Tag Archives: arduino

7 year old’s guide to getting started with Electronics & Arduino

Kind of fun stuff; maybe other kids might find this interesting. Click on any thumbnail below to zoom in or you can download a pdf file here – Kid’s guide to Electronics & Arduino (pdf).

ps: He wants you to know this guide is a work in progress and will be updated with bit more advanced programs soon.

Adafruit Neopixel LED strip on Spark Core Arduino

Getting start on the Adafruit Neopixel on the Spark Core. This shows a WS2812B 60 LED strip from Adafruit and uses the Neopixel port on Spark Core to run it.

It is quite easy to code thanks to the Adafruit library and a good way to get kids introduced to the for loop.

#include "neopixel/neopixel.h"
Adafruit_NeoPixel strip = Adafruit_NeoPixel(60, D2, WS2812B);

void setup() {
    strip.begin();
    strip.show();}

void loop() {
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 255, 0, 0);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 255, 255, 0);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 0, 255, 255);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 0, 255, 0);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 0, 0, 255);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
    for(int i=0; i<60; i++){
    strip.setPixelColor(i, 255, 0, 255);
    strip.show();
    delay(5);
    }
}

2014 Maker Faire – year of the kid maker

Just got back from attending the Maker Faire 2014 in SF Bay Area. This was our 3rd Maker Faire and as in the past years we wished we had more time there.

The 2012 Maker Faire and an article on Popular Science about 12 year old entrepreneur Quin Etnyre sparked my son’s interest in making. So certainly the big highlight of the day was meeting Quin himself in person who was generous with his time and goodies. Be sure to check out his company website qtechknow.com for his kid friendly Arduino products.

Quin

The second highlight was the encounter with Spark Core team at their booth. They were so super awesome in recognizing my son from his last video and showered him with praises, encouragement and goodies (even a new Spark Core!). Plus he got to meet their CEO Zach Supalla who was really nice to offer encouragement and support. Thanks guys – we promise to make some cool projects with the 2 Spark Cores soon.

A few other kits that he was really interested in were:

Except the Phoenard all the others look like good kits for young kids to get started, though he said the Phoneard was the coolest thing he saw at the show. The best part was seeing exhibits from many young makers including these 12 year olds:

…sure feels like year of the kid maker!

Arduino project for Mother’s day

This project uses a LED 8×8 dot matrix for the display, a piezoelectric buzzer for the music and a photo-resistor to play it when you open the box.

I’ve used these examples to put this together:

More details on how to will follow later.

Introduction to Arduino programming

Arduino programming language is based on c/c++. So if you are familiar with basic programming then you should be able to get started easily using the Arduino IDE. Even folks completely new to programming should be able to get started easily referring to the Arduino website.

Arduino introduction for kids

Arduino is an open source hardware and software platform that is low cost and easy to get kids started on. The Arduino UNO is a good board to start.

The kit shown in this video is the Arduino Uno Ultimate Starter Kit. This kit comes with Arduino Uno and a whole bunch of components including LEDs, resistors, motors, transistors, buttons, wires, relay and more. A great low cost kit to get started on many easy projects.