NTK 1.0 announcement

We’re excited to announce the 1.0 release of NTK! This version offers a double-clickable app, new widgets, a better design, and improved stability.

This fall, NTK has gone through extensive testing and many updates based on user feedback. It now has a full suite of widgets that do everything from playing a sound if someone is close to a proximity sensor (AudioAnalogIn) to controlling synthesizers using the OSC protocol (OscOut). From using cloud data as input for a custom HTML display (CloudIn, HTML) to turning on a light if two sensors have the right readings (Boolean, DigitalOut). From animating a robot with complex motions (Sequence, Servo) to running custom Javascript code to process incoming data (Code).

NTK
The Double-Clickable App Version of NTK

Here are a few projects that design students new to Arduino created in just a few weeks this fall using NTK:

Version 1.0 News

Double clickable NTK app

Previously, you needed to install Node/NPM and use the command line to install and run NTK . With 1.0, we’re providing a completely self-contained app. Just download it, connect your Arduino, and open the app.

Right now, we’re providing a Mac version of the app. Windows and Linux versions will follow soon – you can still use the command line version of NTK for those platforms.

Widgets

See our documentation page for widgets to see everything NTK provides. Here are some highlights of what’s new:

  • OscIn/OscOut – These widgets allow NTK to communicate across networks with a wide range of hardware and software using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, which is widely used for samplers and synths. For example, if you want to run Ableton Live to make music and use a physical knob to control it, NTK can connect an Arduino to Live through OSC. These widgets are also a convenient way to send data from one computer to another, where NTK is running on both systems.
  • Webhook – More and more IoT cloud services are offering webhooks as a way to interface with them – these are URLs with data sent. You can use a webhook to create an event occur with IFTTT, and using the Webhook widget in NTK could have a motion sensor send you an SMS message when something moves in your house.
  • HTML – This widget allows you to add your own HTML elements with custom CSS to the NTK presentation. And any element within your custom HTML is controllable by the widget’s input. So you could create your own visual data monitor that gets data from a Particle Photon (using CloudIn). Did you know that you can hide all the widgets and run NTK full screen?
  • Sequence – When creating projects with motion, you often want to create a series of moves that occur in response to some input. For example, using the Sequence widget and some servos (Servo), you can have a robot turn its head and nod slowly when you come close to it, and when you move away, you could have the robot shake its head. This is a simple matter of entering each part of the move with start and end positions, and the time it takes.

New Design

NTK has continued to evolve this fall, and we’ve recently updated the design to present a more clean and easy to use interface. Each of the widgets is color coordinated, matching the widget menu on the right. We will continue to improve the UI/UX, and think that this attention to design is a key feature of NTK (pardon our dust as we update all of our documentation to match the new design).

More to Come

We have many more plans for NTK, and look forward to your input. Just one note on what we’re working on. The newest member of the Arduino family is the Arduino 101, made by Intel. The 101 is only $30, and includes Bluetooth (along with an accelerometer and other features). We are planning to add support so that NTK can talk with the 101 wirelessly via Bluetooth. That will mean you can put the 101 in a device with a battery and control from anywhere.

Thanks

Special thanks go out to the team for all their hard work and dedication to this open source project:

Scott Cazan @scazan – Systems architecture and software development
Justin Gier @realjustingier – UI/UX
Sal Orara @salvadororara – Website

We’d also like to thank Intel Corporation for a generous grant that helped make this new version of NTK happen. Thanks as well to the NTK home base and testing ground (thanks students!), the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design.

All the best!

Philip van Allen


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