Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects,   ISBN:9780596510510

Customer Rating: 

This book isn't as good as "Physical Computing: sensing and controlling the physical world with computers" by the same author.
Making Things Talk isn't as informative and complete. The bluetooth section isn't worth the buy, I regret buying this after the Physical Computing book.

Customer Rating: 

If you are planning to go any further beyond the blink program, this book is for you.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book with one of the Arduino kits online thinking it would be a really great way to get my feet wet with microcontroller programming. While the book does give some very basic starting points, as stated in the preface, it is not a first book in microcontrollers, as some of the marketing might suggest. For me it just took getting up to some speed using the Arduino online tutorials, so if it is your first foray into microcontrollers you will definitely need some supplemental materials. Also the point about making things talk is not about sound but rather about networking, i.e. talking to your computer or a web server.

With that said the book is really well laid out and the projects are applied enough to be useful and fun enough to keep going. The projects have a good ordering to them. You learn about serial and slowly move up to network modules finally getting to wireless and RFID components. You have fun creating things that play games, clap when triggered by events, or automate the home. While some may call the project not very useful, they are really the building blocks for your imagination with the basic to complex, a very nice addition to the simple tutorials you find online.

One note while the book has some neat projects the price tags can really start to add up. Flex sensor here for $25, XBee module there for another $30 and so forth. I have been able to do a lot with switching out some of the more expensive parts but if you are someone thinking about a course or summer study with this book make sure you get it in advance and do some pricing of the projects.

I give it 5 stars for a great combination of items even though the book requires supplemental knowledge. The simple networking tutorials are great though, a subject that is normally a complete bore.

Customer Rating: 

The description of this book fooled me into thinking that it was about speech chips that "make things talk". You know, like talking toys you buy for your kids. Doesn't that monkey on the cover look like one of those? But the book is actually about simple ways to get wired and wireless communication onto hobby projects. Interesting, but not what I needed.

Customer Rating: 

Assumes a little more knowledge than I had thought (or maybe I just wasn't that careful). Be sure to check out what they assume you know; for me it was the circuit schematics stuff.