How Arduino is opensourcing imagination Massimo Banzi
a few weeks ago a friend of mine gave
this toy car to his eight-year-old son
but instead of going into a store and
buy one like we do normally he went to
this website and he downloaded the file
and then he printed it on this printer
so this idea that you can manufacture
objects digitally using these machines
is something that The Economist magazine
defined as the third Industrial
Revolution actually I argue that there
is another revolution going on and it’s
the one that has to do with open-source
hardware and the makers movement because
the printer that my friend used to print
a toy is actually open source so you go
to the same website you can download all
the files that you need in order to make
that printer the construction files the
hardware the software all the
instructions is there and also this is
part of a large community where there
are thousands of people around the world
that are actually making these kind of
printers and there’s a lot of innovation
happening because it’s all open source
you don’t need anybody’s permission to
create something great and that space is
like you know the personal computer in
1976 like the apples with the other
companies are fighting and we will see
in a few years there would be the apple
of this kind of market come out well
there’s also another interesting thing
that I said the electronics is
open-source because at the heart of this
printer that is something I really
attached to these Arduino board so the
motherboard the sort of powers this
printer is the project I’ve been working
on for the past seven years it’s an
open-source project I work with with
these friends of mine that I have here
so the five of us two Americans two
Italians and a Spaniard with
you know it’s a worldwide project so we
came together in this design Institute
called the interaction design incitive
rare which was teaching interaction
design this idea that you can take
design from the simple shape of an
object and you can move it forward to
design the way you interact with things
well when you design an object is
supposed to interact with the human
being if you make a full model of a
mobile phone it doesn’t make any sense
you have to have something that actually
interacts with people so we worked on
Arduino not a lot of other project there
to create platforms that would be simple
for our students to use so that our
students could just build things that
worked but they don’t have five years to
become an electronics engineer we have
one month so how do I make something
that even a kid can use and actually
with Arduino we have kids like Sylvia do
you see here that actually makes
projects with Arduino I have 11 year old
kids stop me and show me like stuff they
built for Arduino that’s really scary to
see the capabilities that kids have when
you give them the tools so let’s look at
what happens when you make a tool that
anybody can just pick up and build
something quickly so one of the examples
that I like to sort of kick off this
discussion is is this example of this
cat feeder the gentleman who made this
project had two cats one was sick and
the other one was healthy so he had to
make sure they ate the proper food so he
made this thing that recognizes the cat
from a chip mounted insert on the collar
of the cat and opens the door the cat
can eat the food this is made by
recycling an old CD player that you can
get from an old computer some cardboard
tape a couple of sensors a few blinking
LEDs and then suddenly you have a tool
you build something that you cannot find
on the market and you know I like these
phrases cracker on each if you have an
idea you just go and you make it this is
the equivalent of sketching on paper
than with electronics so one of the
features that I think it’s important
about our work is that our Hardware on
top of being made with love in Italy as
you can see from there so the back of
the circuit is that it’s open so we
publish all the design files for the
circuit online
so you can download it and you can
actually use it to make something or to
modify to learn you know when I was
learning about programming I learned by
looking at other people’s code or
looking at other people’s circuits on
magazines and this is a good way to
learn by looking at other people’s work
so the different elements of the project
are all open so the hardware is released
with a Creative Commons license
so you know I like this idea that
hardware becomes like a piece of culture
that you share and you build upon like
it was a like it was a song or a poem
you know with Creative Commons or the
software is GPL so it’s open source as
well the documentation and the hands-on
teaching methodology is also open source
and released as the Creative Commons
just the name is protected so that we
can make sure that we can tell people
what is our doing and what isn’t an
Arduino itself is made of a lot of
different open-source components that
may be individually are hard to use for
like a twelve-year-old kid but so
Arduino grabs everything together into a
mash-up of open-source technologies
where we try to give them the best user
experience to get something done quickly
so you have situations like this where
some people in Chile decided to make
their own boards instead of buying them
to organize a workshop and to save money
or there are companies that make their
own variations of Arduino that fit in a
certain market and that’s probably of
maybe like a hundred and fifty or ten or
something at the moment this one is made
by a company called Adafruit which is
run by this woman called the morph Reed
also known as lady arrow is one of the
heroes of the open-source Arbor movement
and the maker movement so this idea that
you have a new sort of turbocharged DIY
community that believes in open-source
in collaboration collaborates online
collaborates in different spaces that is
this magazine called make the sort of
gathered all these people and sort of
put them together as a community and you
see like very technical project
explained in a very simple language
beautifully typeset or you have websites
like this one like Instructables where
people actually teach each other about
anything so this one is
about Arduino projects the page you see
on the screen but effectively here you
can learn how to make a cake and
everything so let’s look at some project
so this one is a quadcopter it’s a small
model helicopter anyway it’s a toy now
and so this one was military technology
a few years ago and now it’s open-source
easy to use you can buy it online
DIY drones is the community that you do
this new thing called r2 copter but then
somebody actually launched a startup
called mater light when they figured out
that you could use these to actually
transport things from one village to
another in Africa and the fact that this
was easy to find open-source easy to
hack enable them to prototype their
company really quickly or other projects
I’m getting a little sick of hearing
about the same people on TV over and
over and over again so I decided to do
something about it this Arduino project
which I called the enough already will
mute the TV anytime any of these
overexposed personalities is mentioned
I’ll show you how I make
our producers caught up with Kim
Kardashian earlier today to find out
what she was planning on wearing - it
should do a pretty good job of
protecting our ears from having to hear
about the details of Kim Kardashian’s
wedding okay
so you know again what do you think this
thing here is that Matt found this
module that lets Arduino process ttv
signals he found some code written by
somebody else that generates infrared
signals for the TV put it together and
created this great project it’s also
used other windows using serious places
like you know the Large Hadron Collider
there’s some Arduino boards collecting
data and sort of measure some parameters
or it’s used for
so this is a musical interface built by
a student from Italy and and is now
turning this into a product because it
was a it was a student project becoming
a brother or it can be used to make
assistive device this is a glove that
understands the sign language and
transforms the gestures that you make
into sounds and in write the words that
you’re signing on a display and again
this is made of all different parts you
can find on all the website they sell
arduino compatible parts and you
assemble it into a project or this is a
project from the ITP part of NYU where
they met with this boy with severe
disability can not play with the ps3 so
they built this device that allows the
kids to play baseball although it has
limited movement capability or you can
find it in art projects so this is a the
txt Bombur so you put a message into
this device and then you roll it on the
wall and he basically has all these
solenoids pressing the buttons on sprite
cams so you just pull it over a wall and
it just rides on the wall all the
political messages then we have this
plant here this is called botanicals
because this is a as an Arduino ball
with a Wi-Fi module in the planter and
it’s measuring the well-being of the
plant that is creating a twitter account
where you can actually interact with the
plant so you know it this plant will
start to say this is really hot or like
there’s a lot of you know that I need
water right now so it just gives a
personality to your to your plant or
this is something that Twitter’s when
when when the baby inside the belly of a
pregnant woman kicks or this is a 14
year old kid in Chile who made a system
that detects earthquakes and publishes
up on Twitter he has 280,000 followers
is 14 and he anticipated a governmental
project by one year
or again another project where by
analyzing the Twitter feed of a family
you can basically point where they are
like in the Harry Potter movie so you
can find out everything about this
project on on the website or somebody
made the chair that Twitter’s when
somebody farts it’s interesting how in
2009 geez model basically the fight said
that this project actually gives a
meaning to Twitter so it was a lot
changing in between it’s a very serious
project when the Fukushima disaster
happened a bunch of people in Japan they
realized that the informations the
government was giving wasn’t really sort
of open and really reliable so they
built this Geiger counter plus Arduino
plus network interface they made 100 of
them and gave them to people around
Japan and essentially the data that they
gather gets published on this website
called Qasim and other website they
built so you can actually get reliable
real-time information from the field and
you can get unbiased information or this
machine here is from the DIY bio
movement and it’s one of the steps that
you need in order to process DNA and
again it’s completely open-source from
the ground up or you have students in
developing countries making replicas of
scientific instruments that cost a lot
of money to make actually they just
build them themselves for a lot less
using Arduino in a few parts this is a
ph probe or you get kids like these kids
that are from spain they learn how to
program and to make robots when they
were probably like 11 and then they
start the user do we know to make these
robots that play football they became
world champions but we can an Arduino
base robot and so when we had to make
our own educational robot we just went
to them and said you know you design
because you know exactly what is its you
know what it’s needed to make a great
robot that excites kids not me like I’m
an old guy what am I supposed to excite
but it’s like in terms of educational
lessons
there’s also companies like Google that
are using the technology to create
interfaces between mobile phones tablets
and the real world so the accessory
development kit from Google is open
sourced and based on Arduino as a post
on the one
Apple which is close source NBA sign
your life to Apple here you have there’s
a giant maze and Joe is sitting there
and the maze is moving when you killed
the tablet also I come from Italy and
the design is important in Italy and yet
very conservative so we worked with the
design studio called habits in Milan to
make this mirror which is completely
open source this doubles also as an iPod
speaker so the idea is that the hardware
the software the design of the object
the fabrication everything about this
project is open-source and you can make
it yourself so we want other designer to
pick this up and learn how to make great
devices to learn how to make interactive
products by starting from something real
but when you have this idea you know
what happens to all these ideas there’s
like thousands of ideas that I you know
it would take seven hours for me to do
all the a percentage level I will not
take all the seven hours thank you so
but let’s start from this example so
they the group of people that started
this company called pebble they
prototype a watch that communicates via
bluetooth with your phone and you can
display information on it and a
prototype with an old LCD screen from a
Nokia mobile phone and an Arduino and
then when they had a final project they
actually went to Kickstarter and they
were asking for $100,000 to make a few
of them to sell they got 10 million
dollars they got a completely fully
funded startup and they don’t have to
you know get VC’s involvement it just
excited people with their great project
the last project I want to show you is
this is called art du Sud is currently
on Kickstarter so if you want to
contribute please do it it’s a satellite
that goes into space which is probably
the least open-source thing you can
imagine and it contains an Arduino
connected to a bunch of sensors so if
you know how to use are doing you can
actually upload your experiments into
this satellite and run them so imagine
if you as a high school can have the
satellite for a week and do SAS
satellite you know space experiments
like that so as I said there’s lots of
example so I’m gonna stop here
and I just want to thank the Arduino
community for being the pastor and just
everyday making lots of project
community you told me um Elliott say
that you had no idea of course that it
would take off like that so I mean how
much do you feel when you read this
stuff and you see what you’ve unlocked
well you know it’s the work of a lot of
people so we as a community are enabling
people to make great stuff and I just
feel overwhelmed it’s just I it’s
difficult to describe this every morning
I wake up and I look at all the stuff
that Google Alert sends me and it’s just
amazing it’s just going into every field
that you can imagine thank you so much
thank you