Physical Computing at ITP | Tutorials / 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
ToneOutput - Introduction to Tone output using the Tone library
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 ITP students have access to a laser cutter at the Advanced Media Studio (AMS). Here's what you need to know to use it.
- Sewing
Electronics
- Integrating sound recording snd playback in your projects by Mike Rosenthal
- 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
- xbeeBasics - Introduction to Xbees
- xbeeFirmware - How to upgrade the Firmware on 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