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What ever happened to a breadboard and a flashing LED?

J

John Nagle

Jan 1, 1970
0
David said:
Play the video game and get interested in engineering:
http://www.software-kids.com/html/video.html

1. Loads slow.
2. Cheezy progress bar.
3. Rotating flying logo is so 1997.
4. Audio sounds like something from a "free background music" site.
5. Dumbest logic puzzles since "Myst".

Further along, as with the submarine, it gets better. But it's at
best mediocre edutainment. It's too much of what game designers
call a "track ride", where you're forced through a sequence of events.
That's where gaming was ten years ago.

Someone started with a lesson plan and tried to hammer it into a video
game format. That usually sucks.

John Nagle
 
J

John Nagle

Jan 1, 1970
0
David said:
What ever happened to a breadboard and a flashing LED?

Why would a kid want to do that?

On the one hand, it's possible to get an incredible amount done
on a desktop today, what with free EDA tools, FPGA programming
capability, cute little board systems like Arduino, free programming
tools for microcontrollers, and low-cost parts.

On the other hand, the knowledge you need to use all that stuff
effectively is substantial. It's all on the web, and a few kids
will figure it out. But not many; there's not much social support
for that kind of thing. And, in the end, what comes out will be
less cool than something you can buy.

This isn't a new problem. There are some classic books from
the 1950s, "A Boy and a Battery", "A Boy and a Motor", etc.
Those describe how to build your own electric train set from used tin cans,
if you have vast amounts of free time, a really good set of tools, and
the skills of a master machinist.

John Nagle
 
B

Ben Jackson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Play the video game and get interested in engineering:

What ever happened to a breadboard and a flashing LED?

One of the things that got me interested was an Apple ][ game called
"Rocky's Boots". You solved puzzles by putting logic elements together.
The setting was a series of rooms. One of the best parts I remember was
that you could go back to previous rooms and steal their components to
build ever more complicated things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky's_Boots
http://ldt.stanford.edu/ldt1999/Students/kemery/esc/rockyDemoFrame.htm

(latter one has screenshots)
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel Koltner said:
in most cases those who ended up being decent engineers were
probably taking stuff apart of their own volition by about age 6.

"Ok, Jason, new rule... you can take apart your toys, but not the house."

Both my kids assemble their own PCs from parts when they get upgrades.
They both know how to use most of the power tools in the basement, and
they both know some car repair.

It's important to teach them how to learn.

FWIW, my pcb tutorial starts off with a non-blinking LED and leads up
to a blinking one:

http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/ (chapter 4)
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim Thompson said:
During my childhood I disassembled spinning wheels, and pedal-pumped
sewing machines... no kidding ;-)

My mother tells this story, I'm not sure if it's true...

When I was a young kid, we had two TVs. One worked, one didn't. One
night my mom woke up hearing some sounds downstairs. She came down
and found me with the TVs - watching one and taking apart the other.
How cute, she thought, until she realized I was taking apart the
working one - and watching the now-fixed broken one.
 
N

Nico Coesel

Jan 1, 1970
0
"Fred_Bartoli"
Dead the day it took 200000 transistors in a PIC to emulate a 2 transistors
astable...

I still have a blinking led on every device I make that contains a
microcontroller. Proves very handy. If the led blinks check the
interfacing cables, if not check the power.
 
D

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax

Jan 1, 1970
0
Nico said:
"Fred_Bartoli"


I still have a blinking led on every device I make that contains a
microcontroller. Proves very handy. If the led blinks check the
interfacing cables, if not check the power.

Customers like a few flashing lights as well.
Oh... and the guys that hired you, esp if they are not engineers.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
 
D

David L. Jones

Jan 1, 1970
0
John Nagle said:
Why would a kid want to do that?

You answered your own question below (for those kids who are still curious
about such things)
On the one hand, it's possible to get an incredible amount done
on a desktop today, what with free EDA tools, FPGA programming
capability, cute little board systems like Arduino, free programming
tools for microcontrollers, and low-cost parts.

On the other hand, the knowledge you need to use all that stuff
effectively is substantial. It's all on the web, and a few kids
will figure it out. But not many; there's not much social support
for that kind of thing.

That's why most start with simple hands-on stuff like a flashing LED.

But of course it's all changed now, and there are far too many other
exciting distractions for kids.
Before the techno/computer craze came along though, curious kids built stuff
and learned because there wasn't much else to feed your curiosity.
Electronics was a much more visible field to play around in then, now it's
just down in the noise floor.

Dave.
 
T

T

Jan 1, 1970
0
Why would a kid want to do that?

On the one hand, it's possible to get an incredible amount done
on a desktop today, what with free EDA tools, FPGA programming
capability, cute little board systems like Arduino, free programming
tools for microcontrollers, and low-cost parts.

On the other hand, the knowledge you need to use all that stuff
effectively is substantial. It's all on the web, and a few kids
will figure it out. But not many; there's not much social support
for that kind of thing. And, in the end, what comes out will be
less cool than something you can buy.

This isn't a new problem. There are some classic books from
the 1950s, "A Boy and a Battery", "A Boy and a Motor", etc.
Those describe how to build your own electric train set from used tin cans,
if you have vast amounts of free time, a really good set of tools, and
the skills of a master machinist.

John Nagle

Actually you can blink LED's all you want with a platform that costs as
little as $20 or haven't you heard of the Arduino?
 
E

ehsjr

Jan 1, 1970
0
T said:
Actually you can blink LED's all you want with a platform that costs as
little as $20 or haven't you heard of the Arduino?

Or a 2n2222, 2 resistors and a cap, but the thread is not
about the many ways to blink an LED.

Many (most?) of the kids today have been jaded by the advances
made in technology since the "breadboard days". Binking an LED
carries no charm for them against the background of the
alphabet soup of commonplace electronic stuff like IPODs, MP3's
TIVO, DVD, PCs, Cell phones etc etc. Most of today's population
can't conceive of what it was like without radio or television
or even microwave ovens. The "magic" of how a voice or an
image of someone 100 or 10,000 miles away gets to your house
has lost its luster. It used to be that the kid who knew how
to wire up an extension phone or an intercom was looked at as
some kind of genius by his neighbors. That skill was valuable,
and (relatively) rare. Today, people just go to Walmart or
Best Buy or wherever and buy a cordless phone or a wireless intercom.
The typical kid gets no satisfaction learning how to build and install
an intercom or a doorbell or wire up an extension phone todayt, and
the competion (store bought stuff) is far superior to what he does,
and readily available.

The innate interest that used to drive kids into breadboarding
circuits probably drives some of them into programming, these
days. And if they're interested in electronics the same way
"breadboarders" were, they can fire up Spice and "breadboard"
that way. No need to save pennies for the next order from
Allied in Chicago or Lafayette Radio, and no need to go
dumpster diving for old radios and tv sets.

Ed
 
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