Pratt Institute

Garden Gadgets
September, 24th, Monday 9:30 am-6:00 pm, @ Pratt Brooklyn Campus
Facilitators David Cuartielles & Evren Uzer

As a part of Pratt Green Infrastructures Project Community Outreach Program, first public workshop, Garden Gadgets will take place on September 24th. Garden gadgets is a design and technology workshop and it aims to encourage participants to come up with device/gadget/robot ideas in order to use in monitoring or representing data related to green areas, and partially or totally execute these gadgets as a part of North Hall rooftop garden project at Pratt Brooklyn campus. David Cuartielles*, an interaction designer based in Sweden and also the co-founder of Arduino platform, will be leading the workshop together with Evren Uzer (Pratt Institute). Garden Gadgets workshop will lead participants to learn on environment related simple sensing techniques and experiment at the green areas at Pratt Institute Brooklyn campus and how to remotely monitor a garden's environmental data. Along with issues related to urban gardening and rooftop gardens and Green Infrastructures project at Pratt campus, we will introduce concepts about:

- communication through wireless technologies
- sensing simple environmental data
- tricks for data gathering, event detection, and retrieval
- DIY sensors
- understanding concepts about global communication (build a project home and send it anywhere in the world)

If you want to come prepared to rock this workshop, you should have a strong interest in the workshop's topics. Having previous knowledge in electronics, software, or agronomy is a plus, but it is not a requirement. We want people that can stay through the whole session as the knowledge builds through the day. We will be using Arduino open source processors as our materials.

As there is limited space available in order to save your spot and receive the information for your participation along with reading materials, please e-mail to Evren Uzer euzer@pratt.edu your interest in the subject in 2-3 sentences and brief information about your background, until September 14th. Participation is for free and workshop materials will be provided by Pratt Institute  and Green Infrastructures Project generously supported by Department of Environmental Protection.

David Cuartielles is an interaction designer based in Sweden. He is co-founder of the Arduino platform: http://arduino.cc, head of the Prototyping Laboratory at K3, Malmö University and Research Fellow at Medea, Malmo University: http://medea.mah.se. Conducts his doctoral thesis analyzing the boundaries between technology, arts and society. www.david.cuartielles.com/

Evren Uzer, PhD Urban Planning is  currently a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute Urban Environmental Systems Management. www.roomservices.org