Marion Workshop Offers Intro to Arduino Controller

SparkFun is teaming up with TRECA and the National Robotics Challenge, hosted annually in Marion, to provide a two-day professional development session based on the Arduino controller and its companion environment Processing. In these two days, instructors will cover the basics of Arduino and the circuits that can support data logging instrumentation, robotics and a myriad of levels of interactivity.

SparkFun says the recent advances in hardware and software led by the open source movement have changed education. One of the most striking advances has come from Arduino, a small, powerful and inexpensive microcontroller. This tiny programmable computer is about eight times faster and eight times more powerful than the computer that sent men to the moon. It can be purchased for around $25.

As well as Arduino, instructors will delve into the Processing language. Processing is extremely powerful and provides all the tools to link to the internet and bring in graphical environments to data log and create dashboard functionality. SparkFun says this combination will give a classroom the same functionality that has sent satellites into space at a fraction of the traditional cost of hardware solutions for the classroom.

This workshop assumes the attendee has no prior experience with controllers, programming or electronics. The material covered is suitable for middle, high school and CTE settings and will be presented with an eye toward classroom implementation.

SparkFun supports a large range of education options and all materials are free and open source. Curriculum, tutorials and sample code and projects can be found at learn.sparkfun.com. For more formation about Arduino, visit arduino.cc, or for processing, visit processing.org.

Each participant will take home a SparkFun Inventor’s Kit for Arduino (a $94.95 value).

The workshop will take place at TRECA on August 1 and 2, 2013 from 9:00am to 4:00pm each day with a one hour lunch on your own.

The registration fee for the two-day workshop is $150. Registration is open until the July 30, but there are only 20 seats available.

You can register online by clicking here.