Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects by Tom Igoe

An Arduino Microcontroller Project Gold Mine!by evaddnedaed

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April 14, 2009: The name and cover art of this book fooled me for quite some time, but you should not pass it up if you're interested in Arduino microcontroller projects and simple wireless communications. It is cleverly disguised as something trivial, but is actually an incredibly well-written, simple, and comprehensive guide to causing your microcontroller projects to interact in both wired and wireless environments. It focuses specifically on the Arduino flavor of development boards that are powered by Atmel, 8-bit microcontrollers.

This is very much a hands-on project book. It uses a well-planned series of practical projects to take the reader through progressively more complex projects, many of which are very esoteric, befitting the cult mentality of the open-source Arduino community. Photos, illustrations, diagrams, schematics, and lots of source code abounds.

The author, Tom Igoe, has a terrific knack for engaging the reader in a personal manner. While following along with his projects is a great teaching aid and is useful in the short term, the book has great staying power and will become a reference book that you'll pull out over and over.

Specific topics I found particularly valuable are related to his simple explanations of wired and wireless serial communications, the integration of the xBee series of wireless transceivers, and methods for causing Arduino microcontroller projects to communicate via the internet.

"Making Things Talk" also finds itself in the good company of other books published by Make Books, the driving force behind the very clever magazine and website with a similar name, Make Magazine (www.makezine.com). If you like to make things -- anything -- make sure you look at everything this publisher has to offer. They are single-handedly intent on reviving what is progressively being lost here in the good ole' USA...the endeavor of creating tangible things using your own brain and hands.

Fun, fun, funby Anonymous

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November 01, 2007: This book is awesome. It goes with the attitude that everything with a circuit is a tiny computer, so therefore, you should be able to program it. The author then proceeds to show how you can talk various items from around your house?combined with the right circuitry?turn into entirely new creations. The book begins with the tools of the trade?soldering irons, breadboards, and lots and lots of circuit parts. The author then shows how these simple items can be used to create fun and useful items you can use around the house. In one of the first projects, the authors show how to create a replacement mouse using one of your favorite stuffed animals. Once you get the basics down, they show how to do the same thing over Bluetooth. Other projects include a network interface so your cat can send email, a wireless RSS component that you can hook up to your TV, a cymbal monkey toxic chemical sensor, and a lot of fun stuff with RFID tags. The projects in this book are fun to read, easy to follow, fun to build, and a great all around introduction to circuitry and circuit programming. The programs in this book will be easy for anyone with a familiarity with Java or a C-based language. Finally, the book shows where to get all the stuff you?ll need to build these projects. The book lists addresses of hardware manufactures, listing of the software used in the book, and full listings of all the programs used. This is a great book, and a lot of fun for people who like to get their hands dirty with technology. It?s well written, fun to read, and the final projects will impress your family and friends.