At this past weekend’s meeting of the Seattle Robotics Society, Kerry Hammil and Michael Ashby demonstrated the Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer “open-source toolkit for building small electronic devices using the .NET Micro Framework and Visual Studio/Visual C# Express.” Very cool stuff. The projects they showed included two robots; an infrared controller for a remote-control helicopter; a self-contained, stop-motion animation record-and-playback system; and miniature arcade game.
Check out some of the sensors, actuators, and other component modules for Gadgeteer, designed, developed, and/or distributed by GHI and Seeed Studio. You can also create your own modules.
These modular, reusable, rapid-development toolkits such as Gadgeteer, GROVE, and Phidgets would be great for creating ad hoc electronic ritual tools and interactions that you can break down and later turn into new tools or interactions.
As a busy futurist, I have not much time to wax nostalgic, but inspired by a conversation about text-based online occult activities and communities, earlier today at the Seattle Chaos Magic meetup, tonight I am watching Hackers and remembering some of the things that steered me to this place…
The Micro Adventure books, e.g., informed my ideas about writing grimoires that include source code for programs that augment the grimoires’ texts.
Wow, there are a lot of Arduino books coming out this year. Here are some of them, mostly from Apress or Make / O’Reilly:
- Android and Arduino: Take the Physical World Mobile With the Mega ADK
- Arduino and Kinect Projects: Design, Build, Blow Their Minds
- Arduino Robot Bonanza
- Arduino Wearables
- Arduino, Sensors, and the Cloud
- Beginning Android ADK with Arduino
- Codebox: Adventures with Processing and Arduino
- Environmental Monitoring with Arduino: Building Simple Devices to Collect Data About the World Around Us
- Getting Started with Netduino
- Getting Started with NFC: Contactless Communication with Android, Arduino, and Processing
- Getting Started with RFID: Identify Objects in the Physical World with Arduino
- Learn Electronics with Arduino
- Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot
- Pro Arduino
- Programming Your Home: Automate with Arduino, Android, and Your Computer
- Sensor Interfaces for Arduino: Importing the Universe
I will review several of these for potential hyperRitual and Robomancy.com projects.
TarotBot is an open source framework for tarot readings on Android devices with switchable card decks and interpretations.
Not my doing, but sounds cool. Check it out.
My sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the Robomancy.com fundraiser on IndieGoGo. Of all the ass kickers, you’re the kick-assest! We raised 180% of our target funds over one lunar cycle. Here are the final stats:
Visitors 1,324
Views 2,218
Funders 35
Contributions $1,800
Favorites 42
Referrals 1,697
One of my favorite things that happened during the campaign is we were mentioned on All Things Apocalyptic and This Week in Creepy Robots.
Now my friends and I have a lot of work ahead of us. For those who contributed, I will be in touch soon re when to expect various perks. Further updates on this project will be transmitted through IndieGoGo.
Thanks again!
