Making a robot from scratch in three days with hardly any previous knowledge of programming or electronics is quite a challenge, but the participants at CRACs the Art of Robotics workshop proved that it is possible.

We were all too busy working to gather any decent documentation of the results, but some of the material that we used during the workshop is available here. ..

Documentation from the Rag-tag workshop are now online at the Rag-tag Workshop 2008 website. Among other things there are slides from Bengt Sjöléns presentation (see my previous report), slides from Bengts and David Cuartielles media player dissections, slides and summaries from Davids physical prototyping presentation, tutorials + code from Davids Arduino workshop and some thoughts and experiences on how to construct installations for public spaces from Nils Claesson.

There are also presentations of works from among other people Michelle Teran, Tina Finnäs and Performing Pictures.

Links:
Rag-tag Workshop 2008

I have just committed an alpha version of as3Glue to Google Code. as3Glue is an open source physical interaction libary for ActionScript 3. It enables communication between ActionScript 3 applications and Arduino boards. It can be used to monitor sensors such as rotary encoders and motion detectors, control actuators such as LEDs and motors, and to interface other electronics such as RFID readers from within Flash / Flex and Air applications.

Check it out here: as3Glue

I’ve updated Arduino For Flash with Flash and Arduino code for the Parallax RFID reader and the Arduino Code for the Parallax RFID Reader with a new example that uses SoftwareSerial for RFID->Arduino communication. Enjoy…

I’ve just released Arduino for Flash, an ActionScript 3.0 package that makes it easy to control Arduino boards with the Firmata 1.0 firmware from Flash.