Date: 2 – 3- 4 July 2007
Location: Bates Mill, Huddersfield, UK
Host: DRU
Price: FREE
Time: 10.30 – 17.00
Teachers: Tom Schouten, Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk
Booking: lisa -at- blinkmedia -dot- org

CATkit is a 3 day workshop dedicated to physical computing. During the workshop you’ll learn how to use the CATkit board to create small stand alone objects that use sensors, knobs and switches to generate sound. The workshop is based on 100% FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) and open hardware. You’ll go home with the board and all the software you need to keep building.

What is CATkit ?

CATkit is an open hardware project. The kit consists of a printed circuit board plus components, to be used as a standalone interactive Forth computer. The main purpose of the board will be to serve as a teaching platform for physical computing workshops and as a tool for artists looking for a simple system to create stand alone objects, or an easy way to work with sensors. The Catkit board and its current applications are more particularly focused on audio and video processing and interaction.

For more information on CATkit, please visit the packets website: http://packets.goto10.org

Workshop Schedule

DAY1 – HARDWARE
• Quick introduction to electronics: batteries, digital zeros and ones, voltage and current, resistors, capacitors and microcontroller.
• What is a sensor and how they work. Review of different types of sensors: digital (switches, phototransistor) and analog (potentiometer, LDR)
• Building the CATkit: how to solder, how to put components on a board, how to not hurt yourself and fry components
• ping ! First contact with board

DAY2 – SOFTWARE
• Introduction to FORTH: the stacks, first words, the dictionnary
• Proof of concept: How to make a blinking LED
• Learning the environment and the application: write some scripts to control a simple audio synthesizer

DAY3 – PROJECTS
• individual project day: try to design a simple interactive system with the help of the teachers

This workshop is brought to you by GOTO10 and the Digital Research Unit which has commissioned a prototype of CATkit as part of its support for GOTO10′s Packets project.