These starter kits are great. I'm a complete electronics newbie but was always interested, but found the sheer choice of equipment on offer, and the fear of buying a bunch of kit that wasn't compatible to be a barrier to getting started.
I came across a kit for the Micro:bit which I purchased as a Christmas gift for my young daughter. It's really captured that delight in working with technology for me again. Even starting with the LED "Hello World" examples, as described in the post here, led (haha, whata pun) me down a rabbit hole when I noticed blue lights were flickering, while red ones were fine. I thought it was a defective LED, but it turns out power requirements vary depending on wavelength of light being generated.
I never would have considered that in a million years, but then of course you get deeper into the physics of all this, and it's just fascinating. All thanks to a kids electronics starter kit.
I've purchased a few other bits and bobs now, and discovered simulators so you can build out your breadboard circuits without fear of frying components (luckily the kits include a few LEDs as I learnt the hard way!) I'm now onto trying to build out a magic wand for my daughter to control the house smart lights with gestures as she's just got into Harry Potter. I love how there's a whole hobby community around this stuff too, and the basic websites with datasheets and descriptions of the various gizmos and archaic "warnings". It reminds me of learning 3d graphics development back in the day, when openGL was the goto, and building things up from the math concepts without layer upon layer of abstractions and opinions getting in the way.
> but it turns out power requirements vary depending on wavelength of light being generated.
[pedantic]
It's actually because of the different forward voltages of the blue LED vs red, not the overall power
[/pedantic]
Clearly, I knew what you were getting at, but I made that comment because it's useful to understand that LEDs are primarily current controlled devices, not voltage controlled. Had you driven both LEDs with e.g., a 10mA constant-current driver, they would both be solidly visible.
For a regular indicator LED, this isn't really an issue (other than a too-low voltage will cause the flickering you observed), but for high-power illumination LEDs, or especially laser diodes, current management can be the difference between reliable operation or letting the smoke get out.
When I did my electronics technical diploma at CEGEP, we lost point if our wires were not perfect, they had to be of exact length, use only right angle, bus had to be color coded... I used to find that petty, my boards where on the messy side (but compared to the one from the article they were neat) but when I saw those horror that have more in common with an eurorack patch I understood what the teachers were trying to instill in us.
Wires placement are like properly formatted code, it helps with readability and even with debugability. Sorry for the rant, i an back to yelling at the clouds!
My biggest problem is that you get excited for the first few days, then you realize that there is very little you can learn from these toy projects, and then there isn't a project that is meaningful (to yourself) enough to persue. If you look at all those motors and sensors -- you need to think hard enough to come up with a project that makes good use of them.
I browsed maybe 50 of the most viewed project on arduino website to get inspired. There are may be 1 or 2 that somewhat interest me.
Based on impression coming from secondhand marketplace listings, my very uninformed guess is that 70% of Arduino kits and raspberry pi units purchased by amateurs are sitting in their home gathering dust, including mine.
I suspect this is very subjective. I had a Radio Shack 200-in-1 kit when I was a kid and learned tons from it, working through the book and then designing my own projects.
My current project just ties in my doorbell to Home Assistant. I could have built it only using what came with my old Raspberry Pi kit. Once I finish that, I'll be tying in my garage door, another project that uses simple parts. These projects are way simpler than what I do for work (currently writing PLC code for the Navy), but they're still fun.
Is getting a kit like this the recommended way to learn electronics? I don't know anything about it! I would like to get to the point where I can light up a LED bulb programmatically and understand how it's happening.
I can't comment on how good these things are for learning electronics but I find a lot of people who learn embedded development or programming from Arduino end up learning an endless number of bad practices.
I think C++ is a terrible programming language to give to people with potentially no prior programming or at last no prior C++ experience. And for people who _do_ know C++, it's just a weird environment full of strange hacks (may as well just go straight for bare metal).
It's great that these kits are available and fairly cheap. But as it turns out, the kit that TFA links to is a Chinese clone of Arduino and none of the profits made on that kit contribute to further development of Arduino hardware, software, documentation, community, and so on.
I'm not saying don't buy this kit, what I am saying is if you find yourself needing or wanting a second dev board, consider purchasing an official Ardiuno from https://store.arduino.cc to support the folks that made all of this happen in the first place.
This is going to be my go-to reference for 'how should I get started with electronics' - getting to see various capabilities (sense things, move motors, flash LEDs) without having to purchase parts while not knowing what you don't know is fantastic. Props for pushing through all the projects - I look forward to seeing what you make with these new skills :)
I have also found that many of these Arduino projects will also work with MicroBit. This makes it easier for kids to get started as Microsoft MakeCode offers the ability to program with MicroBit with block coding as well as Python and Javascript.
This is fun, but the hard part really is when you want to migrate from the prototype to something embedded. You won't deploy a development board for mass (your friends) production, or yes. I think there's a gap there that few people teach. How to design a PCB, and hook up an enclousure, doesn't need to be a 3D printed thing
17 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] threadI came across a kit for the Micro:bit which I purchased as a Christmas gift for my young daughter. It's really captured that delight in working with technology for me again. Even starting with the LED "Hello World" examples, as described in the post here, led (haha, whata pun) me down a rabbit hole when I noticed blue lights were flickering, while red ones were fine. I thought it was a defective LED, but it turns out power requirements vary depending on wavelength of light being generated.
I never would have considered that in a million years, but then of course you get deeper into the physics of all this, and it's just fascinating. All thanks to a kids electronics starter kit.
I've purchased a few other bits and bobs now, and discovered simulators so you can build out your breadboard circuits without fear of frying components (luckily the kits include a few LEDs as I learnt the hard way!) I'm now onto trying to build out a magic wand for my daughter to control the house smart lights with gestures as she's just got into Harry Potter. I love how there's a whole hobby community around this stuff too, and the basic websites with datasheets and descriptions of the various gizmos and archaic "warnings". It reminds me of learning 3d graphics development back in the day, when openGL was the goto, and building things up from the math concepts without layer upon layer of abstractions and opinions getting in the way.
[pedantic]
It's actually because of the different forward voltages of the blue LED vs red, not the overall power
[/pedantic]
Clearly, I knew what you were getting at, but I made that comment because it's useful to understand that LEDs are primarily current controlled devices, not voltage controlled. Had you driven both LEDs with e.g., a 10mA constant-current driver, they would both be solidly visible.
For a regular indicator LED, this isn't really an issue (other than a too-low voltage will cause the flickering you observed), but for high-power illumination LEDs, or especially laser diodes, current management can be the difference between reliable operation or letting the smoke get out.
When I did my electronics technical diploma at CEGEP, we lost point if our wires were not perfect, they had to be of exact length, use only right angle, bus had to be color coded... I used to find that petty, my boards where on the messy side (but compared to the one from the article they were neat) but when I saw those horror that have more in common with an eurorack patch I understood what the teachers were trying to instill in us.
Wires placement are like properly formatted code, it helps with readability and even with debugability. Sorry for the rant, i an back to yelling at the clouds!
I browsed maybe 50 of the most viewed project on arduino website to get inspired. There are may be 1 or 2 that somewhat interest me.
Based on impression coming from secondhand marketplace listings, my very uninformed guess is that 70% of Arduino kits and raspberry pi units purchased by amateurs are sitting in their home gathering dust, including mine.
My current project just ties in my doorbell to Home Assistant. I could have built it only using what came with my old Raspberry Pi kit. Once I finish that, I'll be tying in my garage door, another project that uses simple parts. These projects are way simpler than what I do for work (currently writing PLC code for the Navy), but they're still fun.
I think C++ is a terrible programming language to give to people with potentially no prior programming or at last no prior C++ experience. And for people who _do_ know C++, it's just a weird environment full of strange hacks (may as well just go straight for bare metal).
I'm not saying don't buy this kit, what I am saying is if you find yourself needing or wanting a second dev board, consider purchasing an official Ardiuno from https://store.arduino.cc to support the folks that made all of this happen in the first place.