Among his collection of works I found two I liked the most the first one is called Daily Stack ,  I really need to get one of these organizing my work flow has become a bit difficult with so many distractions and activities to do and this seems to be a fun and effective way to solve this situation.

Daily Stack is a playful tool that helps you become more aware of your daily work-flow and time management. By creating a physical representation of your tasks, Daily Stack speaks subtly to your conscience and helps you manage your time through unobtrusive ambient feedback.
It consists of a base device and a collection of wooden bricks in different shapes and colours. The bricks represent different kinds of tasks and time-intervals. By adding a brick to the base you commit yourself to the task and time span that the selected brick represents. Daily Stack communicates with an desktop widget on your computer that enables you to keep track of your time and tasks in progress. It also enables you to browse through your past and and compare your days in a colourful informative pattern.

Daily Stack from Anders Højmose on Vimeo.

The other project would be Pong that Beat wich is a project made in collaboration with Sebastian Thielke and Jonas Maanson ,it is an interactive Pong table that when you play , the camera register where the ball is when it hits the table, and a new sound is added to that location. While playing the step sequencer is continuously running. In that way you create a beat while playing. If you drop the ball on the floor, you are game over.

PongThatBeat! from Sebastian Thielke on Vimeo.

Some weeks ago Andy Payne from Lift Architects announced the release of his first version plugin Firefly which is a specialized set of tools dedicated to bridging the gap between the Arduino interface and Grasshopper , currently the plugin has two components one for receiving data coming from sensors and the other to send parametric data from grasshopper to some sort of actuator via Arduino.

I think Firefly is a great tool for prototyping projects that involve sensors and actuators , because before you actually build it, with this tool you can first model a digital muck up to see how your project elements will behave with real sensor data, so then you can port that same logic to build your real project.

Here is an experiment I made sending data from a photoresistor to Grasshopper to create a Responsive Structure that reacts to the degree of light of a physical space in real time.
What you need:
-Arduino Board
-1K Resistor
-Photoresistor
-LED

(sorry about the crappy picture I had to use my webcam)
You have to start by making your Arduino Hookup and writing a code in the Arduino environment so you can retrieve the value of the photoresistor which measures the amount of light in a room and then send it to the board , in this case I wanted that when the amount of light is low an LED started to turn on and that the intensity of it also varies depending the amount of light .

So for the hookup the photoresistor and 1K resistor are hooked up in series. Arduino +5V goes to the photoresistor and ground goes to the 1K resistor. The junction where the photoresistor and the 1K meet is where Arduino pin #5 goes (picture Above).

Next step is write a code in the Arduino environment were we take an analog reading being send from the photoresistor to our board and then send that value to our output which in this case is digital pin11 which is the position of our LED , I made some annotations to the Arduino code to make it more easy to understand.

Arduino Test from Rodrigo Medina on Vimeo.
The last part would be porting the data from arduino to Grasshopper , here is were Firefly comes into action , actually is very easy to use once you install the plugin you´ll se two more components added which are the Serial Read and Serial Write.

In this case as we want to import data from Arduino we are going to use the Serial Read component which has three inputs , the first one is to define if we want the port that transfer data open or closed, you will like to have an integer slider that goes from 0 to 1 to control this easily, remember to have it always at cero before yo start the timer, the second input is for indicating the computer the serial port you are working on which in my case was  COM3 but it depends on the serial USB ports of each computer you can check with which port you are working by opening your Arduino code , then going to the menu Tools and were it says Serial Port you´ll see the one that the Arduino board is using , the last input of the component is the Baud Rate which controls the speed and it should match the one you are using in Arduino apparently the standard is 9600 so I used that one.

Besides that the rest goes pretty straight forward using the common tools of Grasshopper , have I also included some notes in the definition to help you out.

Arduino + Grasshopper & Firefly from Rodrigo Medina on Vimeo.

As always let me know if you have any problems the best way to catch me is by twitter @Rodrigo_Medina

Files Names
Arduino Code:GH3D_FireflyExperiment.pde
Grasshopper Definition:Arduino + Firefly experiment.ghx

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Adaptive Fa[ca]de by Marilena Skavara

Adaptive fa[CA]de from marilena on Vimeo.

Adaptive Fa[ca]de explores the functional possibilities and performative characteristics of cellular automata (CA). In addition to the unique emergent behaviour of CA, a neural network enables a further computational layer to evolve CA behaviour to the context of its surrounding environment. Building upon the early work of Conway’s ‘Game of life’ and Stephen Wolfram’s extensive research on the wider implementation of CA, ‘Adaptive Fa[ca]de’ becomes a living adapting skin, constantly training itself from the history of its own errors and achievements.

FINE COLLECTION OF CURIOUS SOUND OBJECTS  by Georg Reil

FINE COLLECTION OF CURIOUS SOUND OBJECTS from Georg Reil on Vimeo.

The arrangement includes six exceptional exhibits from the world of sounds and acoustics. At first sight looking trivial, each object incorporates a very unique ability.

The magical character of each object is accompanied with a little story, almost completely concealing the existence of technical components such as speakers or sensors. Only small connection ports as well as the uniform black finishing point to their unusual abilities.
Processing is used for recording live audio input, modifying the playback and generating digital sound according to sensor data.
In form and functionality all these exhibits pursue John Maeda’s „Simplicity“. They are enjoying to use, they are surprising and one wants to explore and investigate them.

Philip is also associated with the University of Waterloo, were he is a professor of architecture and shares responsibility for the Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing, a high-performance computer and rapid-prototyping facility.

Hylosoic Soil
The glass-like fragility of this artificial forest, built of an intricate lattice of small transparent acrylic tiles, is visually breathtaking. Its frond extremities arch uncannily towards those who venture into its midst, reaching out to stroke and be stroked like the feather or fur or hair of some mysterious animal. In keeping with Beesley’s own description, his enchanted environment complies with the laws and cycles that determine the millennial assembly of a coral reef, with its cycles of opening, clamping, filtering and digesting. Capacitance-sensing whiskers and shape-memory alloy actuators create a diffuse peristaltic pumping motion, luring visitors in to the every  shimmering depths of a forest of light. Hylozoic Soil implements a distributed sensor network driven by dozens of microprocessors, generating waves of reflexive responses to those drawn into its vast array of acrylic fern stalagmites. Different levels of programmed activity encourage the emergence of coordinated spatial behavior: thirty-eight controller boards produce specific responses to local action, while a bus controller uses sensor activity collated from all the boards to command an additional “global” level of behaviour. The forest thus manifests a haunting, breathing organicity, as it stirs to envelop and charm its human explorers. In keeping with the tradition of biologist artist Ernst Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe (1899), which traced actions of organic and inorganic nature alike back to natural causes and laws, Beesley’s Hylozoic Soil stands as a magically moving contemporary symbol of our aptitude for empathy and the creative projection of living systems.

The Roadshow interview with Philip Beesley from The Roadshow on Vimeo.

Hylozoic Soil from Karen Siemers on Vimeo.

Using Arduino on my personal projects is one of my main objectives , I already have got one board and started making some experiments I´ll wait to have some meaningful results to share them with you , in  the mean time I´m going to be posting  some projects and experiments made with Arduino that I find along the way ,hope you enjoy them.
Calvin Harris Human Synth

Through the power of skin-safe conductive ink and Arduino, Scottish electronic artist Calvin Harris has collaborated with a team to make a synthesizer out of himself and a group of models in bikinis.

Morpholuminescence


Made by students from Ball Satate Universtity Morpholuminescence is an installation for fashion photography it is programed to find its form and provide optimized lighting, enhancing the experience of trying on clothing. Differences in height are read by the sensors and interpreted by two Arduino microprocessors which drive servo-motors, in order to actuate the surface.

Piano gloves

Piano Gloves from Scott Garner on Vimeo.

The Piano Gloves made by Scott Garner. This prototype was created using Arduino and Processing

Credit Synthesis

Credit Synthesis from jgv on Vimeo.

A sculpture made by Jhonathan Vingiano which interprets magnetically stored data of credit cards and translates it into a brief melody.
software, arduino, housing, card reader and a computer.