This is Jure Martinec, 24 year old. Interaction designer. He does thing from design to Art. He is interested in the Human side of the technology.
Your experience of this physical computing platform?
I used Arduino (very basic) and now I used Gadgeteer. I comes from Microsoft lab. One of my friends did the product called Pulse. Now, we are working some stuff with gadgeteer. My expereience with Arduino, I am not that good with electronic. I can only do very very basic electronic. I not good at figuring out basic things such as the resister or how to connect stuff together to make it work properly. I do not want to deal with that and I am not interested in that. Still, I wanted it to be plug and play. Sometimes it takes you a lot of time just to figure out how to turn on some special light or something because it wasn't connect properly. Nothing gives me feedback . If there is a log to tell me that would be really helpful. For example, tell me that I just burnt a lamp or LED. If I connect and LED I want something to tell me how to properly and easily connect that LED. I do not want to go through electronic schematics or whatever. I am not interest. I just wants it to work. You have thinks like Gadgeteer and the tinker kit. I like working with that it is simple for me.
Is it necessary to learn all these things? like electronic , coding etc..
Well, we need something that is very flexible. If you understand coding and electronic that's means you can work to a much greater extents with programming and electronic. You can make some connection that you usually wouldn't be able to to make. You can make some discovery that you usually wouldn't be able to make. If you have something really simple as like putting a light and a sensor together and it just works. May be it is good that it is very easy to use and very simple to make but in a sense, I think its harder to find out new possibilities.
How do you find out new possibility if you don't know how to work with them? (i.e. Programming and electronics)
I think you need to know something about it to get the basic understanding of it but there shouldn't be a need that you should be an expert in that. It is the same with typography. You need to know some history of typography to understand the development and understand why things are as they are but you don't want to follow just that. You wants to be able to come up with new things.
Can you tell me what project did you do with Arduino?
I did a one pixel camera for a friend of mine. He is a photographer and he wants to camera's sensor to capture only one pixel. So I uses the light sensor and LED to calibrate it properly and make the calculation to make a proper color for the environments. It took me quite a while. I had to work more with the electronic. I have to find how to connect it properly. It really simple. Its just a simple LED and a light sensor and it just have to detect a light. It's nothing complicated but it took me a couples of night just to get it to detect the proper value. Its way too much work and it shouldn't be like that. There was a problem that there were no real documentation. You almost have to guess how to connect them properly, finding out the value of the input and the output. If nothing is documented then that's the worst thing. With Arduino is cool because the community is very big and you can google it and you can quickly figure it out. With platform like gadgeteer, although it is easier to use but it is still buggy and still lack documentations and there is no one to help you.
For the gadgeteer platform, they had something but it more like a bunch of engineer and they dont know how to do it properly. Especially for the user that it's intended for.
How about the coding? was it a problem for you as well?
I do not know much about the electronic and there's a link to that. Basically in each project with electronic, I have to relearn it. I figured it out but then I do not want to do it anymore. So, I still have to relearn all the basic stuff. I still have to check the formular online how to calculate the resister and all the stuff like that.
Is there any benefit for you to relearn about all these stuff or is it about you managed to get things working?
I a long run it is but I rather not do it. Because, I have to deal with things that are getting in my way and it consume so much time to do it. Its like the majority of the project is spent just to figure this out and it sucks.
Would you use these kinds of platform to help you present your work to someone?
Yes, because it's still the easiest way to do it. I will just find the easiest way in the current platform. I would just buy a bunch of stuff from tinker kit and build it together. If I have to make a really small - that is going to be difficult.
How much time would it takes for you to make a simple project?
well, its depends. Because if I used all the material that I already used once before then it will be very quick. If I understand the component, it would only takes me a day. If I have to relearn it then it may takes me like a week to figure it out.
Tell me about the tinker kit. How did you find it?
I haven't used it but I started using gadgeteer before I know the Tinkerkit. I was quite frustrated why nothing like gadgeteer existed for Arduino. Then I discover the Tinkerkit. From what I know, it is pretty simple. I should be like the sensor and the shield that we used. My expereience with the Gadgeteer is that it is very easy to connect things together. You uses visual studio to develop and there are library fro components and you get this visual tools that you can make the diagram of all the parts. Its automatically connected together. So, you just need to click on the image and write the code for it. That's the best part of gadgeteer. Once you get into the programming, it is not that difficult and it is not difference from Arduino. I think it uses C# but it lacks doucmentation and you have to figured things out. If you are lucky enough, you might find something online. If you uses some basic component then it is not that difficult. If you uses something more exotics then it is not the most special and its can get really complicated. It will takes you a lot of time. I think that if gadgeteer has a big community support like Arduino then this wouldn't be a problem.