Arduino + Rhino + Grasshopper + Firefly

For me this is finally the wow moment. Today I have made the connection between all my Arduino experiments and the latest work I’ve been doing in Rhino. This video shows a very simple Arduino circuit featuring nothing more than a potentiometer (basically like a volume knob). Rather than writing code within the Arduino IDE as per normal, you can actually load an add-in for Grasshopper called Firefly, which will allow you to build code through the normal Grasshopper graphic interface. As a designer, not a coder, this really makes a lot more sense to me!

I’ve then added the Arduino to my previous Grasshopper model (check it out here), allowing the heights of the hexagons to be controlled by turning the potentiometer, and dividing the area of each hexagon by a function of this reading. The attractor points still also modify the model when dragged, so if I had some more potentiometers I could potentially control the location of these as well and creat a model that is easily modified using hardware external to the computer. Very cool!

As yet I’ve had no real luck finding any tutorials for Firefly so I think I’ll be making it up as I go from now on. If anyone does have some good links, please leave me a comment.

– Posted by James Novak