Spooky Projects - Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino

Posted by todbot on October 2nd, 2006

spooky headerarduino usb

Spooky Projects is a set of four 3-hour classes in October 2006 hosted by Machine Project and taught by Tod E. Kurt. It is an introduction to microcontroller programming and interfacing with the real world using the Arduino physical computing platform.

In the class, participants are shown and experiment with the Arduino’s capabilities and learn the basics of common microcontroller interfacing, such as: digital output to control lights and LEDs, digital input to read switches and buttons, analog output to control motor position or LED brightness, and analog input to read sensor inputs. From these tools all sorts of interesting projects can be created. In the class, a few simple project sketches are covered using the provided parts kit, under the theme of spooky animatronics for Halloween.

The class assumes no previous electronics knowledge, though it does assume a little programming knowledge. No soldering is needed during the class, as all circuits are built with solderless breadboards.

At the end of the class, Mark Allen of Machine Project bestowed upon each of the students an awesome programming merit badge. Take other Machine Project classes to get other great geeky badges!
arduino class merit badge

Blog Posts

Class Notes

Arduino Sketches Used in Class

Processing Sketches Used In Class

  • http_rgb_led — fetch a web page, parse it, send RGB color value to Arduino. Used with Arduino sketch ’serial_rgb_led_too’ above.
  • arduino_ball — Arduino with piezo sends a number, Processing parses it and draws a ball the size of the number.
  • arduino_spookysounds — When piezo on Arduino is whacked, Processing draws scary eyes and plays a spooky sound.

Class Kit Parts

Arduino & Other Microcontroller Resources

Parts Suppliers

  • SparkFun — Arudino board and shield, and many other neat gizmos.
  • Jameco — General electronic parts, easy-to-use, also has computer parts.
  • Digikey — Exhaustive parts supplier. Cheaper than Jameco usually, has more variation, more hard-to-find parts.

44 Responses to “Spooky Projects - Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino”

Will the rest of the class notes be made available? I am interested in using them for the High Tech Explorer Post that I am an advisor for.

Left by Carlos L Qualls on October 10th, 2006

Yup, after each class I’ll post the notes and any code or links references within.

Left by todbot on October 10th, 2006

This is great. It made me go and buy an Arduino and now I can’t wait to use it. Thanks for publishing the class notes, it’s really helpful to someone (like me for instance) that is poking about with electronics but doesn’t know any theory. At all. Thanks again!

Left by bennr on October 17th, 2006

Wow. This is super! Next week I’m going to attend an Arduino workshop and as I will probably be the only not so programmy and female individual, I wanted to have a surf and sniff around some arduino-related websites, which is how I ended up here. I am really impressed and I think it is tooootally great that you post all your notes. May you have a lot of nice work and recognition :-)

Yeay from Brussels!

Left by wendy on October 23rd, 2006

Your class_notes are really great!! Can we expect more and if yes, when? Thank you!

Left by Jovan on October 29th, 2006

Thanks heaps for these notes - just got the board and am really enjoying trying out your suggestions - a fine resource - thanks

Left by Garth Paine on November 13th, 2006

hello, thank you spooky ! I translated many of your skteches and words in french for my Arduino’s workshop booklet. great work !

Left by JNM on November 15th, 2006

Part one says “Complete kit manifest with part numbers will be online” - is this available somewhere and I’m just not seeing it?

Left by Tophat on December 2nd, 2006

Thank you so much! I found these class notes just in time. I volunteered to teach a few of our Linux LUG members some embedded development and was just beginning to put together the required courseware. This is exactly in line with what I was hoping to do and will save me SO much time that I can’t thank you enough.

Left by Mark Stanley on December 2nd, 2006

Tophat, you’re not missing it, I’ve not done it yet. I forgot about it actually. Look for it in a few days.

Left by todbot on December 2nd, 2006

I’ve added the parts list finally. :)

Left by todbot on December 20th, 2006

The arduino_ball.pde creates vertical ovals with a gradient from pink to blue. Here is a picture of it: http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1393/arduinoballerrorgo4.jpg

Left by Tim on January 7th, 2007

Tim, yeah that’s what it’s supposed to look like. I guess ‘ball’ is a misnomer. You can change how far ‘long’ the ball is by adjusting the value ‘100′ in drawball().

Left by todbot on January 7th, 2007

Thanks Tod!

Left by Tim on January 9th, 2007

Thanks for the notes, i’m a keen ameteur myself and i found your notes a great help, thanks again, your a star.

Left by Michael on April 3rd, 2007

Thanks, Tod, for these excellent learning resources. I, and I’m sure many others, are indebted to you.

[m]

Left by Marcel on May 7th, 2007

thank you for all this information- it has being very helpful

Left by uriel on July 9th, 2007

Hi, this all looks awesome! Will utilize the code for reading the piezos, to make my own drum triggers. Lots of other cool ideas here too.

Have you used Arduino for reading distance sensors? I’m pretty confident I can get standard ultrasound ones working (same as pots or a photoresistor which are no problem), but I’m looking to use lasers as I need the measuring beams to be ultra-narrow. Wondering if you’ve ever hacked around with something like this.

This is part of a 12-string “Laser Harp” I’m building (break beams = trigger note or other events, but I’d like hand-height to give a continuous value along with it). Jitter and a camera could easily do it using color-tracking along the appropriate “column”, but it bogs things down a bit and makes the harp non-stand-alone…

I’m OK with the Arduino and quite familiar with Max (where the interface will be). Just need some electronics ideas (or a juicy link which I’m been searching in vain for) that you might have come across, that would be ever so helpful!

Great work, and thanks for the info. Would love to participate in the class and show some of the cool things you can do with Max and physical computing, it’s definitely worth a serious look if you’re into this sort of thing… plus it gives a interesting different “take” on programming.

–CJ

Left by seejayjames on September 24th, 2007

Hi CJ,
Most laser harps I’ve seen (look around on the net, you can probably find plans for a few), use LEDs/lasers as the light emitter and phototransistors/photodiodes as the receiver. They’re strictly an on/off detector, and the circuit is the same as any other type of “optical interrupter” that you’ll run into in, say, robotics. If all you want to do is measure “off” (hand breaking the beam), you’ll have no problem, and will be able to detect how long the hand is breaking the beam too.

If you want to measure how far away the hand is from the light source, that’s measuring distance, and measuring distance is a bit harder. To do so cheaply, an ultrasonic rangefinder is commonly used. Not sure how they would work if there were twelve in close proximity.

Let me know when you get your laser harp working, I’d love to see some pics of it.

Left by todbot on September 24th, 2007

Thanks todbot, I think I’m going to go with those parallax ones, experiment a bit. They might be good for some “master” controls rather than individual string controls. I’ll see what else is out there for possibly hacking into a commercial laser-measurer, or putting one together with parts somehow, if I want that (and it doesn’t cost more than it’s worth).

It may be that four of these ultrasonics placed cleverly will give enough gestural control, particularly with the interface design and being able to map the values to whatever parameters one wants. Plus, there will be lots of MIDI stuff included in the setup, so there’s no shortage of keys and knobs one can also use for control.

Will keep you posted, though it’ll be awhile. Lots of other projects going on…

Thanks again, this is a great resource!

CJ

Left by seejayjames on September 24th, 2007

Oh yeah, you could totally just have one of the ultrasonic sensors be a “mod wheel” hooked to filter cutoff or pitch bend or something and the note triggers being the just the on/off light sensors.

Left by todbot on September 24th, 2007

Thanks so much for your class notes. There is a minor error in lecture 1. On page 29, the blinky LED circuit wiring diagram should have the positive terminal of the LED connected to the resistor (it looks like it is the negative). The schematic is correct.

Left by Mike on February 25th, 2008

You’re right Mike, oops! Though that wiring diagram is a bit vague so it’s hard to tell exactly how the LED is wired up. General rule of prototyping with LEDs: if it doesn’t light up, switch the leads around and try again. ;-)

Left by todbot on February 25th, 2008

[...] tutorials that I find really valuable when teaching this stuff. This is namely Tod E. Kurt’s Spooky Arduino and Lady Ada’s Arduino Lessons. Great explanations on all sorts of issues and very useful [...]

Left by criticalmaking.com » Blog Archive » Killer Arduino Robots on April 15th, 2008

[...] todbot blog >> Spooky Arduino, Tutorials [...]

Left by Arduino Einführung | Robotfreak Blog on April 18th, 2008

Thank you so much! I found these class notes just in time. Your class_notes are really great!!

Giulio

Left by Giulio Guglielmi on May 11th, 2008

[...] great set of notes from Tod E. Kurt, from his ‘Spooky Projects - Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino‘ [...]

Left by What About Socialization? » Science! on May 14th, 2008

I love your notes. They are definitely a big help with my robot.

Left by Roy on June 2nd, 2008

[...] This other random site. [...]

Left by Arduino Tutorials: Everything You Need | Hack N Mod - Amazingly Cool Hacks, Mods, and Projects on September 2nd, 2008

[...] http://todbot.com/blog/spookyarduino/ (full workshop in PDF with code examples) [...]

Left by current art and design courses » Blog Archive » Arduino Resources for DIS folks on September 3rd, 2008

[...] This other random yet very useful site." [...]

Left by Arduino Microcontroller Tutorials - Hacked Gadgets - DIY Tech Blog on September 11th, 2008

Terribly entertaining and educative course, congratulations.

Left by slandete on September 13th, 2008

[...] Very nice set of tutorials: http://todbot.com/blog/bionicarduino/ http://todbot.com/blog/spookyarduino/ [...]

Left by Guilherme Martins - Project Showroom : Easy Arduino Robot Tutorial on September 19th, 2008

[...] http://todbot.com/blog/spookyarduino/ [...]

Left by Arduino Microcontroller - THlab on September 30th, 2008

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Left by Guilherme Martins - Project Showroom : Primeiro Robot com Arduino - 1ª Parte on November 5th, 2008

Excellent, excellent Arduino reference site. Great class notes!

Left by ... on December 3rd, 2008

[...] todbot blog Spooky Projects is a set of four 3-hour classes in October 2006 hosted by Machine Project and taught by Tod E. Kurt. It is an introduction to microcontroller programming and interfacing with the real world using the Arduino physical computing platform. (tags: arduino electronics tutorial) [...]

Left by links for 2008-12-12 | Grrrúsk og Gaman on December 16th, 2008

[...] Spooky Projects [...]

Left by rudi niemeijer » Arduino on December 17th, 2008

hi,
I was trying arduino_spookysounds and it works fine. I want to use six piezos. Can you tell me how to modify the sketches on Arduino and Processing so that each piezo plays its own sound?
thanks, mae

Left by mae on January 20th, 2009

Hi mae,
For the Arduino sketch, grab “piezo_read.pde” above and replace the “loop()” function with something that will look at each piezo and send out via serial the number of the piezo that’s been hit. Something like this:

int numPiezos = 6;
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(ledPin,LOW);     // indicate we're waiting
  for( int i=0; i= THRESHOLD ) {      // is it bigger than our minimum?
      digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // tell the world
      t = 0;
      while(analogRead( i ) >= (THRESHOLD/2)) {
        t++;
      } // wait for it to go LOW  (with a little hysteresis)
      if(t!=0)
        Serial.println( i );  // print out the number of the piezo read
    }
  }
}

Then in the Processing sketch, you want to read that piezo number sent by the Arduino. That means the “serialEvent()” method in the “arduino_spookysounds.pde” sketch would turn into something like:

void serialEvent(Serial p) {
  int num = port.read();
  println("num="+num);        // print out the value read
  if( num >= 0 && num < num_sounds ) {
    myChannel[num].play(1);   // play a sound
  }
}

Left by todbot on January 21st, 2009

thanks for your quick answer!! I´ll try it. greetings from germany. mae

Left by mae on February 3rd, 2009

thanks! I´ll try it. greetings from Germany :)
your site is great. I´ll recommend it. mae

Left by mae on February 3rd, 2009

[...] Spooky projects with Arduino [...]

Left by Experimentierboard Arduino Duemilanove « Netzwelten on March 21st, 2009

[...] Short video (m4v) of a piezo, photoresistor and Arduino…. Here’s the code we used from TodBot! [...]

Left by Piezo with an Arduino & photoresistor « adafruit industries blog on May 19th, 2009

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