Making Things Talk
by Tom Igoe · first published 2007
11mentions
8recommended by
11HN commenters
2008–2018first – last mentioned
73% recommend27% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A project-driven introduction to connecting physical devices like sensors and microcontrollers to networks, using Arduino. Suited to beginners and programmers wanting a hands-on route into electronics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Provides instructions for building a variety of projects that are able to communicate with one another, including a video game controlled by a stuffed monkey and a battery powered GPS that reports its location over Bluetooth.
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Art of Electronics is a very good book, but if you want to learn from a fun / programming point of view I highly recommend "Making Things Talk", by Tom Igoe. http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510510/
on “Ask HN: What's a good book to learn electronics?” ↗The book "Making Things Talk" (O'Reilly) is a great way to start: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510510/
on “Ask HN: What are the best Arduino starter projects?” ↗…robots. The chips have a lot of quirks but are not very hard to figure out despite some comments to the contrary on Sparkfun. If you are interested in Arduino I would highly recommend Tom Igoe's book Making Things Talk. The book is filled with a ton of wireless projects and walks you through the Arduino basics. If you are in L.A. and interested in Arduino I recommend checking out the occasional Arduino classes offered…
on “Cheap Arduino Wireless Communications” ↗One of the best electives I took in my CSE program was Art in Code. We covered Processing and Arduino and the only required textbook was Making Things Talk. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Things-Talk-Practical-Connecti... These tools were designed to be accessible to non-programmers and had our entire cross-disciplinary class making games, interacting with…
on “Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)” ↗Its not a bad idea, but I think it misses the potential that YC was suggesting. Read the book 'Making Things Talk' - think about the potential of measuring things in the analog world, temperature, weight, flow, force, sound, etc, and correlating these things with enterprise data. Maybe you can start off by measuring…
on “Y Combinator Challenge #14 - Tools for Measurement” ↗Their server seems to be swamped. There's nothing like a unresponsive server to sober you up from a whimsical book purchase on a FRiday. I was trying to buy: * Making Things Talk (great into to networking with low-level HW) * The Best of Instructables (excellent selection of mostly simple projects, includes IKEA hacking)
on “O'Reilly is selling any eBook for $9.99 today” ↗…Pillow Talk: http://www.joannamontgomery.co.uk/littleriot/?q=node/11 Chatter Pillow: http://sternlab.org/2006/11/chatter-pillow/ For making one yourself, books on soft electronics might be useful. Making Things Talk: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510510.do Fashioning Technology: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514372.do Instead of regular Arduinos, you can use sewable electronics specifically designed…
on “Ask HN: Do any open Furby-like projects exist? ” ↗…more of an intro to electronics text. If your primary interest is the arduino and you are relatively comfortable with a soldering iron and circuit diagram then the book you are probably looking for is "Making Things Talk" (also from ORA.)
on “The Era of Black Boxes” ↗…perform all of the complicated electronic functions (A/D Converters, H-Bridges, Omp Amps, etc), and don't need to fully understand the physics behind them, although it helps. I'm currently going through "Making Things Talk" by Tom Igoe, whose audience appears to be non-technical, or at least non-hardware, people. It does not cover the physics and math behind the projects though.
on “TI releases Launchpad, a $4.30 (shipping included) microproccessor dev kit” ↗I was going for that too, but wanted the "Making Things Talk" book (which is also cheaper on Amazon). Getting the individual pieces for the kit on sparkfun was also cheaper than getting the kit, and you could get a full size breadboard too. Thanks for the find.
on “Reminder: 1/7/10 is SparkFun Free Day (get a free Arduino)” ↗FYI, the "Making Things Talk" book is not about attaching voice circuitry to devices. It's about making devices that can communicate with each other.
on “Make: Electronics Book Bundle” ↗