Electronic Project

[mans048]

I have been thinking about doing a hardware project for my clubbers and the DIY Gamer on Technology will save us looks good. The downside is that they are £65 each. Has anyone had any experience of getting the kids to do a sponsored event to raise the money?

Steve

[Peter Lister]

I have been thinking about doing a hardware project for my clubbers and the DIY Gamer on Technology will save us looks good. The downside is that they are £65 each. Has anyone had any experience of getting the kids to do a sponsored event to raise the money?

Steve,

I got my school a set of DIY Gamers when Code Club offered them in 2014. They were free (thanks Google), so I'm not complaining, but I would not bother with the DIY Gamer if raising funds. It's an expensive way to buy an Uno, an 8x8 LED array, some buttons, a buzzer, a LDR and an IR Tx/Rx pair.

If the accompanying software and resources were any good, I might be prepared to excuse the expense, but they aren't. The projects were boring, and the games that came with it, whilst playable in a couple of cases, were so badly written that they couldn't be used for teaching. Worse, the DIY Gamer library code - effectively the "operating system" which drives the LED and manages the inputs - didn't let one use the buzzer to add sound to the games or use the IR communications. I ended up writing my own, which did far better than the supplied library. About the only thing which did work was the animation generator code which allowed the kids to design moving images and upload them, but that didn't take them any further with programming and certainly didn't justify the cost.

If I were you, I'd get some cheap Arduinos - you can get perfectly fine Nano copies on eBay for well under £5 each - a stock of breadboards and a grab bag of LEDs, resistors, buzzers and LDRs. You could even get some 8x8 LED matrices and the shift registers you need to drive them (contact me directly if you want details) for very little. As to funding this - ask your school for ideas (apparently cake sales are popular) and be cheeky: approach local tech firms with a budget for the parts and a couple of Really Useful Boxes to keep it all in. You can get quite a lot of kit for less than £100.

Look on the net for Arduino projects, or ask e.g. on this list for help.

Peter

[Winkleink]

I did the following using Arduino.
http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/preparing-for-2015-after-school.html

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[mans048]

Thanks Peter

I'll take a look at that route as an alternative.

Steve

[Dan Andrews]

Steve,

I've got a nice electronics hobby kit you can use if you want.

I think I'm up to 4 arduinos, 4 raspis and a nice little selection of capacitors, resistors, LEDs, ic chips (logic gates,shift resistors, 555 timers etc) and some hats for the arduinos too.

I'm going to be using the Pi's with my clubbers as a means of allowing some of them to use Python until the school can get hold of IDLE. But the rest of it you're more than welcome to borrow.

Dan

[mans048]

Dan

You are a hero! Oh and if you are about this week or next I could do with borrowing you. Mainly as this week I'll be a work and next week I have FUZE coming in to do some sessions. I coerced them into to doing two :-) (Dont ask dont get) One with yr6 as a whole and the other with Yr 5 Codeclubbers. Let me know if you can come along.

And thanks for getting a ticket to the code evening!

Steve