Arduino

To end this term we've been working with Arduino. Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for anyone making interactive projects and it's mainly composed by a software and a board shield, supplemented by several means. This project was created in around 2005 by a group of people related with the Italian Interactive Design Institute Ivrea, to create a more affordable and accessible free hardware device, compatible with most operative systems. Now there are discussions about the licensing of Arduino between its creators but this project is a great mean for education and development so I hope we will still be using it in schools for long.

In our high school we have several Arduino materials with which we create interactive gadgets. Then with our creations we participate in a technology fair. But, to get started on it, we at first make simple projects. We've made two projects until now. You can see the information about them in the Verkstad Creative Technologies webpage, in the second and third blocks.

The first project consisted on a sport or game. My group made REACT. It consists on a sequence of LEDs that come on light aleatory and you have to push the corresponding capacitive sensor rapidly to continue playing. You can see the information here:

The second project consisted on a "magic" gadget. My group made POV, which consists on a line of LEDs on the shield which come on light depending on how you program them, so that when you make it turn rapidly or you move it rapidly, you can see words or symbols on it, and it is so cool. You can see its information here:

I hope you liked, I'll upload more information and images about this if we continue working with Arduino. Have nice Easter holidays!

Processing

Hello again. We've started programming in computing with Processing and Arduino. Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) to create designs and electronic or media art. For example, you can create figures which follow the mouse, stay the same, move aleatory or through your keyboard's keys, or follow orders, with different colors and shapes, and make them do something interesting.

We worked with the exercises from the Creative Technologies web, and then modified them, so in the 1st block from this webpage you can find the explanations about these exercises and how to do them.

To set the size of the window that appears we use the function void setup(). Data is inserted between {} and each line with data ends with ; .

A first exercise useful to learn is creating a figure with different shapes, sizes and colours, and place them in a coordinate or make them follow the mouse. The properties of these figures and the background colours are set with the function void draw()

Another simple exercise to learn is creating a line whose end follows the mouse and leaves a trail through his way, by making one of its ends follow the mouse with the coordinates line(0, 0, mouseX, mouseY).

Then we also made a kind of snake which follows the mouse and changes colour through the time. I changed its shape, the colours, the time in which it changes colour...

A more complicated practice was making a digital clock which was based on the computers' clock. We inserted the numbers' images, changed the shape of the clock, put it horizontally and added the colons.

To finish with Processing we made a videogame in which something moved with the keyboard keys had to catch a falling object. I set all the images, changed the time limit, set a winning objective and adjusted several things.

Programming is complicated if you have to do it from scratch, but with Versktad's webpage it's a lot easier, it explains it very well and you can manage to change already existent programs.

I hope it was useful and you liked it, in the next post I'll write about Arduino.

Golden Ratio in design

We've been asked to write something about the Golden Ratio in design. This amazing term is the one which appoints the proportion between two quantities when their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities, and you can see it better in this image:

This ratio can be obtained from the division between two consecutive numbers from the Fibonacci progression (Fibonacci or Leonardo of Pisa was an Italian mathematician from the XII and XIII centuries), whose numbers are obtained through the addition of the two previous numbers of the succession (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144...). This division has a result of roughly 1.618.

Golden Ratio in nature

This ratio appears naturally in several aspects of nature as the position of some plants' leafs or petals, the shape of shells, galaxies, reproduction of rabbits... Even the entire human form may be broken down into a series of Golden Ratios.

But, appart from that, many designs are based on the Golden Ratio, as it is considered as a beautiful proportion to see. Some examples are the shapes of credit cards, postcards, playing cards, posters, wide-screen televisions, photographs, light switch plates and cars, webpages, and many brands' logos. There are also even hisatorical art samples which show the Golden Ratio, such as portraits, paintings, buildings, sculptures...Some of these historical samples are the Athens Parthenon, the Mona Lisa, the Vitruvian Man, and many other paintings, sculptures and buildings, as a result of trying to create beauty.


According to more actual designs, for instance, most apple designs are based on the Golden Ratio, as their logo, the iCloud logo or their mobile phones. Something we use daily as our credit cards or identity cards have the Golden Ratio on them. Also the logos of National Geographic, Toyota, Pepsi, BP, Grupo Boticario, Twitter, and also the Twitter main webpage, but surely many more have this ratio. You can see these examples here.

To sum up, the Golden Ratio or Fibonacci number is something which surrounds us naturally or artificially, that makes us see things beautiful. It may appear by chance or be really studied by designers, but it's on many things we see, and realizing and learning about it is amazing.

I hope you liked and learned a bit about this wonderful ratio. I'll write the next post soon, see you.