I haven't posted in so long I'm surprised that the account wasn't deleted!
Anyway, instead of posting on the random things in my life, I have more of a mission this time. I've been having some fun learning and teaching my daughter about the new wave of electronics experimenting boards such as the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, and so on. My introduction to electronics was through component-based kits of the 70's and early 80's, and I enjoyed them immensely and they pushed me to become the engineer I am today.
But somewhere in the late 80's and 90's these things fell out of popular view. More and more the idea of interest in electronics was associated with computers and programming than actually building something. Component level electronics faded as a hobby, and even though engineers lamented the fact is just became accepted.
The somewhere in the 2000's the Arduino was introduced. It really wasn't much - just a micro-controller with some support chips and a programming port (RS-232 at first, then USB and even Ethernet on some now) and the I/O pins brought to headers so one could connect buttons and LEDs to it and program it to do stuff. I'm still a bit fuzzy on what all happened because it didn't come across my radar until late 2011 when I had a project at work dropped into my lap involving one.
While I didn't like the project that much (I worked 24 hrs straight to get it done because some moron decided to add features at 4:30 PM the day before it had to work), I was fascinated by this little controller board - it was simple, inexpensive, powerful, and it was limited by imagination more than anything else.
So over the last few years I have been working with various Arduino boards and shields both at work and on my own, as well as designing a couple custom shields for work projects. I got a Raspberry Pi that I found Linux to actually be useful for something (have a few projects in the works for those as well). And one of these days I'll get to play with a BeagleBone as well.
Along the way I introduced my genius daughter to the Arduino with some interesting results. She liked the idea but found the dealing with components frustrating as a beginner. She understood the software side much more than the hardware and constructing a circuit to do what she wanted became too time consuming for her (she reads, writes her own stories, does volunteer work at a local library, and is also into soccer, running, art, chemistry, programming, and well, you see her schedule is a bit busy). So I looked for kits that would make things easier for her to try out her circuits. And what little I found was thorough, but also a bit pricey. There are some good kits out there if you can shell out the money, but what I was looking for was rather simple. And I didn't really want it to be tied to one platform either.
So I came up with a rather simple board with some LEDs and buttons. Nothing really fancy, but usable. So usable I think I might be onto something. I'll post more really soon!
