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