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Arduino Day 2020 at the Jaycar maker hub SILICON CHIP’s Editor Nicholas Vinen and Technical Team Member Tim Blythman ventured out to Jaycar’s maker hub at Central Park Mall on March 21st, to celebrate Arduino Day with fellow Arduino enthusiasts and help with various Arduino-based projects. M arch 2020 was shaping up to be a great month for With the shadow of COVID-19 hanging around us, we makers. While March 21st was originally promot- weren’t sure what to expect. Happily, everyone was keen ed as a global day by the people behind Arduino, for Arduino Day to go ahead and SILICON CHIP staff, Jaythere was not much activity in terms of new Arduino soft- car’s maker hub staff and assorted Arduino fans of many ware or hardware, as we were expecting. ages attended. As we noted in our Arduino Retrospective in the March With elbow taps instead of handshakes, a small but ea2020 issue (siliconchip.com.au/Article/12575), Arduino ger group gathered (but not too tightly) to share their proDay is often the occasion for new releases. jects and ideas. For example, the Arduino MKR Vidor was released on Arduino Day 2018, and we subsequently reviewed it in Proceedings the March 2019 issue (siliconchip.com.au/Article/11448). The Jaycar staff, led by Darren, ran a series of workshops Instead, the Arduino Day event was presented as a live throughout the day, starting with the Snake Game project stream; it can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ (www.jaycar.com.au/snake-game), which is built using u93BhPnooZc their Cat XC3900 Arduino Learning Kit. A few enthusiasThey did mention the new Portenta H7 board, but it was tic beginners (including some quite young and some not actually released at CES in January 2020. The Arduino CLI so young) took part in this. (which we also covered in our retrospecWe had set up a display featuring a by Tim Blythman tive) was also mentioned. number of our Arduino-based projects, 92 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Between workshops, small groups gathered to share ideas and get help. The maker hub is well laid out for both roles, with shelves of Arduino products nearby for that lastminute add-on. Photo by Dan Malone. We’re still impressed by the little tips and tricks that people come up with. Using a development board that is too wide for a breadboard can be frustrating; the trick is to use two breadboards side by side! Photo by Dan Malone. and we had a few curious individuals looking at them and asking questions. For the most part, those attending were just starting out with Arduino; most had a good idea of what they wanted to do, but were not sure how. Some had well-developed projects and were simply stuck and looking for advice. Others were tentatively interested in Arduino and just wanted to ask some questions and get comfortable with the idea of working on hardware. One common refrain we heard was that they were experienced programmers but had no idea how to build hardware. When we showed them how it could be done, by plugging Arduino modules together, they unanimously commented that it was a lot easier than they were expecting! The overall vibe was one of knowledge, curiosity and sharing. The projects we helped with included a game controller, a device for remote operation of curtain blinds and an environmental monitor. A few were looking to add a colour touchscreen display to their project, but had run into problems. One of our demonstration projects was our 3.5in LCD Breakout Board for Arduino (www.siliconchip.com. au/Article/11629), which is very simple hardwarewise, but looks very impressive when showing off the graphics that are possible. As we have often found, a colour touchscreen display is a very useful thing to have, but can also be a great deal of work due to apparently identical hardware having vastly different software requirements. We ended up helping two attendees get their displays up and running. One of them commented that he had been trying to get it to work for around six months, and was delighted when it did! out to need a new ATmega328 chip. We replaced the SMD ICs regardless, to demonstrate how it is done. As we removed and reinstalled the chips, those present were able to view the activity through a USB microscope attached to a large monitor. Thank yous We want to thank Darren, Dan and the other Jaycar staff for hosting us. It’s great to see the maker hub being used for hands-on activities. The ability of customers to see actual working projects being built before their eyes (rather than merely being static and hanging on a hook) shows the value of the maker hub concept. As things start to return to normal, we hope to see Jaycar’s regularly scheduled workshops (which were operating at many stores, not just the Broadway maker hub) continue. Who knows, you might even see us again in the future! Uno repairs As promised, we brought along some spare parts to assist with a hands-on version of our “Fixing a Busted Uno” article from the March 2020 issue (siliconchip. com.au/Article/12582). To their credit, none of our attendees had any damaged Unos, so we demonstrated on a unit that Jaycar had in their store, which turned siliconchip.com.au Darren is the resident Arduino expert at the maker hub, and is patient and knowledgeable. Here he presents one of the many workshop sessions that ran during Arduino Day. Photo by Dan Malone. SC Australia’s electronics magazine June 2020  93