Hi Tildes,

I'm looking to introduce my children (aged 10 or so) to simple electronics (blinking lights, simple sensors, ...). I've played with Arduino in the past, but I see that there are now many competing options: Arduino, cheap rip-offs, RPi zero, adafruit, ESP32, ... It's easy to get lost!

Which do you recommend? Ideally, I'd like something cross-platform and open-source, easy to set up (ideally a kit with everything included), and of course not insanely expensive.

Edit: thanks everyone for the good advice! There are so many good options...

I recently came across a cool video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxj8JwdQ7Lk&feature=youtu.be - The guy added a 4g connector to his rc plane and I think some extra batteries and managed to fly to the next island over.

I love stuff like this. Do you guys know any other current electronics that can be modded like this? Sadly it seems like most new consumer electronics come with their own small walled garden and often enough stuff just stops working once the seller goes bankrupt.

Other things that come to mind are:
Raspberry Pi
Arduino
ESP
But do you guys know whole systems that are moddable like this?
The Ryze Tello is a programmable drone, which is pretty cool as well.
I also saw some people modding 3d printers to laser cutters

To summarize, I am annoyed that there are two different standard for 4-pole audio connectors. For those curious I mean this.

You have OMTP and CTIA, the difference is they swap the mic and ground pins. This is irritating because Apple vs Android use them differently. This becomes especially annoying when you want a feature like an inline mic mute switch (one designed for CTIA for example will disconnect the ground pin on OMTP instead of mic)

This has been an ongoing frustration for me for a while. I really enjoy a good pair of headphones because I use Discord and I work from home which necessitates using headphones for extended periods of time to listen to music, take calls, chat on discord.

I just want there to be a device that does OMTP/CTIA swapping AND include the ability to physically mute the mic. Like this but with something that will break the mic pin. Im currently designing something in fritzing that will allow both direction switching as well as selective muting.

/rant

Has anyone else had any similar experience or frustration with this problem?