Starter projects on Tindie

[Mel Chua]

I saw Sebastian tweet this, but wasn't sure if anyone else on this list had picked it up: http://tindie.com is like Etsy for electronics. It's small, but I like the homebrew nature of the projects there (if you're a year or two into electronics, you can see them and think "ooh, I could make that") and there are some interesting project examples, including things that might be inspirational if we're thinking about small starter projects for students to learn basic construction techniques (and through them, beginning to think about things like design).

http://tindie.com/Solexious/ministylophone-electriclaboratorycom/ - if you don't know how to solder a resistor at the end of making this, I'll be surprised. (That having been said, $10 is a lot just to teach someone to solder resistors, and it's not *that* useful afterwards.

http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mkel2.htm is a solder practice kit. I'm not so much suggesting buying these en masse as I'm thinking it might be a cool thing to look at and possibly adapt -- add SMT, etc. It's nice that they have everything wired up so you can check your connections by lighting an LED (or at least that's what I'm inferring from the picture) and that they have a desoldering exercise and a self-evaluation metric of some sort. Rube Goldberg soldering, basically.

http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mksb016.htm is a breadboard voltage regulator kit -- which is what we're thinking of purchasing (along with wall-warts) instead of pricey power supplies, at least for the intro electronics class. It might make a nice rite-of-passage marking for people who've completed a basic fab skills assessment -- are you all set on wire-stripping, thru-hole soldering, etc? Got checked off on all that? Awesome -- now as a mini "boss level" sort of thing, here's your breadboard power supply kit... put it together, and once you do that correctly, you'll get your breadboard and your kit of tools. Sort of a way to "earn" your toolbox at the start of the semester.

http://tindie.com/TroyDowling/troyduino/ is $15 and might contain what we need from an Arduino in a way cheaper (and smaller, and arguably easier to plug things into) format. It would reduce the price of Arduino kits (individual ones for students with a board, cable, and some common components) quite a bit. Probably needs more investigation if that sounds interesting -- by which I mean "let's think about the things we'd want the arduino to be able to do, and then see if this cuts any of the things that would enable that."

http://www.wayneandlayne.com/projects/metronome/ is just cool, though it likely applies to this class... not at all.

Carry on. I'm hacking on learning objectives this morning.