MakerFaire Giveaway Suggestions

[Chad Lawson]

I'd like to have a little cheap(ish) giveaway for people who visit my booth at MakerFaire. Something that people can put together at home and tinker with.

My dream idea is to build a little arduino clone that consists of two circuit boards that get attached at 90-degree angles shaped like a rocket. Similar to the Vellman Christmas tree[1].

So two questions:

1) Is the rocket-arduino-thing something that could be done in time for the Faire? And is there someone with the experience who could help me get it done? I'm working from home this week and next with all the time available to anyone who could help make it happen.

2) If not, are there any kits I could get private labled or something? Or does anyone have a suggestion for a simple kit I could get done in time?

Thanks in advance,

Chad

1. http://www.vellemanusa.com/products/view/?country=us&lang=enu&id=351133

[Pete Prodoehl]

You've got 30 days... How many do you need? It could get done in time,
but getting PCBS professionally fabbed would be really tight/super
expensive. You could etch the boards yourself, but it is a good amount
of work. But hey, there's no minute like the last minute!

Also, you'd need to find/create an Arduino(ish) clone... or maybe go
with an ATtiny or something even simpler? What functionality will it
have? (Also, there's always next year.)


Pete

[Chad Lawson]

Yeah. Ruth wants me to have a give-away and I want to do the rocket. I thought combining the two might work.

I was planning to use one of the larger ATTiny series. Don't need a full mega but more than the 8-pin versions.

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[ChrisH]

What are some of your specs?

* How many IO pins do you want?

* Should it have LED(s) on-board? If so, how many, what color?

* What's the power source? watch battery? 9V? AA? 2xAA? 

* Can you provide a rough draft of the outside shape of the board? Or better yet, a DWG of it?

[ChrisH]

Oh yeah -- what is the overall size?

[Tom Gralewicz]

Cheap and easy:

A circuit board shaped like a small rocket, a piece of laser cut plastic about the same shape to make it 3D and standable.

5 Green LEDs on the body to act as a count down.

2 Red and 2 Orange LEDs on the bottom for the rocket blast

Power it up and it counts down the green LEDs and fires the rocket.

A coin cell might work, but would make the board much larger to mount the battery.

A pair of AAA cells would be ideal, plenty of power and they would look like fuel tanks. 

One idea was to make the base so it sat on top of a 9V battery so all you did was set it on top an it would work.  This would need a regulator but wouldn't need a power switch.

The good news is this would work with a TINY8 just fine, look up something called "Charlieplexing" to see how many LEDs it can drive with just a few pins and no extra hardware.

The bad news is you will need to make a prototype or two before you get a working version and then wait for your boards to be fabbed.  30 days isn't realistic.

You might do something really simple with no CPU and just some self flashing LEDS.

Also remember, very few people know how to solder and even less have a working iron at home.  Most of these kits will go home with someone and never get assembled.

Tom Gralewicz

Chronic Maker

(414) 380-1716

milwaukeemakerspace.org

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[ChrisH]

I like Tom's suggestion of half-PCB-half-plexi.  It definitely makes for an easier build.

I'd like to understand if you want user-accessible GPIO, or just a "display piece".

ATTINY's can be had with >8 pins; They can also use 6 of the 8 pins on a DIP8 package as GPIO, so depending on how many LED's you want to drive, per Tom's example, you might not even have to Charlieplex.

One downside to the ATTINY, is it's a lot more difficult to program (you need a programmer, versus something you plug in to USB and can have the end-user program).

Another option would be a ATMEGA16U2. This chip includes USB (it's what is used on the Uno to act as a "gateway" to allow you to program the actual ATMEGA328P), so you can just plug it in, and program it.

Any way you slice it, this is a complex project that's going to take time to pull off, especially in quantity.

Is your intention to give away a "solder it at home kit", or an assembled, ready-to-go device?

-Chris