Tutorials

Intro Phys Comp Labs

• Components Some of the basic components
• Breadboard Setting up a breadboard
• Soldering Begining soldering exercise -- soldering a power connector
• Electronics Introduction to electronics
• Digital input and output on the Arduino Module
• Analog input and output on the Arduino Module
• Servomotor control
• Serial Communication - an introduction to microcontroller-to-PC communication using Processing
• Serial Communication - More on serial
• DC Motor Control using an H-bridge
• MIDIOutput - Introduction to MIDI output

Shop Skills Tutorials

• Tools
  • Brother NS40 sewing machine
  • Drilling a hole from instructables.com
  • Using a hacksaw from instructables.com
  • Dremel Tutorial
• Documentation
  • Information on using the ITP Documentation Station
• Fabrication
  • RISDpedia is a great wiki of fabrication techniques from the industrial design department at the Rhode Island School of Design
  • Laser Cutting Though ITP doesn't have its own laser cutter, there is one you can use on campus, thanks to the Arts Technology Group. Here's what you need to know to use it.
  • Sewing
  • Lesley Flanigan's tutorial on making your own gears using a laser cutter
• Electronics
  • See the Sensor Wiki for tips on a variety of sensors
  • How to use a Multimeter (YouTube video by Make Magazine) (Tutorial by Jeff LeBlanc)
  • An Oscilloscope Tutorial Oscilloscopes are powerful tools for observing the electronic flow of a circuit. This is a good tutorial on how to use them.
  • A Soldering Tutorial A few tips on soldering wisely and safely. Even if you think you know how to solder, you can learn something from this PDF.
  • Tips on soldering a perfboard
  • Etching Your Own Circuit Board
  • How to use Eagle CAD
  • How do inverters work How does an inverter work.
  • LCD interface using the Arduino LiquidCrystal library
  • Controlling a Digital Potentiometer using SPI
  • Circuit boards that use the ICs commonly used at ITP
  • Sparkfun has a series of good engineering tutorials on beginning embedded electronics and surface mount soldering, among others.
  • Using ALD Energy Harvesters
  • Controlling the MediaMation CL6 MIDI light dimmer with an Arduino

Microcontroller Tutorials

• Pic
  • Microcode Studio Tips and error corrections with Microcode Studio (the environment that you program PicBasic Pro in).
  • Analog in on the PIC18F4520 and 2520 A sample of how to use analog in on the 18F2520 and 4520
• Arduino
  • Nice intro to Arduino tutorials from ladyada.net
    • Youtube video of settng up the Arduino Environment
  • Setting Up Arduino on a Breadboard
  • Tymm Twillman's muDuino setup on a breadboard (Arduino with minimal parts and low cost; useful if you have your own programmer and need a lot of Arduino-compatible modules)
  • hc Gilje's minimal Arduino instructions
  • Controlling High Current Loads with Transistors How to control a DC motor or a lamp from a microcontroller using a TIP120 transistor
  • Making a perfboard prototyping shield A nifty and cheap way to make a breadboard proto shield for Arduino.
  • Software serial - a way to get a second serial port out of the Arduino.
  • Memory Management Gian Pablo Vilamil explains how to optimize the Arduino's limited memory.
  • Multiple digital outs with a 595 Shift Register - how to extend your digital out options
  • Multiple digital ins with a CD4021 Shift Register - how to extend your digital in options
  • Multiple Analog ins with a CD4067 multiplexer - how to extend your analog in options
  • Arduino with 4D OLEDS - Jenny shows you how to use arduino to control your 4D OLEDS.
  • Using Arduino as a MIDI Output Device
• XBee
  • Xbee Radios - Rob Faludi explains everything you wanted to know about Xbee radios, and then some. See also the ITP ZigBee Wiki page, in which you can (and should) reserve a PAN ID.
  • Rob and Luke Dubois' Max/MSP patch to read XBee API code
  • Tymm Twillman's XBee library for Arduino
  • Tymm's Google repository for Arduino-Xbee development
  • hc Gilje's example of using Xbee series 2 radios standalone

Programming Tutorials

• Reading A Serial Protocol in Processing. This example shows how to read an ASCII-based, comma-delimited serial protocol in Processing. It uses the GPS NMEA0183 protocol as an example, but the concepts can be generalized to other protocols.

• C Tutorials
  • Installing Eclipse Where to get eclipse and prepare it for programming in C.
  • AVR C programming Where to get the software and prepare it for programming in C.
  • AVR C programming Prepare your breadboard.
  • AVR C programming Connect the ISP programmer.
  • AVR C programming Write your first program.
  • AVR C programming Compile and program your chip.
  • More on installing and running AVR C with XCode for the OSX