http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

The software is available for Windows, Linux and Macs. To set up on a Mac, follow this guide:

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MacOSX

Then you can get an idea of what to do first:

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Sketch

http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/

This Friday Ben Dalton, Paul Emery & I will be running an Arduino workshop at LeedsMet’s staff development week for staff across the University. The session titled “Future Craft” will include an introduction to Arduino along with discussion of the potential for the use of this type of technology across a range of academic disciplines.

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It can be used in performance aswell.

Motion tracking with Quartz

and this snazzy installation.

Here’s a Video.

The main challenge of getting this to work was translating the jittery signal from the Arduino into a smooth and fluid movement in flash.

I separated the values from the different controllers by adding 257 to the second input in Arduino. Then once id identified the different feeds in flash I gave the second value a different name and subtracted the 257 back off again.

I achieved the smooth and fluid movement by using action script to store the incoming signals into 2 arrays and creating an average of each array which id use as the value to control the behavior of objects in flash.

Here’s a section of the AS2 code I wrote that did this (for just one of the values)

// fills array for value1

function loop1() {

            // need to store data values  e.g. store[arrayPointer] = data

            dataArray[arrayPointer] = _root.mc_square._xscale;

            arrayPointer = (arrayPointer+1);// adds 1 to arrayPointer each loop

            //trace(arrayPointer);

            _root.createAvg();

            _root.divideAvg();

            // if arrayPointer is a number the same as or greater than the length of the array

            if (arrayPointer>=dataArray.length) {

                        arrayPointer = 0;// resets arrayPointer back to 0

            }

}

// gets average value from array and makes the var avg equal to it.

function createAvg() {

            for (var i:Number = 0; i<dataArray.length; i++) {

                        //trace(dataArray[i]);

                        avg = avg+(dataArray[i]);

            }

}

// divides the average by the length of the array and outputs it

function divideAvg() {

            avg = Math.round(avg/dataArray.length);

            _root.mc_square2._xscale = (avg);

            // make paddles = new averaged values

             _root.p._y  = (avg);

}

Another main problem I found was flash didn’t seem to treat the incoming xml socket data as an integer so to get it as a value I could use in my equation I linked the scale of an invisible movie clip on stage to the value of data and then used this movie clips properties in my calculations.

+ wii nunchuck