Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part I The World of the Maker

1 Who Are the Makers? 3

The Culture of Reuse 3

We Are All Designers 4

Not Only Digital 4

The Maker 5

2 The Origins of the Movement 7

The Culture of Sharing 7

The Triumph of Technology 8

The Fab Labs 8

The Spread In the Media 9

3 A New Revolution? 11

The introduction of Computers 11

The Cower of information 12

From Bits to Atoms 12

The Rebirth of the Economy 13

Part II Realizing an Idea

4 Can Creativity Be Learned? 17

Neurophysiology for the Uninitiated 17

The Learning Process 18

Techniques for Creativity 19

Lateral Thinking 19

Making Associations 19

Experimenting 19

Networking 19

Generating Alternatives 19

Chancing the Assumptions 19

Shifting IHE Boundaries of the Problem 22

Pseudorandom Input 22

5 From Idea to Project 23

Design 23

The Design Process 24

The Problem Definition 25

The Requirements 27

Decomposition 28

Evaluating Alternatives 29

Aesthetics in Design 32

You've Got to Try, Try, and Try. 33

Eventually You Cars Do It…Even Twice, Three Times 34

6 Project Management 37

What is a Project? 37

The Project Manager 38

Management of a Project 39

The List of Activities 39

The Gantt Chart 41

7 Try, Fail, and Pick Yourself Up! 45

Business Plan 45

Abstract 45

Product (or Service) 45

Marketing Plan 46

Operating Plan 46

Management and Organization 46

Assess 46

Financial Plan 46

Ready for Success? 46

Wrong Assumptions 47

Success, This Time for Real 49

This Time for Real 49

Customer Development 49

The Business Model Canvas 51

8 Financing Your Work 55

Classic Funding Sources 55

Friends and Family Network 55

Bank 55

Alternative Solutions 56

Local and Regional Economic Development 56

The New Angels 56

Venture Capital 56

Crowdfunding 56

Beyond Financing 57

Bootstrapping 57

What's the Right Solution? 57

9 Collaboration 59

An Open Process 60

Distributed Intelligence 60

A New Protection 61

Bits, Bytes, and Atoms 62

Part III From Bits to Atoms

10 Managing Project Files 65

Distributed Design 65

Git and GitHub 66

Creating a New Project 66

The Three Areas of the System 68

Installing Git Locally 69

The Workflow 70

Not Only Trees Have Branches 73

11 This Is Not a Pipe 77

Manufacturing Processes 77

Starting from Bits 78

Software 78

Open SCAD 79

Hello, World! 80

Beyond Cubes 80

Variables 81

Move Slightly! 82

Lazy is Good! 82

Other Transformations 84

Expanding OpenSCAD 87

12 3D Printing 89

How Does It Work? 90

Materials 90

3D Printers 91

MakerBot 92

Kentstrapper 92

WASP 92

The Workflow 93

Corrections 93

Slice It Up! 95

Setting Up the Printer 95

Operating the Printer 96

What If You Don't Have a Printer? 98

13 Milling 99

CHC Machines 99

Designing with a CNC 102

Software 103

CAD Software 103

CAM Software 103

Control Software 107

Where Do We Turn? 107

14 Laser Cutting 109

Users 109

Laser Cutters 109

Models 112

Part IV Giving Life to Objects

15 Electronics and Fairy Dust 123

Hello World! 123

What You Need 123

A First Circuit 124

Current, Voltage, and Resistance 125

Circuits and Components 128

Circuits 128

Components 128

Creating a Circuit 135

Measurements 137

Ohm's Law 139

16 Arduino 141

What Is Arduino? 141

The Software Structure 142

The Simplest Sketch 142

How to Upload a Sketch in Arduino 144

Interacting with the Physical World 145

Shall We Switch It On 146

Not So Fast 146

Pardon Me, you Were Saying? 146

Where Do You Store Your Data? 147

Only When I Say Go 148

…Even Two, Three Times 149

Beyond Digital 152

Some Exercises to Try 158

17 Expanding Arduino 159

Reading the World: Sensors 159

Thermistors 159

Photoresistors 160

Other Kinds of Sensors 160

Changing the World: Actuators 161

Buzzers 161

Servos 162

Strong Currents 163

Shields 164

Smart Textiles 164

18 Raspberry Pi 167

Component Check! 167

Getting Started 169

Basic Shell Commands 171

Operations on Files and Directories 172

Redirection 173

The World of the Superuser 174

Monitoring Hardware 174

The Graphical User interface 175

Python 176

GPIO 177

Hello World 177

A Flashing Python! 179

Button, Button 181

Arduino and the Raspberry Pi 182

19 Processing 185

Your First Sketch 185

Let's Get a Move On! 188

How Many Circles? 190

I've Got the Power! 192

Programming with Cartoons 192

Classes and Objects 193

I Want…a New One! 194

OK, but What Should I Do with it? 195

Using a Drop 195

Raindrops Keep Failin' on My Head… 196

Processing, Meet Arduino! 198

Libraries 198

20 The Internet of Things 201

Physical Computing 201

This New World 201

Where to Put the Data? 202

From Ivrea to Rome: Flyport 202

Raspberry Pi on the Net 203

Features of a Service 206

Index 207