I'm if we have any
(04:02):
Italian listeners, please correct me on my pronunciation, but it's
near Milan in Italy. Basically, uh, some of the art
students there and an associate professor named Massimo Bonzi came
up with UH an idea to come up with electronics
boards that you could program yourself, but it was for
(04:25):
artists and people who weren't programmers. Yeah. The the goal
is to use this this basic foundation to build really
anything that you can imagine as an electronic device. Really,
you're limited by your budget and your creativity and your
(04:45):
comfort with working with electronics. Uh. I was sorry before
before we get into the details, I just wanted to
add this a little trivia. Think it's fun. Yes, the
name because like I said that, you know, you come
up with these hyphil names that are supposed to indicate
some kind of coolness factor or do we know, Actually
it's it's got sort of a coolness factor too, because
(05:08):
Bondsi has suggested the name of the bar that they
used to go to discuss these things as the name
for the board, and are do we know is what's stuck.
So there we go, and they're they're programming language is
of course called the ard we know programming languages based
on an older programming language called wiring, which is another
open source programming language, which I think is a little
(05:30):
weird because if you're not if you're just doing your
preliminary research on our do we know? You might say wiring?
What kind of wiring? Yeah, that's just the programming language
name threw me a little, but yeah, if you if
you take a look at this, if you were to say, well,
let me, let me see what you're talking about, you
would you would be looking mostly at circuit boards, and
you wouldn't necessarily know just by looking at it what
(05:53):
the circuit board does. And the reason for that is
because the circuit board is that, you know, they've designed
the circuit board to be as flexable as possible, uh figuratively,
not literally, you're not gonna you're not gonna bend this,
but flexible as possible so that it can perform as
many different functions um as you can come up with
in theory. Anyway, by by using programming it properly and
(06:16):
linking it to the other parts of hardware that you
would need to do whatever it is you're going to do.
So this is kind of a you can just call
it a micro controller. Really, Yeah, that's what most people
seem to refer to the ard We know and it's uh,
wouldn't say competitors similar products. Yeah, there are other open
source micro controller products out there, and some of them
(06:38):
are a little more limited. Uh, some of them are
are really they've done a lot of the engineers behind
it have done a lot of the work for you.
For example, there are modular computing systems out there, or
modular electronics systems out there where you can create an
electronic device by purchasing the the various modules you would
(06:59):
need need and then linking them all together. It's almost
like legos, right, Like you've got all these these electronics legos,
and if you put the right Lego bricks together, suddenly
you have, you know, whatever device it is that you
were looking for, like an accelerometer. It's funny you would
mention legos UM. The make issue that had the Arduino
(07:20):
and it um listed several different types of controllers UM,
including io boards like pico board and fidgets p h I,
d G, e T s UM and some others UM
the net duino, which is very similar to Arduino controllers
like the pick axe and propeller um. And then programmable
(07:42):
modules including basic Stamp two and Lego mind storms. So
these are all related to I mean, the similar kinds
of devices to the Arduino but um. But yeah, Arduino
has gotten really popular I think because of its open
source Yeah, and and again because of its flexibility. Uh
(08:03):
you can you can program and our Dwino based device
to be essentially self contained where it's going to follow
it's it's programming and uh, you know, you have to
set it up with power and everything like that. You know,
it's not just like it's some magical device that can
work on its own. But but the you you can
have it where it's a self contained device, or you
can have it where it's a connected device, where you
(08:25):
could connect it to a computer and you run uh
software off your computer to the circuit board to make it,
uh do whatever it is you plan like. I'll give
you an example. Let's say that you you have your
Arduino circuit board UM that you've purchased, and you can
actually build these yourself if you want to they do
have the the directions on how to build one. Uh
(08:50):
most people I think would probably be a little intimidated
by building a circuit board and would be more comfortable
purchasing and a completed one. And remember, a complete circuit
or it's still pretty much a blank slate. That's just
the foundation for you to build whatever it is you
want to build. Uh. Well, let's say you've got your
circuit board and you get an LED uh so, and
(09:12):
you connect that to your circuit board in the proper place,
and you program your circuit board in such a way
so that when it receives a particular kind of information,
the light goes on. And you program it so that
every time you get a new email, a little light
comes on. And then you plug it into your computer
and you've logged into your email client, and whenever you
(09:33):
get a new email, it sends the signal because you've
programmed it this way and you've programmed it to interact
with your computer. The there's a signal sent from your
computer to the electronic board and the little light goes on. Now,
that's just a very simple application of the art we
know board. Right, That's just one tiny little example, but
that's the sort of thing you could do if you
(09:55):
wanted to. Yes, yeah, if you uh, if you're listening
to the podcast to this point and you're you're sort
of trying to get an idea, um, you you would
basically see the same kind of thing. If you're you know,
if you haven't actually seen an ARD we know board yet,
you if you popped open a remote control or really
(10:17):
you know, any kind of electronic portable electronic device, popped
it open and looked at the guts of this, that's
basically more or less what an RD we know is.
It's the board that has um all kinds of whatever
the components are that needs to run that device. Um.
But in the case that ARD we know, it's a
do it yourself type thing. So it comes to the
(10:38):
basic the board like the ARD we know you know,
which is I would I would guess probably the most basic,
you know, multi purpose, very popular board, although there are
again many others. Um, you know, it comes with certain
things pre installed on it. But though that's by no
means you know, that's really just sort of to get
you started, I think, but really, um, it's not very
(11:01):
if you're not the kind of person that likes to
take stuff apart or built stuff from scratch. This may
not be very interesting to you might look at it
and go, I don't care. I want it to be
what I wanted already. The thing is, uh, you know,
for people who like to do a little hacking and
getting into uh some programming, this can be a lot
of fun because you can do It's sort of like, um,
(11:24):
this is sort of like the physical representation of a
programming language, I would say, because it takes. What it
does is you can hook things into it to receive
inputs and then hook other things up to it to
give you an output. Um. They're all kinds of projects
on the web. Um. I've seen games for it. UM,
I've seen you know, different kinds of input detectors, like
(11:46):
you were talking about the the email when it comes in,
things like that where it says, okay, when you get information,
send me a signal somehow. Yeah, And I mean you
can do almost anything with it really really. In order
to do these things, you have to hook up other
circuitry to the arduino. Uh. They are two, like I
says it, that's that's the board. It's just the foundation.
(12:08):
And you have to you have to provide the other
bits that are going to build into whatever electronic device
you're designing. So here let's give a couple of other
just examples of devices you could you could create with this. UM.
I found a site called hacken mod h A c
K N m O D and it had a list
of the top forty Arduino projects on the web, and
(12:32):
it was an interesting list. There were a lot of
different applications and these are just things that hobbyists thought, Hey,
you know what I want to build such and such.
The cool thing with our dwino is that, let's say
that you have come up with an idea for an
electronic device, but you're you know, you don't you don't
know any way of going about and doing it without
without starting from scratch. Well, the Arduino might serve as
(12:54):
the foundation for your device, and you can even create
devices that you can go on to sell in the market.
Uh that that use our two as the basis for
the electronics. That's perfectly fine with the the Creative Commons
license that they've used to to license this stuff. UM. Now,
there are cases where if you're going to make modifications
(13:14):
to the hardware, you need to publish those those changes
so that other people can benefit from your work and um,
and you stay true to the license. But anyway, some
examples include I read about collision avoiding robots. So in
other words, you're using that circuit board as the brains
(13:35):
for lack of a better term of this of this robot. Yeah,
and and so you have to attach the right sensors
that will detect any sort of obstacle in the way
of the robot. And you have to connect the the
other wires over to the various motors in the robot
(13:55):
so that the the robots able to process the information
that it it pulls in and act on it. So
that's an example of what the artwino could be used for.
But you can also do other things. Like I said,
there's accelerometers. I came across a guitar pedal that was
using the artwino as the main circuit board for the
guitar pedal. It's just a hobbyist made it key tars. Hey, Yeah,
(14:21):
you want to bring those eighties days back? You wanna
have your keytar out? Uh that This is one that
I thought was really a great idea. Someone used the
ardwino as the basis to create a turn signal biking jacket.
So yeah, it's a jacket that has turned signals built
into it. Yeah, and uh and this, you know, these
(14:43):
are these are just kind of neat ideas that that
people came up with and they tooled around with the
Ardwino and various other electronic components and made them. There
are others as well. There are radio control device devices
I've seen. I've also seen a gaming devices like there
was one it was essentially called an open source game boy. Yeah.
(15:04):
So the idea of being that, you know, using the
Arduino as the main circuit board, you could create a
gaming device. Now again, you still have to have all
those other components and you have to hook them up. Now,
for a lot of these devices, people what they do
is they just went to an electronics store and bought
the individual components, went back home and then started to
hook them up to the Arduino in the proper configuration.
(15:27):
And then you know, then you have to program it.
And like I said, the programming language that's you know, Ardwino.
Uh uh give makes that available to so you can
learn how to program your electronics device through the Arduino
system and actually you know, create the parameters that your
device needs to follow in order to execute whatever actions
(15:51):
you want it to do. Um, and you can you
don't have to use the Ardwino language either, you can
use others, but you would still have to uh create
the halfway from it to go from whatever programming language
you were using into the art programming language. That would
add an extra step. But um, but it is a possibility.
And I've seen there are a lot of tutorials on
(16:14):
the web as well on how to use are we
on how to program? Aren't we know? Yeah? Actually the
language is expandable using C or C plus plus according
to make and that's that's pretty standard, um, you know, comparatively,
for example, net net we know uses C sharp as
it's programming language. Um. And that's one of the things
(16:36):
that they saw as a downside to that if you're
not comfortable programming and see, it might be a little
daunting at first. Um, but you really don't need all
that much if you want to get started with that.
Of course, as we were saying before, you know, it
does take uh some cash to get started to buy
the uh the main controller board, whichever board you decide
(16:58):
to choose. There are several UM and I have some listed. UM.
You would also need some stuff to go with it, UM,
led s, potentiometers, accelerometers, speakers. Yeah, you definitely need a
USB cable because you have to attach the board to
your computer to program it. UM. Then one of the
(17:19):
nice things about it is that it works with Windows,
Mac and Linux. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of the
things that sets it apart from a lot of other
of these micro controllers that you can purchase. A lot
of them are our platform specific, most mostly Windows, because
of course that's the the most popular operating system out there.
You have the dominant operating system, and so that does
(17:41):
set it apart. Um. So yeah, that's that's one of
the things that I really liked about our Twino is
that it's it's you know, platform agnostic. It doesn't doesn't
align itself with a specific platform. Although those of us
with amigas are still out of luck. Those of you
with a megas, I'm amazed that they even run. I
have to be fair, I haven't plugged it in quite
(18:03):
some time. UM. So yeah, if you if you, it
doesn't really matter if you've got one of the predominant
operating systems out there. Even the smaller ones. Um. Then
you're welcome to go ahead and dig in. Um. You
just need to, you know, figure out what it is
that you want to do. Uh. Some of the you
(18:25):
can find kits online from a number of different stores
that will give you the basics to get started with
some easy projects, sort of get your feet wet with it.
And it kind of reminds me when we were talking
about radio in a podcast not too long ago, about
the crystal radio kits that you used to buy. This
is sort of like that. It doesn't require a whole
(18:46):
lot of soldering or anything like that. Uh, there are
you know, some of the other systems that I mentioned
earlier and others like them do It depends on whether
you're buying just a controller or controller board or an
input output board. You know, it sort of depends on
what you're working with. But the Arduino doesn't necessarily require
a lot of that kind of thing because it's it's
(19:06):
designed to be used in a variety of ways, so
you can you can hook it up with wires just
basically clipping the wires into place to see what it does. Yeah,
it's it's a teaching tool in a way. It's really
so that so that you can learn and experiment with
electronics so that you know you don't Also you don't
(19:26):
have to worry so much about if I what if
I made a mistake, What if I'm not supposed to
solder this wire to this contact point here? What if
that's the wrong one, and then I have to you know,
desauder and then resolder and then yeah, it's a it
could be a headache. So this is kind of a way. Yeah, this,
this is kind of a way to avoid that and
to have a little more flexibility and and not feel
(19:48):
as anxious every time you're about to make a connection.
Um as for the programming language are duo. Divides it
into three different parts structure values, which are your variables
and your constants, and the functions. And it's the combination
of using these three parts that allows you to tell
the circuit board what you know, what information it's going
(20:11):
to receive, and how it's going to act on that.
So it's a neat idea I've and I do recommend
you check out the the hacken mod article on the
top forty because there are there are a lot of
really interesting applications there and also there are like you said,
there are some tutorials online that are pretty helpful. It's
funny because I found tutorials on two different sites and
(20:34):
they share something in common. Yeah, let's see if you
pick up on it. There's Ada Fruit Industries and Lady
Ada dot Net. Okay, so Lovelace there had a bit
of an influence on both of those, but both both
sites have um tutorials on the the the RD we
(20:59):
know micro controller, and we'll even go so far as
to walk you through the first couple of projects, like uh,
the Lady Eta one. The very first project that will
walk you through is the what they call the the
electronics version of Hello World. Hello World. If you aren't
(21:19):
familiar with this, Hello World is one of those very
basic basic programs. Yeah, you're supposed actually, it's a I
would put this in quotes. You're supposed to just, you know,
write your first program and have it say Hello World.
It's sort of it's it's sort of a tradition, a
programming tradition, but yeah, it's it's the whole idea is
that you pick something that's incredibly simple to accomplish, but
(21:42):
that that gives you the basis to learn the tool.
In this case, the programming language. Um, so with the
electronics version of Hello World, what that is is a
blinking LED. So it's it's learning how to program the
art we know so that it will cause a an
(22:03):
LED to blink. Very nice. Yeah, you can't get really
any simpler than that. Yeah, it's about as easy as
it gets. But then that beyond that, the later tutorials
start to teach you how to incorporate things like sensors
and switches and buttons, things that we take for granted
(22:24):
as users of electronics. You know, you tend to forget, Oh, this,
this button that I'm pressing is actually interacting with this
electronic device in a fairly complex way. You know, you
just think I pushed the button and uh and and
Joel and the bots get the really bad movie of
the week movie sign ah good times. Yeah, just don't
(22:51):
as it a side note. Um, the founder of Ata
Fruit Industries actually was profiled on the cover of Wired
not too long ago. Uh, that's a neat article. She's
a she's an interesting person. Yes, yes, I remember that. Definitely.
The cover caused some some controversy, as I recall, yeah,
which was unmerited. Well anyway, Nonetheless, she and her company
(23:18):
is very into taking stuff apart and hacking it and
doing it yourself. So, um, it's very cool. Actually, Uh,
she's got some I believe she's got some stuff that's wearable.
And that's one of those funny things. When I got
into the different boards. Um, as I mentioned earlier that
who knows the very basic board, but there are different ones.
I mean you have the Bluetooth board that comes with
(23:40):
the Bluetooth module installed. Um, there are mini boards and
nano boards. Uh, not literally nano, they're not actually on
the nano scale. They're just smaller than the other boards
use the USB Mini b cable instead of the regular
And I mean you would want to have those if
the if your goal was to create an object that
would need to be smaller, and you wouldn't want this
(24:03):
this larger circuit board in there because it would it
would change the form factor you have in mind. That's
why you would go with one of these smaller boards.
In general, it's one of the reasons anyway. And then
there's the lily pad. Did you see this? Not? The
lily pad is an argue. We know a board for
h that's designed to be worn. It actually comes in
(24:24):
purple um. But it's it's designed to be sewn into
fabric so that you can wear whatever it is you're
you're building and for and for those who are working
on a professional level who want to use the art
we know and something that you're going to leave as
a permanent you know, I want to create this device,
and I want it to be this way forever. It's
not something I'm going to take a part again. There
(24:46):
is a pro version of the board too, so really
they're reaching out to a pretty broad section of the community.
And you could tell. I mean, uh, Seth Rosenblatt did
an article for zd net just a couple of days
before we recorded this. Actually the week we are recording this, Uh,
we're following up on Google i OH, which is their
developer conference um and uh Seth Rosenblatt was writing that
(25:11):
about the Android Open Accessory Initiative and the Androids Android
Device Kit, which used the art we know for people
to build their own Android based devices. Yeah, that's that's
a that was a big part of Google's IO event
was that they were talking about how Android is not
just going to be a smartphone and tablet um platform,
(25:35):
but a platform that will be on top of lots
of different kinds of electronics, things that you wouldn't even
necessarily have thought. Oh well, yeah, clearly you want Android
on that. So things like you know, stoves and and
and refrigerators and you're robot dog, robot dog. Um. Yeah,
(25:55):
I don't I think that the the system actually would
continue the art we know part of it still continue
to run, um the I D that comes with, aren't
we know? But this this kit would allow you to
basically create an interface between your Android based device and
the thing that you're building. Um, So that's that's pretty
(26:18):
cool to to reach out and sort of bridge that gap,
so you could make something that you could control with
your phone for example. Yeah, I've seen some in that
hackened mod list. I think there were a couple of
things that people have already already built where you can
control certain devices through a phone. Um. But yeah, that's
I don't have the list ring in front of me,
(26:39):
but I do seem to remember that. So yeah, it's
a really neat kind of idea. If you guys are
interested in electronics and building your own electronics and just
really learning what makes electronics tick, then you might want
to you can actually make the electronics tick. What does
it do? It ticks? I got a ticking module and
(27:00):
I hooked it up and it's yeah, I don't suggest
you make something that ticks and then put it in
a public place. Yeah, let's just right now, that's not fun.
Don't do that. Yeah, they'll trace it back and then
they'll come back and they'll knock on our doors and
they'll say, why did you tell people to do this?
So we didn't tell them to do that. We said
that they would it is possible to do that. Yes,
(27:21):
we now disavow ourselves. And then he taking our duenos um,
although taking our twos would be a great name for
a band. Yeah, I'm getting a little sidetracked, I think anyway.
I was trying to say, if you're interested in electronics,
you might want to look into this. It is a
bit of an investment. Although they there their boards tend
to be fifty dollars or less. Yeah, it's not an expensive,
(27:42):
expensive investment. But if it's something that you're doing as
a hobby and you know, well, you also have to
buy the stuff in addition to the board. A lot
of the kids or whatever, sorry, go ahead, A lot
of the kids I've seen her a little or usually
around nine or maybe a hundred forty for a kit
that has again you know, a speaker and a potentiometer
(28:03):
and some other stuff that you can use to make
it do stuff. Um, so that's not it's not terrible,
but it's not pocket change for a lot of people. Right.
But if you are interested in really getting into electronics,
and maybe you want to design electronics for further down
the line, and this would be you know, probably a
good way to kind of learn the ins and outs
of the basics and maybe even you'll come up with
(28:26):
the next you know, killer electronics device, and you never
know that this is the sort of stuff that can
inspire people to to really push the envelope as far
as consumer electronics goes, well, you and I have talked
about it before, and we've talked about programming and things
like the Commodore sixty four and how many people who
are in what is now a billion multibillion dollar video
(28:49):
gaming industry started off typing in commands and there very
low power Vick twenty or vicy Vick twenties and Commodore
sixty four's back you know, years and years ago. You
know this is a way to get your feet wet
in the electronics world. So if you're interested in in
electronics engineering, uh, and you really don't have a lot
(29:10):
of experience with it, this is a good way to
get started, and it's a good way to build on
it if you already do have some experience exactly. Yeah,
anything from robotics too, Like I said, consumer electronics. Well,
I think that wraps up this discussion on our DW know.
If you guys have any suggestions for future topics, let
us know. Or let's say, maybe you've worked with our
two If you have, let us know, let's know what
(29:32):
sort of projects you've you've worked with or any of
our DWIN knows um, uh, you know, contemporaries, any of
the other kind of micro controllers, if you have experience
with that, let us know. And uh, you can let's
know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is text
stuff hs W or you can send us an email.
That email address is tech stuff at how stuff Works
(29:53):
dot com. Chris and I will talk to you again
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It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and
I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
(00:22):
here across from me, as always, his senior writer, Jonathan
Strickland binary solo that that was a short quote. Yeah,
it helps balance help the epic quote I did a
couple of episodes ago. That's true. That's true. Today, we
wanted to talk about a topic that a couple of
people have brought up to us in the past, and uh,
(00:44):
we just sort of tabled it for a while. Um,
but we're both sort of interested in it, and UM,
I think it's time we, uh we pulled this one
out and give it a give it a try. Yeah,
it's the ard we know, which is a an open
source platform, both of hardware and software. Yeah, that's uh,
that's kind of interesting to mention. When we talk about
(01:05):
open source a lot, we are often referring to software,
and by open source we mean uh, when they release
in this case, the software, Um, it's made public to everybody.
What the code is behind the software, so that other
people want to make contributions or look for vulnerabilities, or
find ways to improve it, ways to incorporate parts of
(01:29):
that software and other software. They're welcome to dig in
and get to work. But you don't often see that
with hardware. Yeah, it's a little trickier to do. For
one thing. Um Also, Yeah, if you're if you're looking
at your general kind of hardware, let's say a microprocessor,
you're looking at your your general microprocessor, you tend to
um to have a prop proprietary right like Intel doesn't
(01:53):
publish it's micro architecture and complete detail to the entire world.
That's that's for prietary knowledge, because that's that's what Intel's
business is built upon. To go open open sources to
kind of um uh, well, just to take the veil
away and say this is exactly how this is put together.
This is what each component of this thing. You know,
(02:16):
how it works and what it does. And if you
want to build your own you are more than welcome to.
Or if you want to take this and modify it
and and evolve it in some way, you're welcome to
do that too. There are a little there's some guidelines there,
but we can get into that. I mean, it's just
sort of very simple kindelines really. But in the case
(02:38):
of the the Art we know system, it's kind of
a a tool for people to get familiar with electronics
and to learn how electronics work and how to not
just design the hardware, but to to program electronics so
that they do what you want them to do. Yeah,
(02:58):
it's it's funny too. You may should Intel, because of
course they are. It's really not even arguably the leading
my microprocessor manufacturer in the world. UM. But you know,
when when somebody like Intel or Apple or Google or
somebody else who has a worldwide reach comes up with
(03:21):
a new product UM, in a lot of cases they
come up with focus groups and marketing efforts to try
to come up with cool names for this product because
they wanted to to sell UM an open source that
might be a little different. Actually, this this all came
about around two thousand five. I was reading UM, an
(03:41):
issue of Make magazine that came out a few months
ago UM from the time we're recording us UH. In
the piece by Dale Doherty, who who wrote the welcome
to that issue, said this all started in two thousand
five UM and it came from an Italian institute, the
Interaction Design Instant Toute Ivrea. I'm if we have any
(04:02):
Italian listeners, please correct me on my pronunciation, but it's
near Milan in Italy. Basically, uh, some of the art
students there and an associate professor named Massimo Bonzi came
up with UH an idea to come up with electronics
boards that you could program yourself, but it was for
(04:25):
artists and people who weren't programmers. Yeah. The the goal
is to use this this basic foundation to build really
anything that you can imagine as an electronic device. Really,
you're limited by your budget and your creativity and your
(04:45):
comfort with working with electronics. Uh. I was sorry before
before we get into the details, I just wanted to
add this a little trivia. Think it's fun. Yes, the
name because like I said that, you know, you come
up with these hyphil names that are supposed to indicate
some kind of coolness factor or do we know, Actually
it's it's got sort of a coolness factor too, because
(05:08):
Bondsi has suggested the name of the bar that they
used to go to discuss these things as the name
for the board, and are do we know is what's stuck.
So there we go, and they're they're programming language is
of course called the ard we know programming languages based
on an older programming language called wiring, which is another
open source programming language, which I think is a little
(05:30):
weird because if you're not if you're just doing your
preliminary research on our do we know? You might say wiring?
What kind of wiring? Yeah, that's just the programming language
name threw me a little, but yeah, if you if
you take a look at this, if you were to say, well,
let me, let me see what you're talking about, you
would you would be looking mostly at circuit boards, and
you wouldn't necessarily know just by looking at it what
(05:53):
the circuit board does. And the reason for that is
because the circuit board is that, you know, they've designed
the circuit board to be as flexable as possible, uh figuratively,
not literally, you're not gonna you're not gonna bend this,
but flexible as possible so that it can perform as
many different functions um as you can come up with
in theory. Anyway, by by using programming it properly and
(06:16):
linking it to the other parts of hardware that you
would need to do whatever it is you're going to do.
So this is kind of a you can just call
it a micro controller. Really, Yeah, that's what most people
seem to refer to the ard We know and it's uh,
wouldn't say competitors similar products. Yeah, there are other open
source micro controller products out there, and some of them
(06:38):
are a little more limited. Uh, some of them are
are really they've done a lot of the engineers behind
it have done a lot of the work for you.
For example, there are modular computing systems out there, or
modular electronics systems out there where you can create an
electronic device by purchasing the the various modules you would
(06:59):
need need and then linking them all together. It's almost
like legos, right, Like you've got all these these electronics legos,
and if you put the right Lego bricks together, suddenly
you have, you know, whatever device it is that you
were looking for, like an accelerometer. It's funny you would
mention legos UM. The make issue that had the Arduino
(07:20):
and it um listed several different types of controllers UM,
including io boards like pico board and fidgets p h I,
d G, e T s UM and some others UM
the net duino, which is very similar to Arduino controllers
like the pick axe and propeller um. And then programmable
(07:42):
modules including basic Stamp two and Lego mind storms. So
these are all related to I mean, the similar kinds
of devices to the Arduino but um. But yeah, Arduino
has gotten really popular I think because of its open
source Yeah, and and again because of its flexibility. Uh
(08:03):
you can you can program and our Dwino based device
to be essentially self contained where it's going to follow
it's it's programming and uh, you know, you have to
set it up with power and everything like that. You know,
it's not just like it's some magical device that can
work on its own. But but the you you can
have it where it's a self contained device, or you
can have it where it's a connected device, where you
(08:25):
could connect it to a computer and you run uh
software off your computer to the circuit board to make it,
uh do whatever it is you plan like. I'll give
you an example. Let's say that you you have your
Arduino circuit board UM that you've purchased, and you can
actually build these yourself if you want to they do
have the the directions on how to build one. Uh
(08:50):
most people I think would probably be a little intimidated
by building a circuit board and would be more comfortable
purchasing and a completed one. And remember, a complete circuit
or it's still pretty much a blank slate. That's just
the foundation for you to build whatever it is you
want to build. Uh. Well, let's say you've got your
circuit board and you get an LED uh so, and
(09:12):
you connect that to your circuit board in the proper place,
and you program your circuit board in such a way
so that when it receives a particular kind of information,
the light goes on. And you program it so that
every time you get a new email, a little light
comes on. And then you plug it into your computer
and you've logged into your email client, and whenever you
(09:33):
get a new email, it sends the signal because you've
programmed it this way and you've programmed it to interact
with your computer. The there's a signal sent from your
computer to the electronic board and the little light goes on. Now,
that's just a very simple application of the art we
know board. Right, That's just one tiny little example, but
that's the sort of thing you could do if you
(09:55):
wanted to. Yes, yeah, if you uh, if you're listening
to the podcast to this point and you're you're sort
of trying to get an idea, um, you you would
basically see the same kind of thing. If you're you know,
if you haven't actually seen an ARD we know board yet,
you if you popped open a remote control or really
(10:17):
you know, any kind of electronic portable electronic device, popped
it open and looked at the guts of this, that's
basically more or less what an RD we know is.
It's the board that has um all kinds of whatever
the components are that needs to run that device. Um.
But in the case that ARD we know, it's a
do it yourself type thing. So it comes to the
(10:38):
basic the board like the ARD we know you know,
which is I would I would guess probably the most basic,
you know, multi purpose, very popular board, although there are
again many others. Um, you know, it comes with certain
things pre installed on it. But though that's by no
means you know, that's really just sort of to get
you started, I think, but really, um, it's not very
(11:01):
if you're not the kind of person that likes to
take stuff apart or built stuff from scratch. This may
not be very interesting to you might look at it
and go, I don't care. I want it to be
what I wanted already. The thing is, uh, you know,
for people who like to do a little hacking and
getting into uh some programming, this can be a lot
of fun because you can do It's sort of like, um,
(11:24):
this is sort of like the physical representation of a
programming language, I would say, because it takes. What it
does is you can hook things into it to receive
inputs and then hook other things up to it to
give you an output. Um. They're all kinds of projects
on the web. Um. I've seen games for it. UM,
I've seen you know, different kinds of input detectors, like
(11:46):
you were talking about the the email when it comes in,
things like that where it says, okay, when you get information,
send me a signal somehow. Yeah, And I mean you
can do almost anything with it really really. In order
to do these things, you have to hook up other
circuitry to the arduino. Uh. They are two, like I
says it, that's that's the board. It's just the foundation.
(12:08):
And you have to you have to provide the other
bits that are going to build into whatever electronic device
you're designing. So here let's give a couple of other
just examples of devices you could you could create with this. UM.
I found a site called hacken mod h A c
K N m O D and it had a list
of the top forty Arduino projects on the web, and
(12:32):
it was an interesting list. There were a lot of
different applications and these are just things that hobbyists thought, Hey,
you know what I want to build such and such.
The cool thing with our dwino is that, let's say
that you have come up with an idea for an
electronic device, but you're you know, you don't you don't
know any way of going about and doing it without
without starting from scratch. Well, the Arduino might serve as
(12:54):
the foundation for your device, and you can even create
devices that you can go on to sell in the market.
Uh that that use our two as the basis for
the electronics. That's perfectly fine with the the Creative Commons
license that they've used to to license this stuff. UM. Now,
there are cases where if you're going to make modifications
(13:14):
to the hardware, you need to publish those those changes
so that other people can benefit from your work and um,
and you stay true to the license. But anyway, some
examples include I read about collision avoiding robots. So in
other words, you're using that circuit board as the brains
(13:35):
for lack of a better term of this of this robot. Yeah,
and and so you have to attach the right sensors
that will detect any sort of obstacle in the way
of the robot. And you have to connect the the
other wires over to the various motors in the robot
(13:55):
so that the the robots able to process the information
that it it pulls in and act on it. So
that's an example of what the artwino could be used for.
But you can also do other things. Like I said,
there's accelerometers. I came across a guitar pedal that was
using the artwino as the main circuit board for the
guitar pedal. It's just a hobbyist made it key tars. Hey, Yeah,
(14:21):
you want to bring those eighties days back? You wanna
have your keytar out? Uh that This is one that
I thought was really a great idea. Someone used the
ardwino as the basis to create a turn signal biking jacket.
So yeah, it's a jacket that has turned signals built
into it. Yeah, and uh and this, you know, these
(14:43):
are these are just kind of neat ideas that that
people came up with and they tooled around with the
Ardwino and various other electronic components and made them. There
are others as well. There are radio control device devices
I've seen. I've also seen a gaming devices like there
was one it was essentially called an open source game boy. Yeah.
(15:04):
So the idea of being that, you know, using the
Arduino as the main circuit board, you could create a
gaming device. Now again, you still have to have all
those other components and you have to hook them up. Now,
for a lot of these devices, people what they do
is they just went to an electronics store and bought
the individual components, went back home and then started to
hook them up to the Arduino in the proper configuration.
(15:27):
And then you know, then you have to program it.
And like I said, the programming language that's you know, Ardwino.
Uh uh give makes that available to so you can
learn how to program your electronics device through the Arduino
system and actually you know, create the parameters that your
device needs to follow in order to execute whatever actions
(15:51):
you want it to do. Um, and you can you
don't have to use the Ardwino language either, you can
use others, but you would still have to uh create
the halfway from it to go from whatever programming language
you were using into the art programming language. That would
add an extra step. But um, but it is a possibility.
And I've seen there are a lot of tutorials on
(16:14):
the web as well on how to use are we
on how to program? Aren't we know? Yeah? Actually the
language is expandable using C or C plus plus according
to make and that's that's pretty standard, um, you know, comparatively,
for example, net net we know uses C sharp as
it's programming language. Um. And that's one of the things
(16:36):
that they saw as a downside to that if you're
not comfortable programming and see, it might be a little
daunting at first. Um, but you really don't need all
that much if you want to get started with that.
Of course, as we were saying before, you know, it
does take uh some cash to get started to buy
the uh the main controller board, whichever board you decide
(16:58):
to choose. There are several UM and I have some listed. UM.
You would also need some stuff to go with it, UM,
led s, potentiometers, accelerometers, speakers. Yeah, you definitely need a
USB cable because you have to attach the board to
your computer to program it. UM. Then one of the
(17:19):
nice things about it is that it works with Windows,
Mac and Linux. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of the
things that sets it apart from a lot of other
of these micro controllers that you can purchase. A lot
of them are our platform specific, most mostly Windows, because
of course that's the the most popular operating system out there.
You have the dominant operating system, and so that does
(17:41):
set it apart. Um. So yeah, that's that's one of
the things that I really liked about our Twino is
that it's it's you know, platform agnostic. It doesn't doesn't
align itself with a specific platform. Although those of us
with amigas are still out of luck. Those of you
with a megas, I'm amazed that they even run. I
have to be fair, I haven't plugged it in quite
(18:03):
some time. UM. So yeah, if you if you, it
doesn't really matter if you've got one of the predominant
operating systems out there. Even the smaller ones. Um. Then
you're welcome to go ahead and dig in. Um. You
just need to, you know, figure out what it is
that you want to do. Uh. Some of the you
(18:25):
can find kits online from a number of different stores
that will give you the basics to get started with
some easy projects, sort of get your feet wet with it.
And it kind of reminds me when we were talking
about radio in a podcast not too long ago, about
the crystal radio kits that you used to buy. This
is sort of like that. It doesn't require a whole
(18:46):
lot of soldering or anything like that. Uh, there are
you know, some of the other systems that I mentioned
earlier and others like them do It depends on whether
you're buying just a controller or controller board or an
input output board. You know, it sort of depends on
what you're working with. But the Arduino doesn't necessarily require
a lot of that kind of thing because it's it's
(19:06):
designed to be used in a variety of ways, so
you can you can hook it up with wires just
basically clipping the wires into place to see what it does. Yeah,
it's it's a teaching tool in a way. It's really
so that so that you can learn and experiment with
electronics so that you know you don't Also you don't
(19:26):
have to worry so much about if I what if
I made a mistake, What if I'm not supposed to
solder this wire to this contact point here? What if
that's the wrong one, and then I have to you know,
desauder and then resolder and then yeah, it's a it
could be a headache. So this is kind of a way. Yeah, this,
this is kind of a way to avoid that and
to have a little more flexibility and and not feel
(19:48):
as anxious every time you're about to make a connection.
Um as for the programming language are duo. Divides it
into three different parts structure values, which are your variables
and your constants, and the functions. And it's the combination
of using these three parts that allows you to tell
the circuit board what you know, what information it's going
(20:11):
to receive, and how it's going to act on that.
So it's a neat idea I've and I do recommend
you check out the the hacken mod article on the
top forty because there are there are a lot of
really interesting applications there and also there are like you said,
there are some tutorials online that are pretty helpful. It's
funny because I found tutorials on two different sites and
(20:34):
they share something in common. Yeah, let's see if you
pick up on it. There's Ada Fruit Industries and Lady
Ada dot Net. Okay, so Lovelace there had a bit
of an influence on both of those, but both both
sites have um tutorials on the the the RD we
(20:59):
know micro controller, and we'll even go so far as
to walk you through the first couple of projects, like uh,
the Lady Eta one. The very first project that will
walk you through is the what they call the the
electronics version of Hello World. Hello World. If you aren't
(21:19):
familiar with this, Hello World is one of those very
basic basic programs. Yeah, you're supposed actually, it's a I
would put this in quotes. You're supposed to just, you know,
write your first program and have it say Hello World.
It's sort of it's it's sort of a tradition, a
programming tradition, but yeah, it's it's the whole idea is
that you pick something that's incredibly simple to accomplish, but
(21:42):
that that gives you the basis to learn the tool.
In this case, the programming language. Um, so with the
electronics version of Hello World, what that is is a
blinking LED. So it's it's learning how to program the
art we know so that it will cause a an
(22:03):
LED to blink. Very nice. Yeah, you can't get really
any simpler than that. Yeah, it's about as easy as
it gets. But then that beyond that, the later tutorials
start to teach you how to incorporate things like sensors
and switches and buttons, things that we take for granted
(22:24):
as users of electronics. You know, you tend to forget, Oh, this,
this button that I'm pressing is actually interacting with this
electronic device in a fairly complex way. You know, you
just think I pushed the button and uh and and
Joel and the bots get the really bad movie of
the week movie sign ah good times. Yeah, just don't
(22:51):
as it a side note. Um, the founder of Ata
Fruit Industries actually was profiled on the cover of Wired
not too long ago. Uh, that's a neat article. She's
a she's an interesting person. Yes, yes, I remember that. Definitely.
The cover caused some some controversy, as I recall, yeah,
which was unmerited. Well anyway, Nonetheless, she and her company
(23:18):
is very into taking stuff apart and hacking it and
doing it yourself. So, um, it's very cool. Actually, Uh,
she's got some I believe she's got some stuff that's wearable.
And that's one of those funny things. When I got
into the different boards. Um, as I mentioned earlier that
who knows the very basic board, but there are different ones.
I mean you have the Bluetooth board that comes with
(23:40):
the Bluetooth module installed. Um, there are mini boards and
nano boards. Uh, not literally nano, they're not actually on
the nano scale. They're just smaller than the other boards
use the USB Mini b cable instead of the regular
And I mean you would want to have those if
the if your goal was to create an object that
would need to be smaller, and you wouldn't want this
(24:03):
this larger circuit board in there because it would it
would change the form factor you have in mind. That's
why you would go with one of these smaller boards.
In general, it's one of the reasons anyway. And then
there's the lily pad. Did you see this? Not? The
lily pad is an argue. We know a board for
h that's designed to be worn. It actually comes in
(24:24):
purple um. But it's it's designed to be sewn into
fabric so that you can wear whatever it is you're
you're building and for and for those who are working
on a professional level who want to use the art
we know and something that you're going to leave as
a permanent you know, I want to create this device,
and I want it to be this way forever. It's
not something I'm going to take a part again. There
(24:46):
is a pro version of the board too, so really
they're reaching out to a pretty broad section of the community.
And you could tell. I mean, uh, Seth Rosenblatt did
an article for zd net just a couple of days
before we recorded this. Actually the week we are recording this, Uh,
we're following up on Google i OH, which is their
developer conference um and uh Seth Rosenblatt was writing that
(25:11):
about the Android Open Accessory Initiative and the Androids Android
Device Kit, which used the art we know for people
to build their own Android based devices. Yeah, that's that's
a that was a big part of Google's IO event
was that they were talking about how Android is not
just going to be a smartphone and tablet um platform,
(25:35):
but a platform that will be on top of lots
of different kinds of electronics, things that you wouldn't even
necessarily have thought. Oh well, yeah, clearly you want Android
on that. So things like you know, stoves and and
and refrigerators and you're robot dog, robot dog. Um. Yeah,
(25:55):
I don't I think that the the system actually would
continue the art we know part of it still continue
to run, um the I D that comes with, aren't
we know? But this this kit would allow you to
basically create an interface between your Android based device and
the thing that you're building. Um, So that's that's pretty
(26:18):
cool to to reach out and sort of bridge that gap,
so you could make something that you could control with
your phone for example. Yeah, I've seen some in that
hackened mod list. I think there were a couple of
things that people have already already built where you can
control certain devices through a phone. Um. But yeah, that's
I don't have the list ring in front of me,
(26:39):
but I do seem to remember that. So yeah, it's
a really neat kind of idea. If you guys are
interested in electronics and building your own electronics and just
really learning what makes electronics tick, then you might want
to you can actually make the electronics tick. What does
it do? It ticks? I got a ticking module and
(27:00):
I hooked it up and it's yeah, I don't suggest
you make something that ticks and then put it in
a public place. Yeah, let's just right now, that's not fun.
Don't do that. Yeah, they'll trace it back and then
they'll come back and they'll knock on our doors and
they'll say, why did you tell people to do this?
So we didn't tell them to do that. We said
that they would it is possible to do that. Yes,
(27:21):
we now disavow ourselves. And then he taking our duenos um,
although taking our twos would be a great name for
a band. Yeah, I'm getting a little sidetracked, I think anyway.
I was trying to say, if you're interested in electronics,
you might want to look into this. It is a
bit of an investment. Although they there their boards tend
to be fifty dollars or less. Yeah, it's not an expensive,
(27:42):
expensive investment. But if it's something that you're doing as
a hobby and you know, well, you also have to
buy the stuff in addition to the board. A lot
of the kids or whatever, sorry, go ahead, A lot
of the kids I've seen her a little or usually
around nine or maybe a hundred forty for a kit
that has again you know, a speaker and a potentiometer
(28:03):
and some other stuff that you can use to make
it do stuff. Um, so that's not it's not terrible,
but it's not pocket change for a lot of people. Right.
But if you are interested in really getting into electronics,
and maybe you want to design electronics for further down
the line, and this would be you know, probably a
good way to kind of learn the ins and outs
of the basics and maybe even you'll come up with
(28:26):
the next you know, killer electronics device, and you never
know that this is the sort of stuff that can
inspire people to to really push the envelope as far
as consumer electronics goes, well, you and I have talked
about it before, and we've talked about programming and things
like the Commodore sixty four and how many people who
are in what is now a billion multibillion dollar video
(28:49):
gaming industry started off typing in commands and there very
low power Vick twenty or vicy Vick twenties and Commodore
sixty four's back you know, years and years ago. You
know this is a way to get your feet wet
in the electronics world. So if you're interested in in
electronics engineering, uh, and you really don't have a lot
(29:10):
of experience with it, this is a good way to
get started, and it's a good way to build on
it if you already do have some experience exactly. Yeah,
anything from robotics too, Like I said, consumer electronics. Well,
I think that wraps up this discussion on our DW know.
If you guys have any suggestions for future topics, let
us know. Or let's say, maybe you've worked with our
two If you have, let us know, let's know what
(29:32):
sort of projects you've you've worked with or any of
our DWIN knows um, uh, you know, contemporaries, any of
the other kind of micro controllers, if you have experience
with that, let us know. And uh, you can let's
know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is text
stuff hs W or you can send us an email.
That email address is tech stuff at how stuff Works
(29:53):
dot com. Chris and I will talk to you again
really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
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