There's something great about making something that affects the physical world, isn't there? I've written programs that manage billions of dollars and websites that support millions of users, yet I still get a thrill out of simple stuff like wiring an outlet or building a shelf.
Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
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Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#12Small world. I actually worked on some of the content for the Inventor's Kit guide. When you read "You want orange, you want teal, you want aubergine!" that's me. :)
Happy to receive feedback on the guide as you work through it.
I was introduced to the Arduino nearly four years ago and actually earn income now from Physical Computing related teaching, writing and project development.
Creating tangible things and escaping the world of the purely virtual is really fun. (I write as I'm surrounded by a soldering iron and a bunch of XBee related components. :) )
(I was actually planning to submit the original of the following video but DEFCON's taken them down for some reason. But...if you're interested in a security-slanted introduction to the Arduino you might be interested in this session I co-presented at DEFCON18 this year about the Arduino: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XotF9FyiAZc )
If you get the chance to play with some of this stuff, do it!
[Oh, and, that whole flashing LED buzz is an interesting phenomenon and it continues as you gain experience--except instead of signifying you've got everything installed okay it might mean your signal has reached the satellite and returned back again. :D ]
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#13Thrilled that this is #1 for now. HN "Hackers" need to realize that the physical world exists beyond the console.
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#14You can replicate this delightful experience with:
*A normal breadboard and circuit components
*Matlab with DAQ Toolbox included (not all versions have this toolbox)
*An analog to digital converter, such as a National Instruments USB-6008Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#15Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.
Well, this is the same guy who wrote "The Secret To Getting on the HN Front Page".
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#16Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.
Well, the innate coolness of physical hacking may be old news too you at the Replicator blog. :-) But vast numbers of software hackers have a secret love of hacking around with real hardware and micro-controllers, and we don't do it as much as we'd like.
Ryan's post captures this emotion perfectly. I didn't vote for it, but I'm not surprised to see it at the top of Hacker News. There's some value in capturing widely-shared emotions succinctly.
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#17Arduinos are a ton of fun, myself and a couple other startup/web dev/hackers I know have gotten into them recently.
Warning: Shameless plug ahead
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#18Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.
I think his point wasn't that physical products are cool, its that for us web types, they seem preternaturally cool. After a while, one just takes it for granted that bits can be shuffled around a screen. To see a bit flip and actually do something is something altogether different. To wit: I created (and bombed) an entire startup around a very tiny telephone PBX device and the thing I'm still most jazzed about is th…
If you still have an interest in telephony you might want to look at http://www.rowetel.com/blog/ and his work on the Mesh Potato http://www.villagetelco.org/about/mesh-potato/.
It's an open source hardware project to create an easily deployed developing world "village telephony" system.
Some really good content.
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#19Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.
Well, this is the same guy who wrote "The Secret To Getting on the HN Front Page".
I remember reading that and wondering how many people follow it. Today, after watching yet another of my more technical submissions sink without trace, I start to wonder whether I should game the system in the ways he suggests. After all, it would demonstrate and make use of the knowledge I've gained from being here here a while, and perhaps it would give my submissions a fighting chance among yet another submission telling us China has a new supercomputer.
Re: Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this.
#20Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up the page.
It could also just be a slow news day - I certainly feel like there it's been pretty light on meaty articles today. Maybe I should try to track that and see if there's some tendency towards different kind of articles on a Friday due to it being the end of the week.
It's technical/mathematical rather than news, but there's this one: