Created by Emanuel Felipe Duarte and M. Cecília C. Baranauskas

What tools can you use to create art 👨‍🎨? Similarly to the way a ✏️pencil or 🖌️paintbrush is used for the creation of drawings, paintings and other kinds of more traditional art forms, Pincello (latin pincello, meaning pencil or paintbrush) is an electronics kit designed to support the creation of Installations and Interactive Art. Pincello is composed of a list of affordable, recommended components, accompanied by meaningful, straight to the point documentation on how to use these parts and connect to the Internet (of Things?).

Pincello does not require advanced coding knowledge. Some basic Arduino Language and a little bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are enough to build great things! If, however, you are not confident in your skills, don't panic 😱, you can also learn those things along the way, as there will be useful links and references whenever they may be useful. For instance, if you are new to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Arduino you can check out these free courses and guides:

• Udacity: Intro to HTML & CSS
• Udacity: JavaScript Basics
• A Beginner's Guide to Arduino
• A Beginner's Guide to the ESP8266

To get you started in no time, there are three first-steps guides:

1. How to Configure the MQTT Broker
2. How to Program the Microcontroller
3. Basic Communication Tutorial

There is also a fourth, bonus guide featuring the Arduino Pro Micro microcontroller: Alternative Microcontroller.

While these guides can be consulted independently later, for your first time we recommend that you follow them in order. They illustrate what you can do with Pincello while also preparing you to make things on your own afterward.