(Real) Social Networking with Ruby and Hardware 4 comments

posted Friday, August 10, 2007 by topfunky

Scottie Project by Agile Dovadi and the Waag Society

At the Ruby en Rails conference in June, I spoke with Frank Oxener of Agile Dovadi who is working on some interesting hardware projects with Ruby.

They are using the small, inexpensive Arduino microcontroller boards together with some high-tech fabrication to build a non-verbal interface for children hospitalized with long-term illnesses to communicate with their parents.

The handheld unit communicates with a Mac mini via Bluetooth and notifies the parent over the internet.

I did a bit of circuit board fabrication in college and have been fascinated with projects like this. It’s great to see people taking innovative approaches and using technology to provide a meaningful benefit to people who need it.

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Thomas

Greg Borenstein did a great demo of his project, RAD, at FOSCON this year and showed me a close up of it at one of our DorkbotPDX meetups. I have to say, it’s a really awesome idea with a lot of potential. Basically, the idea is to use a Ruby-based DSL to program the Arduino.

I’ve been thinking about doing some work to get Hackety Hack working as a frontend for teaching people about physical computing via the Arduino. Just waiting for why to get it working on Shoes…
topfunky

Also, Frank will be at The Rails Edge in Chicago in August. Just look for the tallest person in the room.
Nate Fletcher

I really like kittens
Sandy

Mechatronics = the future