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Build a Giant Cardboard Robot Arm!
Back in July of 2012, GeekDad pointed out Ken Ihara’s terrific Kickstarter project to fund the design of a giant cardboard robotic arm. Well, Ken easily reached his funding goal and produced his...
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Learning the Arduino Is an Adventure!
The world is abuzz with Makers moving from scripting to physical computing using the Arduino platform. The Arduino, for those that don’t know, is a microcontroller prototyping board based on the Atmel...
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Kickstarter Alert: UDOO Development Board
UDOO Board (Image: UDOO) Two of the most popular electronics boards out there right now for education, development, and prototyping are the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. A new Kickstarter project, the...
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Arduino-Powered Testing Proves That a LEGO Brick Wears Out in 37,112 Clicks
Arduino-powered LEGO brick tester (screenshot from YouTube video) Phillipe Cantin started with the question “How many times can I assemble LEGO bricks before they wear out?” From there, a little...
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FIRST Championship Showcases Brilliant Innovation in First Lego League
In the FIRST Championship, everyone gets their start somewhere and many of the older kids competing in the FTC and FRC competitions came from humble beginnings in the FIRST Lego League and the Jr....
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Texas Instruments USB Launchpad MSP430F5529
MSP430F5529 USB Launchpad Texas Instruments has released a new Launchpad that uses the 16-bit MSP430F5529 MCU. This is the fastest and most capable MSP430 processor yet with a clock speed of 25 Mhz,...
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Want to Learn Electronics and Arduino Programming? It’s Your Lucky Day!
I am very fortunate to count Harold Timmis as a good friend. Not only is he the co-author of one of my books that teaches kids to build and program circuits with an Arduino, but he’s one of the...
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Makies – Dolls That Have Made the Leap Into the 21st Century
The Makie doll with her delivery tube If you have a young daughter, then like me you’ve probably struggled at some point with the whole “playing with dolls and being all girly-girly” thing. You can...
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Kickstart Your Own Space Program With Firefly, A Flexible Mission Control Board
Image courtesy of Evadot.com We’ve previously highlighted the Firefly, an Arduino-compatible system with onboard power, charging, data logging, and radio communications–all the standard stuff that can...
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A $13 ARM Single-Board Computer
Good things come in small boxes…. (Photo by Roy Wood) We live in a great time to be an electronics tinkerer. What with the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard and other single-board computers, it’s...
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This Week on the GeekDad Community
Weighted Storage Cube, by Randy Slavey on the GeekDad Community Welcome to out weekly round up of the goings on over on the GeekDad Community. Remember, everyone who joins up gets their own blog where...
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Enhancing Lego Mindstorms with Arduino
Photo: John Baichtal Lego Mindstorms NXT is a sophisticated and fun educational robotics set that teaches kids and adults engineering and programming skills. As versatile as it is, however, wouldn’t...
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Best of Both Worlds: Make: Lego and Arduino Projects
I’m a fan of Lego robotics. I’ve written over half a dozen books on the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotic system, and tinkering and prototyping with the NXT just never gets old. (And there’s a NEW system...
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Robots, Electronics Hacking, and Kids
I built my first robot at age 7. It was made out of parts from an Erector set and stood about three feet tall. It had arms and legs and wheels under its feet. A (very weak) motor was supposed to make...
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The Mothership: A Visit to the New SparkFun Building
The offspring, playing with the SparkFun engineers’ toys, underneath a giant dinosaur. I’m more science geek than technology geek, but lately I’ve been doing my best — learning how to solder and code...
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Hacking the Holidays
One of my favorite things about the maker revolution is the availability of tools that a decade ago were out of reach of the average hobbyist. Sure, magazines like Nuts & Volts catered to the...
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Hobbyist Kits — Yesterday (200-in-1) and Today (DuinoKit)!
I must have been around twelve years of age when I began developing an interest in electronics. I started taking electronic gizmos like alarm clocks and kitchen appliances apart (often without...
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Kickstarter Alert: ArduinoKit Jr. Electronics and Programming Training
A few weeks back I wrote about the DuinoKit, an all-in-one experimental case containing an Arduino (Nano) and dozens and dozens of electronics components that can be connected easily with jumper...
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GeekDad Daily Deal: Complete Arduino Starter Kit & Course Bundle
Learn Arduino from scratch with today’s Daily Deal, the Complete Arduino Starter Kit & Course Bundle. Even if you have no experience with hardware, this bundle will take you step-by-step through...
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GeekDad Daily Deals: Cherokey 4WD Basic Arduino Robotics Kit
Take your Arduino skills a bit further with today’s Daily Deal, the Cherokey 4WD Basic Arduino Robotics Kit. Controllable with an iOS app, this durable kit contains all the motors and sensors you need...
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