Five great Processing sites

In this Codebox, we take a break from programming to have a quick look at five great Processing resources.

OpenProcessing. OpenProcessing is a community-driven site where people can share their portfolios. You’ll find a vast array of creative sketches that range from art to science. For example, GUIGUITROCHOID by Guigui simulates the gears in a Spirograph. In addition to enjoying the visual beauty, you can also view the source code from any sketch to see how it works.

Learning Processing. This site is home for ITP Professor Daniel Shiffman’s book Learning Processing. Although this book doesn’t cover Arduino, it covers almost everything you would want to do in Processing, and is a great book to tackle once you’ve learned the language. The section on video has many creative mirrors, like “Video Pixelation.”

The Nature of Code. Another great site from Daniel Shiffman, this site covers “topics ranging from basic mathematics and physics concepts to more advanced simulations of complex systems. Subjects covered will include forces, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms.” In addition to all the great Processing code, you’ll also learn the physics behind the code. For example, the material on vectors and path following will be helpful to anyone doing robotics.

Ben Fry’s Project Page. This site has a number of projects by Ben Fry, Processing’s co-creator. Although light on code, the examples show the full range of amazing data visualization possible with the Processing language. (Most of the code for the projects are in his Visualizing Data book). The site also has several interesting examples of visualizing genetic data, but my favorite are the ones of source code from Atari 2600 games.

processing.android. This site compiles videos from a number of workshops on running Processing on Android, the popular mobile phone operating system. In addition to the basic graphics, the site has videos on how to use libraries to read data from a phone’s sensors. Looking forward to exploring this in future columns!

Hope you find these sites as inspirational as I do. Next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program.

In the Maker Shed:

Getting Started with Processing
Learn computer programming the easy way with Processing, a simple language that lets you use code to create drawings, animation, and interactive graphics. Programming courses usually start with theory,but this book lets you jump right into creative and fun projects. It’s ideal for anyone who wants to learn basic programming, and serves as a simple introduction to graphics for people with some programming skills.