sightlines.usitt.org: A special double session will be a highlight of the 2013 Annual Conference & Stage Expo programming in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Arduino Super Session is scheduled for Saturday afternoon, March 23 at the Frontier Airlines Center.
An Arduino is an inexpensive, open-source, physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board and a free development environment for writing software for the board.
6 comments:
What I'd be much more interested in seeing at USITT this year, much more than a session on how to program an Arduino etc, is what the hell do in theatre do with it?
That's certainly not to say I don't believe it has a potential place in what we do but learning the Arduino is one thing - putting it to use is entirely another and I'd be much more interested in seeing what a group of technically-minded theatre people can come up with in terms of application rather than another intro class. But I suppose it all has to start somewhere.
This is a great class to be happening at USIT. I feel that the ardiono is a great thing for groups that don’t have a ton of money but they want to do some effect. I would not use it for life’s critical effects. When I have used it; it sometimes jams and locks up so that would be bad if someone was in the way of it but for prop effect that need to be small and portable it would be great. Or if something needed to be controlled by DMX this would work great. I wonder if the class that they are teaching will have anything that you can’t figure out by the internet . I would like do this class but I have to be at school at that time. I hope the best to the class.
The fact that arduino can be controlled by MaxMSP is something that I did not know. I like the fact that with MaxMSP we can add a user definable front end. This session at USITT would be very helpful right now while I am in the Arduino section of Technical Direction class. I agree with Jake though it would be great to see some applications and coding for real world examples of theatrical usages.
Here's the thing about Arduino, it's not really useful on its own. It's not like you can put an Arduino Uno on your set and it magically becomes wonderful. The value of Arduino is that it is a gateway into other fields. I had little to no understanding of electronics and circuitry before tinkering with Arduino. I hadn't used computer programming since high school where I took a class in C++. It is all these other concepts, tools, and design options that make Arduino so valuable to our field. Once we introduce programming and circuitry into our TD and designer brains (I'm sure those who say it should be already) uses for Arduino will be more apparent. And even if they don't manifest themselves, that doesn't devalue Arduino's educational usage, it's ability to teach and introduce people to new technologies.
Microprocessors are great and Arduinos are great to. I've used them a little bit back in high school and I think it could be really fun and useful to take some classes related to them here in the drama department.
Microprocessors are fast, easy, and cheap ways of making creative designes come to life. And that's just what we like in theatre. I can see Arduinos being used in set models to simulate practicals and moving set pieces.
I know that the people in gates get to play with Microprocessors all day, so maybe we should as well.
I originally started developing on Arduino for a theatrical application a few years ago and would be interested in learning more about APPLYING its capabilities. The simple thing I ended up using it for was triggering a sequence of LEDs after certain button-presses on a futuristic control panel. It was dumb, but it achieved what the director asked for. I agree with the other commentators that it would be nice to see some theatre-specific applications as well. I also did not know that it could easily be integrated with MaxMSP.
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