Arduino And littleBits

So yesterdays post was about littleBits and the new cloudBits that seems to make it pretty easy for littleBits to play with the Internet of Things. Writing that post made me curious about the combination of Arduino and littleBits.

Arduino-At-Heart module for littleBits

A TechCrunch article from May 2014 covered the Arduino-At-Heart module for littleBits and the Arduino Starter Bundle. TechCrunch explains the collaboration between these two tech ecosystems this way:

"The world of littleBits...can now play friendly with Arduino. If you’re not familiar with littleBits, it might help to think of it as a DIY Electronics kit mashed up with LEGO. Each “bit” is an individual electronic component, like a speaker, or a light sensor, or a blinky LED. Snap them together, and you can do all sorts of cool stuff — no programming required...That “no programming required” point has always been one of littleBits’ biggest strengths; it meant that anyone could start putting stuff together, pretty much by accident. Alas, up until now, “no programming required” also meant “no programming allowed”...The littleBits idea is great — but once a particularly enthusiastic user hit the limits of what their kit could do, the next step (learning to

use a standalone Arduino board, which meant also learning proper circuitry, soldering, etc.) was suddenly a pretty big one...This morning, littleBits is introducing an Arduino module into the mix. It’ll snap right into place — no soldering required — just like the other littleBits modules, with one big difference: it’s programmable. You get the programmability of an Arduino, without having to learn the myriad other prerequisite skills. You jack into it via the onboard microUSB port, upload your programming via the standard Arduino IDE, and all of your littleBits modules fall in line."

The Engadget May 2014 coverage of the littleBits Arduino module rollout talks about some of the advantages of this module:

"...it also opens the door to interaction with your computer. Since the Arduino module has USB support built-in, you can create Etch-A-Sketches, Pong games and other programs that have LittleBits and your PC working in harmony. Rothman adds that many existing Arduino projects should work with only a few slight tweaks to pin assignments."

Arduino Starter Bundle for littleBits

This Instructables shows what was previously involved with adding Arduino capabilities to the littleBits synth kit before the Arduino-littleBits modules became available.

To learn more about the littleBits Arduino module, check out the webpage for that module. If you want to know more about the littleBits Arduino starter kit, heres a link to that webpage.

At the next meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group, Ill ask how many people there have worked with littleBits. If no one has, it would be an interesting exercise to get a few littleBits modules and see what all the options are for combining them with traditional microcontroller projects. If you have littleBits modules and are coming to the August 7 MCU meeting, please bring them to the meeting. Thanks!

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Electric Waste Orchestra Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra

So a couple days ago I read about the Electric Waste Orchestra (EWO) in PSFK. It seemed like an idea that is harmoniously complementary to the Humboldt Electronic Light Orchestra were working to kickstart with the Humboldt Laser Harp project. Then today I met Tibora Girczyc-Blum, the director of SCRAP Humboldt, and I realized how well the EWO concept meshes with the SCRAP Humboldt mission. Per PSFK:

Electric Waste Orchestra hard drive instrument

"The Electric Waste Orchestra at Makerspace Urbana, located in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, takes outdated technology and turns them into pieces of fully functioning musical equipment. One guitar, shown in the video above, is comprised of an old keyboard number pad, six hard-drives, Arduino hardware and some software, all of which will not decay into toxic waste. They have other musical hardware in the works, including a Wiimote, and yes, they can all create beautiful music. The electric orchestra is a clever way to bring new life to these old technologies...It’s nice to see people taking these old gadgets out of the dumpsters

Arduino controlling the hard drive instrument

and onto the stage to bring others joy..."

Here is a YouTube list of the EWO videos. It looks like theyre in the early stages of learning to play somewhat traditional music with their Aduino-controlled instruments. However, some of the music played in the video embedded in the PSFK article seems closer to circuit bending than to traditional music. If youre not familiar with circuit bending, Wikipedia says circuit bending is:

"...the creative, chance-based customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, childrens toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators. Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups have been known to experiment with "bent" instruments. Circuit bending usually involves dismantling the machine and

Cateura sax from trash

adding components such as switches and potentiometers that alter the circuit."

Youll likely get a different definition of circuit bending from every person you talk to about it, but "BEND: A Circuit Bending Documentary" is a relatively good place to start if youre new to the genre.

While circuit bending is an aspect of the EWO that microcontroller people would likely enjoy, creatively reused materials seems to be an aspect of EWO thats more along the lines of what SCRAP Humboldt would focus on. When I did a YouTube search for  arduino recycle electric instrument, two of the more interesting finds were The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura and Bash The Trash. There are countless other videos of musical instruments made from upcycled goods, so if Humboldt musicians and upcyclers want to join forces, there

Bash The Trash cardboard trombone

are plenty of examples out there to learn from, and homegrown ingenuity can add local flavor to the effort. Most of the instruments in these videos arent based on Arduino or other microcontrollers (MCUs), but there are plenty of musical instruments made with the SCRAP Humboldt approach to creatively reusing materials, and there are enough MCU-controlled instruments to make it an enjoyable challenge for the electronically-inclined members of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

Make some music (with any type of instrument or source materials you prefer) and make the world a better place!

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