Squishy circuits
You can make your own squishy circuits dough from simple
ingredients. Visit the website for details of what you’ll need and the method
for how to make your own. There are also some instructions here for creating
your own simple circuits.
LittleBits
The littleBits website is packed with ideas for projects,
and also gives you plenty of details of what the modules do, and how to use
them:
You can now buy the bits in the UK. One retailer that we know
of is:
Arduino
The Arduino line of microcontrollers is an industry standard
for building your own interactive projects, and probably has a bigger maker network
than any other product like this. The main site can be found at:
To download the (free) software (which you will need to
program the Arduino device) go to:
I would suggest downloading Arduino IDE version 1.0.6 as
this is tried and tested. If you want to use a Yun or Due board, you will need
Arduino 1.5.8 instead.
For more information on sensors and hardware that you might
like to use in a project, try the Adafruit website:
They have a lot of information on how to use their products
(which are generally very good) including how to get started, sample software
to use, and ideas for projects.
Laser Cutting and 3D Printing
If you want to 3D print or laser cut objects, then you will
need a bare minimum of software for the design. The laser cutter that we have
in the ArtLab is a LaserScript 3060 with a 60W laser tube. You can cut and
engrave acrylic and wood (also cardboard, fabrics and paper) very accurately
with this machine, but you cannot cut or engrave metal – it’s not powerful
enough.
You will need a 2D modelling application to design your
objects for cutting, and it should save (ideally) to dxf format. You can also
import halftone and 1-bit bitmapped images for engraving. The software used
with the laser cutter will import ordinary jpeg images, but they will need to
be converted, and the software is very slow and clumsy to use. Good applications
for design are AutoCAD, 3D max, Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP. You can get the
Autodesk products (3D Max and AutoCAD) for free by signing up to Autodesk Education:
Illustrator and Photoshop are installed in the Art Dept. on
many of the shared machines, and GIMP is free to download from:
For 3D printing, you will need a product that will save to .stl
format, so use either Blender, AutoCAD or 3D Max. Blender can be downloaded for
free at:
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