So What?

My little board doesn't really do anything, so what is the big deal?

Let's take the first general lesson from any number of micro-controller programming lessons - blink an external LED. And for simplicity lets also use an Arduino in our example. You need to somehow (maybe with a breadboard) connect an LED and resistor in series between the output pin and the ground. Not a complicated circuit, most engineers could do that in their sleep. But if the student has never done anything really with electronics before, think of the questions they may have. Does it matter which way the LED is going? How do you tell what is the right way? Why do you need the resistor? What resistor do you use? How do I find the right resistor? Does it matter which way the resistor goes in the circuit? Does it matter which side of the LED the resistor goes?

Well, with my little board it let's you skip over a lot of those questions and leave that for another day. My daughter wanted to see her program do something, not get a lesson on electronics. Eventually she will want to know how and why that works, but my board skips the boring stuff for now and lets her get on to with the 'making it do something' part. You know - the fun stuff.

So I'm thinking if this helps the learning curve for my daughter, what about others who are more comfortable at a keyboard than at a soldering station? Would others be interested in what I made as well? That's what I am looking into at this point. Leave a comment and tell me what you think.