Open Electronics Workshop Tonight: Introducing the Arduino
Photo by Zdjęcia Arkadiusz Sikorski on Flickr Tonight at 7pm at Civic Space, our open Electronics Workshops continue with host Paul Anderson. Tonight we are introducing and planning upcoming workshops with the Arduino, a popular single-board micro-controller used for a wide variety of tasks and projects. It’s free and open to all skill levels. Come nerd it up with artists [...]
33 Questions Per Minute
In 2000, Rafael Lozano- Hemmer messed around with some computer programs, lcd screens and a dictionary and created ’33 Questions Per Minute’, an installation featuring 21 lcd screens set up in various places and positions that generate unique and absurd questions thirty-three times per minute. The text is sorted randomly together through a generator and [...]
Arduino, PHP, LCDs, XBees: Tactical Texting in Public Spaces
While the adventure in working on this project began months ago, I’ve finally sorted through the mess of files I made and put it all together in a nice handy zip folder. Using Arduinos, XBees, LCDs, and PHP, this project was challenging from a technical stand-point, but I think the project is now at a [...]
SRSI, Day 28: Speed Dating for Store Owners
Thursday was the Storefront Success Stories Speed Dating for Store Owners event down on Pelissier for SRSI, and Justin set up a window installation using the Arduino.
XBees, Arduinos, Serial Data
I made some huge progress over the last week or so on this ongoing Arduino / LCD project — it’s finally gone wireless! With some more silly mistakes behind me, I’m finally getting a better handle on how to break down the problems I run into and solve them a lot faster. I remember back [...]
XBees + Arduino
Although it’s been a while since I last worked on this project, things are continuing to move along. I finally assembled the Ladyada XBee adapters and successfully passed a message between the two XBees. So, I’m not the best solderer and the first adapter I worked on suffered from an overusing tip on my soldering [...]
Parsing RSS Feeds for the Arduino + LCD + PHP project
I’ve made some really great progress on this ongoing Arduino + LCD project over the last couple of weeks — some of the two larger hurdles are now out of the way, the results of which you can see in the video above. Since the video was shot, I’ve improved the PHP script some more [...]
Working on the PHP Backend of the Arduino + LCD Project
I haven’t posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the ongoing Arduino + LCD project, which is moving along towards connecting external data to be displayed on the LCD screen. The last bit of time I’ve put into the project has been focused on printing text to the LCD [...]
Arduino + LCD + PHP, Part 2
The epic adventure with Arduino, LCDs, and PHP continues. I’ve finally made some progress in terms of breaking up the words and lines appropriately. It felt like a huge achievement, since I had been trying to figure out this line-break thing for quite a while. You can check the majority of the progress in the [...]
More Arduino + LCD + PHP fun
My work on this ongoing LCD Arduino project has been continuing over the last couple of weeks, I just haven’t had the time to update appropriately. So, I switched over my plan of attack from Processing to PHP. I figured this made sense for a couple reasons: first, I’m already very well-acquainted with PHP, I’ve [...]
![Yesterday was just lovely! Andrea Carvalho did a parking garage performance as part of her study of Non-Places, Kero set up his interactive installation, and a lot of familiar local friends rolled through The People’s Museum to contribute to the giant map. Andrea has been trying to perform in this space for a few days [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_0449-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 8: Rethinking Parking Garages")
![I’ll be heading up to London, Ontario on Thursday, April 14 to speak on a panel with some incredible people as part of the Canadian Museum Association’s Annual Conference, appropriately titled, Evolve or Die!. I’m pumped to get to reconnect with Andrew Hunter and Andrew Lochhead, and to finally meet Yael Filipovic. Not familiar with these [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-13-at-9.24-150x150.jpg "Evolve or Die: CMA Conference")
![This week’s meeting started off kind of slow. A long week had us collectively feeling strapped for good ideas, but we had a specific task list in front of us. Looking at the calendar, an idea we had talked about not all that long ago, suddenly has a pressing deadline. We’re looking to put together [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IMG_3555-150x150.jpg "Already thinking about next summer")
![Our recipe from the other night produced a much stronger planter, though I think there’s still room to add a coat of wheat paste to the outside. The rare earth magnets do well if there’s two, but I think the best solution will be to adhere them to the outside of the planter, or embed [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4208-150x150.jpg "Rare Earth Magnets + New Pulp Recipe")
![We’re in North Bay on a residency as we prepare for an exhibition this fall at the White Water Gallery. After spending Monday getting acquainted with the downtown, we ventured further out. Of course, we had to stop at the North Bay arch. Getting a sense of these kinds of structural parts of the city [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid18911-IMG_0446-150x150.jpg "Learning About the Emerging Emergencies of North Bay")
![Broken City Lab is heading up to Peterborough, Ontario for all of next week (October 12 – 17, 2009) for an extended field trip to collaborate with Artspace for a series of community and inter-city research initiatives, workshops, and interventions to understand the city of Peterborough, its infrastructures, and its communities. We’ll be blogging extensively [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/peterboroughmap3-150x150.jpg "Extended Field Trip #001: Artspace in Peterborough")
![I’m excited to note that in addition to the current exhibition, Make It Work, on at SoVA Projects Gallery (nee LeBel Gallery) featuring work by Michelle, a new poster installation that I did, and a ton of other incredible local Windsor-Detroit artists, there’s a panel discussion featuring guests from across the country. If you’re remotely [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/PosterMIW-cut-150x150.jpg "Make It Work: Exhibition & Panel Discussion")
![We met last night and started our list of 100 Ways to Save the City for our projection on Saturday night as part of FAM Fest. We’re also spent some time putting together a rough schedule for 2009 Micro-Residencies, which will likely start in November. If you’ve thought about applying, but haven’t yet, now would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_5311-sm-150x150.jpg "Planning Our Projection for FAM Fest")
![Below is the transcription of the interview Rosina and I had this fall with Ariane from the Centre Français in Hamilton. While going through what was discussed around the topics of francophonie in Hamilton, I came across a good amount of ideas and phrases that could be interestingly interpreted when paired in context to the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_5336-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Interview with Ariane from le Centre Français")
![Our magnetic planters have finally been finished and installed (temporarily) along the alley that runs behind our headquarters. Consider yourself cordially invited to take a planter or two and move them to some other space in the city in need of a micro-garden. Cristina’s finally back from Italy, it was awesome to catch up and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_9407-150x150.jpg "Magnetic Planters Finished!")
![This morning, on one of Transit Windsor’s new hybrid buses, we saw one of the nearly 100 Text In-Transit panels (this is the first panel on this new bus, as far as we could tell anyways). I believe they will all be installed on Transit Windsor’s entire fleet in the coming days. Let us know [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/IMG_2737-150x150.jpg "Transit Windsor Panels on the Buses!")
![Installed across the road from the University of Windsor‘s Naturalized Area, our sign highlights one of the many wonderful accidental meadows, created by the ongoing city workers strike. These naturalized areas allow for a moment in which one might be able to mistakenly believe that Windsor is a progressive city, a place where this type [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IMG_3079-sm-150x150.jpg "Naturalized Area: Accidental Meadow")
![Official Day 1 of SRSI kicked off, lots of new folks starting their projects, vinyl is up, rooms are painted (and almost done), floors are clean, the storefronts are open!!! Come see us. The day started off with a bit more painting and cleaning up of 410 Pelissier. As no one was moving in this [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_9860-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Official Day 1: Welcome Julie, Eric, Daragh, Andrea, Julie and Jefferson")
![As we continue to paint the letters, we’re now moving onto some exhibition design for the launch of the Letter Library. Really preliminary ideas here … but the gist of it is around wanting the work to feel open… Not sure that we’ll go with tape on top of the photos like this. 4×6 photos [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9965-150x150.jpg "Exhibition Design (in progress)")
![Equipped with a vehicle, Michelle and I spent a few hours on Wednesday out and about in the city gathering materials to further the process on our upcoming project in Hamilton. Our first visit was to The House, a thought factory of sorts where Jodi has been fruitfully working on our collection of sewn squares [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-Shot-2012-01-28-at-11.58.23-AM-150x150.png "Errands! The Next Steps for Two Tales of a City")
![As part of Green Corridor’s Open Corridor festival, I’ll be working with 500 biodegradable balloons with “YOU ARE WORTH IT.” printed on them. The balloons will be filled with helium and some wildflower seeds, 200 of them will be launched anchored throughout the Green Corridor area and handed out to those in attendance next Thursday, June 18th. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/balloons-printed-150x150.jpg "You Are Worth It: Biodegradable Balloons")
![We spent the last couple of daylight hours on Friday working with rope and one of the fences at LeBel. We needed to test some techniques for communicating via rope (or ribbon, as we later decided) on a fence for another project. After moving inside to the warmth, we also settled on a preferred material, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/img_08971-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Nov 28, 2008")