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
Servomotor control
Serial Communication - an introduction to microcontroller-to-PC communication using Processing
DC Motor Control using an H-bridge
MIDIOutput - Introduction to MIDI output

Shop Skills Tutorials

Tools
- Drilling a hole from instructables.com
- Using a hacksaw from instructables.com
Documentation
- Information on using the ITP Documentation_Station
Dremel Tutorial -- is there one on instructables.com?
Fabrication
- 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
- Hatti Lim's tutorial on soft circuits, based on Leah Buechley's paper on the subject, is a good guide to getting started in this area.
- 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 courtesy of the good folks at Make Magazine
- here's a nice tutorial on multimeters from 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.
- soldering a perfboard tips on soldering a breadboard.
- Etching Your Own Circuit Board Etching Your Own Circuit Board.
- Making a printed circuit board using Eagle
- 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
- General Energy in Pcomp

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
- See the Labs for basic exercises using Arduino
- Nice intro to Arduino tutorials from ladyada.net
  - Youtube video of settng up the Arduino Environment
- Setting Up Arduino on a Breadboard What to do when it is the middle of the night.. you need another Arduino Board, you just can't wait (and you have the necessary components...)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Arduino with 4D OLEDS - Jenny shows you how to use arduino to control your 4D OLEDS.

Programming Tutorials

Reading A Serial Protocol in Procesing. 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