What’s it all about?
I don’t want to tackily leverage big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas to peddle my own goods, but Tony Stark was a pretty cool guy. And of course what made him cool was his ability to tinker in his lab and come up with killer robotic exoskeletons. We’re here to show you that tinkering with electronics is in fact accessible to us all, not just genius shut-ins or the hyper-rich. You too can make a robotic exoskeleton, or anything else that looks strongly or even vaguely robotic.
What will we cover?
To achieve these lofty goals, we will be utilising the marvelous burgeoning world of modularized electronics. We’ll take you through the first baby steps towards robo-technological proficiency by basing our lesson on the famous Italian prototyping board Arduino.
- The basics – We start with an explanation of what we mean by modularized electronics, and why the arduino is a perfect plact to start.
- The setup – the Arduino, the programming computer, the cables, the power source, and your choice of electronic madness
- Programming the board – there is a bit of code, but don’t let that scare you We can take baby steps or big steps to show you how your hardware interacts with your software.
- Getting some action – we’ll provide a few different avenues for you to try out the Arduino’s capabilities, but all of them have a real-world element. It’s the transformation from virtual into the physical that is the real excitement of working with this platform.
Once we’ve experienced some Arduino magic, we’d love to do a bit of Q&A on the remarkable international Maker community (something that, as newly minted Arduino experts, you’ve taken a big step to joining.)
**Please note: You won’t need to own an Arduino to participate in this class, although if you have one you are more than welcome to bring it along. We will be working in pairs, and although we will be supplying some computers, there will not be enough for all students. Please bring along your laptop if you are able, and we will install the software on your computer (for free!). This is compatible with both PC’s and Mac’s. If you plan to bring your own computer please show up to the class at least 20mins earlier, so we have the time to upload everything we need!
Who will be teaching?
The workshop is presented by Toolbox, a design/electronics company working out of St Kilda. More specifically it’s presented by Bruno Herfst, Matthew Sullivan and Rhys Sullivan, a trio of technology aficionados who love teaching technology almost as much as they like using technology.