Arduino

Christoph Engemann, Thomas Nyckel, Isabel Schmiedel, Mary Shnayien, Florian Sprenger

Arduino is a participatory, non-proprietary, open prototyping platform for physical computing developed by a group of engineers and designers at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. Its name is derived from a bar in Ivrea, which in turn is named after Arduin of Ivrea, the city’s margrave who was also, for a short time around the beginning of the eleventh century, king of Italy.

Arduino was developed both as an accessible platform for design projects and as a pedagogical tool. In addition to numerous applications in both commercial and non-commercial technology development, it is used in engineering and the arts to teach basic computer science, the handling of hardware as well as the basics of programming. Arduino is used in teaching and research for problem-oriented, collaborative learning based on practical experiments, speculation, and programming exercises. In this way, new applications, aesthetic forms, and hands-on approaches emerge—the latter being especially relevant for humanities laboratories by combining practical and theoretical technical knowledge. Arduino interfaces material and code-based tools and is therefore equally suitable for researching and teaching media studies.

A typical Arduino set consists of a USB- or battery-powered microcontroller, usually an Arduino Uno, which can be controlled by a computer. For didactic purposes, the microcontroller can be attached to a plastic plate with a breadboard, where components such as transistors, resistors, and analog or digital sensors can be connected to circuits using simple plug-in connections without soldering. Arduino microcontrollers are offered in different variants for various applications and are open source. While an Arduino Uno costs only around 20€, the fully equipped starter kits sold on arduino.cc can be expected to cost around 70€. Additional kits are available for sensors, Internet of Things, or machine learning. Support is provided by a vivid online community offering information on almost all problem cases and applications in dedicated forums (e.g., forum.arduino.cc).

Microcontrollers have been a central element of many technological developments in the last 50 years. They have been incorporated in a multitude of electronic devices since the early 1970s, from PC peripherals and smart cards to household appliances, consumer electronics, automobiles, and weapon systems. They are single-chip computers on a circuit board that can contain variously configured peripheral functions, ports, interfaces, displays, sensors, actuators, and memory. Today, especially for the Internet of Things, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, as well as wearable computing, microcontrollers play an important role while also offering a plethora of possibilities for artistic interventions.

Microcontrollers perform several functions: They mediate between sensors and actuators, meaning between the components which register physical events in the environment and convert them into data, and components which implement actions like, for example, move wheels, make diodes flash at a set frequency, produce acoustic signals, or avoid an obstacle.

A special feature of Arduino microcontrollers is that they can be programmed via an integrated development environment (IDE) that is operated on a computer. The IDE includes an editor as well as a compiler and is operated with an easy-to-learn C/C++-based programming language. This programming environment has the advantage of creating complex, yet invisible, program layers from the open interfaces and the modularization of individual hardware elements, while highlighting only the code components relevant for a respective technical problem—and consequently for a respective epistemological problem—thus facilitating the learning process. Therefore, knowledge in computer science is not a prerequisite for teaching with Arduino. Rather, Arduino can be used to acquire and impart basic knowledge of electrical engineering and computer science, which is essential for understanding current developments in media technology. Knowledge is generated in practice—optimal conditions for the open and experimental practice of hybrid laboratories.

The advantage of using Arduino for teaching and research in the humanities is that while it rewards a certain familiarity with the aforementioned types of knowledge, it also provides low-threshold entry to hands-on engagement with computer science, engineering artifacts and methods, and thus a broader access to digital cultures. To give an example: At the Virtual Humanities Lab at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, we investigate (semi-)autonomous driving as a phenomenon of digital cultures through scaled down models. We do this by building Arduino-based robots that can register their environment and interact with it. In doing so, we hope to better understand the frameworks and constraints that have required the use of virtual environments in robotics. This way, we can use Arduino and other tools to investigate those epistemological-technical basic conditions on a small scale that play a role for automobile manufacturers on a large scale—accompanied by historical and media-archaeological perspectives.

Through the permeability of code and material that characterizes Arduino, the challenges as well as the “messiness” of the technical operationalization of hypotheses about a robot’s access to the world can be experienced. This messiness stands in contrast to the promise of frictionlessness that often dominates digital cultures. Working with Arduino usually is a mess in the best sense of the word: Tinkering and speculation are not detours but turn out to be elemental approaches to technology. Our work at the VHL does not aim at developing robotic solutions, but rather at comprehending frameworks and constraints. Based on the problem-solving processes of the constructed Arduino robots, we want to find out how robots acquire problems and which problems they are in/capable of solving or facing altogether.

Working with Arduino is particularly productive for these kinds of inquiry because of its tightly woven hard- and software, which integrates a media studies-specific interest in materialities with the conditions and biases of code. Writing, or initially transcribing, code that sets this hardware in motion is closely linked to tinkering with the hardware. This connection allows for a view of difficulties and obstacles as being interdependent with possibilities and perspectives on digital artifacts and tools in general, a view which could not be held by exploring these areas individually. In practice, this also means dealing with what does not work or what one does not (yet) understand but is part of the cognitive process. Working with Arduino thus changes the view of communication processes, interactions, workflows, and all possible combinations of interfaces between humans and machines within the lab. This way, topologies, principles, and challenges of digital cultures (e.g., between the material and the virtual, or between analog and digital signals), which would otherwise remain off limits for educational and research-driven approaches become apparent and can spark new questions as well as critical reappraisals.

Christoph Engemann is postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center Virtual Lifeworlds at Ruhr-University Bochum. Research and teaching on AR and Architecture, Genealogie of Graphs and Media of Statehood and eGovernment.

Thomas Nyckel is postdoctoral researcher at the chair for Virtual Humanities at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. His research interests are digital media and hypercomputation, Karen Barad’s agential realism, the work of Alan M. Turing and Kurt Gödel and physical computing/programming.

Isabel Schmiedel is research assistant at the Virtual Humanities Lab at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum, currently writing a Master’s thesis on the intersection of autonomous driving, LIDAR and dis/ability.

Mary Shnayien is a postdoctoral researcher currently associated at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. Her research interests include the history of science of cryptology and IT security, political affects in digital cultures, as well as the intersections of media, gender, and race.

Florian Sprenger is Professor for Virtual Humanities at the Institute for Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. He has published on the biopolitics of artificial environments, automation and self-driving cars, epistemologies of surroundings, and mobile media.