My son (almost 9) is showing some interest in computers and programming. He likes his computer class in school and they do some programming lite games. He also likes taking things apart to see how they work.
Are there any good arduino all-in-one kits out there I could get and play around with him so he could see the connection between software and hardware? Want to keep it mostly fun and not overbearing.
Another consideration is community: I think the Adafruit guides (https://learn.adafruit.com/) are really great, especially for folks just starting out / who are more project-focused. Poke through there with your kid and see if anything sparks interest.
Shameless self-promo, if he's into music: I make an Arduino-compatible "synth" electronics kit. It does require soldering (so maybe isn't the best choice just yet) but is a nice step towards making something that looks like a real, finished product. https://www.oskitone.com/product/scout-synth-diy-electronics...
it was a kit that has a breadboard, wires, and some assorted small components like leds and resistors, and some printed cards with projects to make and how to connect the electronic components. Check that the kit you buy has them. It's more expensive that buying each part separately, but it's much easier.
We later bough her some additional leds (you never have enough leds!) and two 7 segments displays, that are nice to show numbers. (There are two methods to connect the 7 segment display, we bought the wrong one and later the correct one. They are not expensive.)
I think the kit has some photoresistor and temperature sensors. It didn't have too many, but a few are nice.
We bought it a long time ago, so to dim a led you can send a signal that is up during some short time and down during same short time. It's good enough for leds, but it's impossible to use it to play music (even crappy one note music). I'd strongly recommend to buy one that can play music. Perhaps now all the available models are good enough to play music. (Anyone has more info or can point what to check?)
Here's a couple that I found from companies I've experience with and enjoyed.
Seeed Studio has their Grove ecosystem. They have a starter kit here: https://www.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Beginner-Kit-for-Arduino-p...
Adafruit have an Arduino-compatible called Metro. They have a starter kit here: https://www.adafruit.com/product/170
SparkFun have a pretty straightforward LEDs and buttons kinda kit here: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18577
Honestly, they're all a good start.
Alternatively, I'd consider an RPi 400 if you want a more Commadore 64 (all-in-one PC to tinker with) approach.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18577
It's from sparkfun so you generally get better support and docs than a random box of stuff from Aliexpress. The QWIIC ecosystem means that you can daisy chain a whole bunch of sensors easily and without soldering. It includes a small but nice selection of sensors, actuators, buttons and LEDs to play with and some suggestion projects.
Soldering and more advanced stuff can come a bit later if he gets into it. No need to discourage a kid from learning electronics because soldering is hard and you want to save 5$ by buying a bare IC instead of a breakout board (not to mention that the current shortage means that breakouts are often more easily available to hobbyists compared to bare chips).
Another angle is robot/robocar kits powered by Arduino, with available source code and documentation. I sent an Elegoo Penguin Bot kit to a nephew, and wrote up a blurb to get him started on hacking the software; you can see the blurb here:
The code is pretty advanced for an Arduino project, but it's trivial to tinker with and immedately see the results.
A robotic arm is a lot more interesting than a generic kit. :)
This will avoid potentially a lot of frustrating code-adjacent things that professional programmers and serious hobbyists will be used to. In my experience teaching programming to beginners, you want to get them actually making changes to the thing as quickly as you can with as little friction as possible. Things like soldering, library dependencies, build process are all things to avoid at the beginning.
I used it for our Toit tutorial: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-TYea7jbYfj2ecMUmr0T0zd...
But any good kit, but keep yourself with Pico.
It never gave me any trouble, although I use it outside of my job.
And instead of C, use MicroPython.
Raspberry Pi Foundation has a book.
https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mega-2560-rev3
a breadboard
https://abra-electronics.com/boards/breadboards-wish/wbu-204...
lots of precut wires, some resistors, LEDs and about 20 74xx series chips...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_7400-series_integrated...
I think you could do as well with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_4000-series_integrated...
I think it's pretty fun to wire up circuits of logic chips and drive them with the Arduino.
We tried an arduino kit we picked up from Micro Center. It has a project book which is quite good.
However, all the code is in C.
I tried the microbit and it was a lot easier for her to get started on her own. Having the option between visual block coding and Python was a good option to have.
For a more 'electronics' experience, you could build your own arduino on a breadboard. eg: http://start.shrimping.it/
The advantage I think with their products is that you only need to connect wires in general -- soldering and stuff is optional. They have good UI on hardware, and even include touchscreens, buttons and so on.
I think it will meet your "mostly fun" for sure!
Technically it's not Arduino in a sense that they mostly use ESP chips (not AVR), which is supported by Arduino IDE.
The homepage has good pictures if you want to get an idea: https://m5stack.com/
(Not shilling :) Just really like their products!)
I was going to ask a bit more about this then checked your comments and found you had answered someone else on this already! [1]
Do you happen to know any other niche online forums (eg non-tech ones) that have a lot of interesting discussions? Other than HN the only things I really use are Twitter and a few subreddits.
(I never bought into a space where it'd be safe to generate those fumes, so I stuck to... cyber stuff.)
Try finding a shop that sells them locally.
Don't buy any of it online.
Be sure to use cash or a gift card paid for in cash to frustrate the people who turned Radio Shack into what felt like the part of a casino where you can enter a raffle for a car.
Anyhow, other than buying a kit you should also consider getting a book even though there are probably loads of tutorials on YouTube explaining all of the basics.
They have a gift guide for young engineers. https://www.adafruit.com/explore/adafruit-gift-guide-young-e...
There are also some sensor packs that are pretty cool. I usually stick to vendors with 50+ reviews.
eBay's usually a few bucks more but US sellers are faster.
i can also recommend the book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" by Seymour Papert. it's pretty short and gives a great way to teach kids programming by encouraging them to put themselves in the computers' shoes, so to speak
once you have a collection of motors and sensors from lego robots and want to repurpose them, you can totally hack them into working with arduino, and i believe there are also projects to write C code on the lego mindstorms brick if you want to dig deeper that direction
- I've hardly ever seen starter kits used fully. I think this is because most people I've seen have gone from learning the absolute basics (blinking a LED, usually) more or less straight to working on some individual and more complex project. For these, you usually end up needing things not included in a beginner kit (components, bigger breadboard, ...). However, there is nothing wrong with a starter kit and if I had to buy one, I'd go with an original Arduino kit [0].
- There are some really nice education-oriented boards available nowadays that integrate a lot of functionality (RGB LEDs, microphones, buzzers, LED matrices, light / acceleration / temperature sensors, you name it). Somebody already mentioned the micro:bit[1] but there are others as well. I can recommend Circuit Playground Express[2] or Calliope[3], for example.
- You can never go wrong with an Arduino Uno[4]. It's basic compared with newer offerings but in many ways it's a classic (lots of documentation and compatible hardware / "shields" out there). Buy the DIP version if you can, it's more repairable and flexible than the SMD versions.
- There are quite a few ways to code for those educational microcontrollers. Most of the fancy newer boards mentioned above (micro:bit, ...) are made to be used both with Micropython/Circuit Python[5] as well as with Open Roberta[6] or MakeCode[7], the latter two for a more visual approach to coding. Unfortunately, those boards usually are not Arduino compatible which is a shame because the (probably) most wide-spread way to code for educational microcontrollers in general is the "traditional" Arduino IDE[8]. Most people I've seen end up with Arduino compatible boards and the Arduino IDE because it's more flexible and most of the documented knowledge, libraries and other stuff out there relates to that. Of course there are other options as well ("modern" alternatives to the Arduino IDE as well as the chip makers' tools themselves, ...) but those can be ignored in beginner contexts.
- For beginner workshops, we often use a Circuit Playground Express for younger or very inexperienced persons (or if we really don't have much time). For everybody else, we most commonly use Arduino Unos with a breadboard, maybe a soldering iron, some jumpers, LEDs and resistors and go from there.
- My favourite supplier by far is Adafruit for a lot of reasons, mainly to do with their open source and hacker ethics as well as with the quality of their tutorials and documentation.
- I make it a point to regularly buy from Arduino (as in https://arduino.cc - not the clones) because their stuff is good quality and it's well worth supporting the "original".
- Seeed Studio has also been mentioned and I think it's one of the coolest companies in this space. You can get a lot of more exotic and specialized (and cheap) stuff from them as well as all the basic Arduino things. They are also a manufacturing & development house (PCBs, assembly, CNC, 3d printing, ...). However, in my experience, their documentation and tutorials are not as good as with Adafruit, Arduino or Sparkfun.
- I can highly recommend TinkerCAD Circuits[9] as a secondary learning tool. It's a pretty awesome microcontroller playground / simulator / learning space. Unfortunately, AFAIK, there is no real open source alternative.
[0] The traditional choice: https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-starter-kit-multi-... -- however, I think this one is more practical: https://store.arduino.cc/collections/kits/products/arduino-s...
[2] https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-expre...
[4] https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-uno-rev3
[5] https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-raspberry-pi...
[6] https://www.open-roberta.org/
