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Ideas for Arduino/microbits projects for my kids and me
What projects would you think would interest my daughters the most? The oldest is 11 years, super creative and builds the most intricate stuff out of plain paper, tape and cardboard. I have learned programming from about her age, but feel like software would not catch her attention the same way hardware would. They already experiment with programming and microbits in school (what a truly lucky generation!!!).
I am looking for stuff that is not too complicated/expensive that it will just collect dust on a shelf because it took a lot of time to build. Specifically I would like to try something that could be dismantled and reused for other projects. Maybe a barcode scanner or something that has a connection with real life applications.
I think that those kind of kits are beat suited as an addition to hobbies rather than a hobby in and of themselves (at first, anyway).
If they like gardening, using an arduino to make some kind of ground hydration tracker can be a fun thing to do. If they like board games, making some kind of score tracker customized for the game can be cool.
Don't make a new hobby, improve an existing one.
Great idea! I'm planning to build a space for growing herbs on the outside wall using some pots hanging from a wire mesh. How do you make something like that waterproof? Can you get casings that can withstand the rain?
You'll want to look for nema rated weather proof boxes. They'll usually have openings you can fish wires out of that have some kind of sealing mechanism. If you aim your wires downward gravity will end up doing most of the hard work to keep water out. You can also add some senor detection for ambient relative humidity and set an alarm if the humidity ever sits at too high a level for too long (be prepared to find out it's just in a humid area, but that's part of the fun!). Water probably isn't too much of a concern unless it's regularly going to get blasted by a hose or sprinkler though.
These boxes are cheap on Amazon, I recently got one that would be big enough for an Arduino for $8.
HOWEVER, make sure you have the proper hardware to put holes into it. The "best" way is a step drill bit, and those are pretty expensive if you need a larger one. If you get one with partially cut hole locations, an appropriately sized hole saw will work (which is what I ended up doing).
Just sharing my experience as someone who previously thought "how hard could cutting into plastic be?" before realizing how easy it is to crack or burn.
Great advice if you need to modify a box and I appreciate you bringing them up. Always nice to find a box with holes where you want them, but so rarely is that usually the case. And plastics can be extremely fickle about getting cut.
I suppose it's also helpful to pay attention to how the box is designed to mount (and keep in mind the location where you want to stick the box). Boxes with mounting options that don't put holes through the case but maybe have mounting points exposed outside the case will always help improve the boxes water/weather resistance.
I had a coworker set up something like that so I assume that the answer is yes, but I will admit that I don't have any suggestions on where to find them
you could lean into the paper crafts and use it to bring them alive. making arms waggle, eyes light up, playing sound effects etc. you might have to slowly introduce more complex concepts or come up with some different ideas to highlight what you can do with a servo or motion sensor, since its hard to come up with doable ideas when you dont know much about electronics or code.
i think servos would be a little too loud for always being active on a shelf, but you could have some puppety character come to life as a sorta cuckoo clock (servo and a realtimeclock). or making those cookie jar theif detectors but deployable by the kid (PIR sensor and a speaker, or whatever trigger).
for me, code was always easier to learn when i had some practical side of it. learning about logic branches and variable types and how to design the logic so that you have the right variable to check in the right logic branch.. its a lot to grapple with when its a totally foreign concept
much easier to see some existing code that does something, and you can read it and go "okay so this number is the arm wiggling value" and feel giddy when you make it wiggle more. that exploratory loop is really rewarding, and its fun to watch someone get more and more sophisticated in their ideas