Two weeks ago we started the physical computing class. The course was based on learning how to use the Arduino board as well as different basic electronic components, accelerometers, ultra sound distance sensors, servo motors and different analog sensors - our teachers in electronics and Arduino were David Mellis and Massimo Banzi, and Gwendolyn Floyd helped us with the inspiration and conceptual level. The Arduino board is probably the easiest microcontroller board to get started with, it has a large online community around it and everything is open source - that makes it really easy to get help, instructions or inspiration on how to use it. The topic wasn't new to me - I have been working with both Arduino (which is Atmel based) and PIC processors before and know a bit about electronics and programming, but it was great to spend some time letting my inner geek loose. In the end of the first week we did some mini-projects, where the focus was on communication between two Arduino boards (via serial). I worked with Jason from Taiwan on two small rubber robots, one was sensing motion and the other one was reacting to what the first one experienced. The following video show the bots, it doesn't really do them justice, but at least it gives an impression of their behavior. In the video it looks like they are physically connected, but actually they are not. I was impressed with how quickly people actually got to use the Arduinos - even people that never tried either electronics or microprocessor programming before, created fairly complex interactive contraptions in only one week. Below is a bunch of pictures from the first week - notice how our class room rather quickly turned into a room filled with small robots, electronic junk, tools, sketches on crumpled paper and empty coffee cups. Second week it got even better. By the way, the latest issue of Wired had an interesting article on Arduino and Massimo.