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Book:   Making Things Talk
Subject:   Make yourself talk with Making Things Talk!
Date:   2007-12-16 15:35:56
From:   Dylan
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

Coming from the MAKE imprint of O'Reilly, I expected much from Tom Igoe's Making Things Talk. A pioneer in physical computing, Igoe's work has appeared in MAKE Magazine, where I first got turned on to the Arduino family of microcontrollers. I was not disappointed when I cracked open this book!


The book covers the basics of physical computing, learning to program and use microcontrollers, simple electronics, internet-aware devices, and interaction with humans and physical objects. Several useful appendices include code examples, distributor contact information, and software resources.


Making Things Talk is a definitive guide and reference for anyone interested in learning computer-controlled electronics with little patience for scouring obscure web pages for outdated information. The book covers the Arduino and Wiring microcontrollers, whose open source IDEs are available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The controllers themselves can be ordered from SparkFun Electronics at www.sparkfun.com, for less money than one might think. Computer code examples given in the Processing multimedia language, also open source and cross-platform, can be easily ported to Python, Ruby, and the like.



In short, Making Things Talk will make you talk: to computers, microcontrollers, electronics, physical objects, and the Internet in new, exciting, and useful ways that you never thought possible.

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"I really enjoyed this; so much so that I immediately bought a Wiring.org microcontroller and got my first "blinking lights" working last night. If this lights a fire in you as it did in me, you'll want this book, and you'll also want to visit the MAKE Website and perhaps subscribe to MAKE Magazine also."
--Tony Lawrence, AP Lawrence: Information and Resources for Unix and Linux Systems