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Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#91

Post by Fatnino »

bunderbunder wrote: post #78
lnsru wrote: post #65

My advice as a parent and electrical engineer. Buy kits. Don’t go to electrical engineering. There is nothing interesting there. Only lots of wasted time. Your son is not interested how to calculate resistor’s value in motor control circuit. Your son needs no frustration with failing printed circuit boards. He needs something spectacular what moves (and is visually appealing) and causes light errors to learn from. My…

The main thing I got out of teaching myself how to do it from scratch is the discovery that there's possibly nothing more frustrating and less satisfying than spending days and weeks designing and building relatively simple electronics projects from scratch and then discovering all the fascinatingly inscrutable ways your designs can completely fail to work. This isn't to say that there aren't people who love it. But…

There are still some mom and pop shops that carry that sort of stuff. Try to find one near you and then give them a lot of business

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#92

Post by psychomugs »

GordonS wrote: post #81
psychomugs wrote: post #69

Plugging my own robot: Blossom is an open-source social robot made from 3D-printed or lasercut parts and a crocheted / knit cover. https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public It's basically a floating head that others have customized with more functionality (e.g. cameras, microphones, screens, control with a phone) for research applications in human-robot interaction (education, telepresence, an assistant for ADHD task-fo…

Wow, really impressed with this! I'm sure my kids would absolutely love to build something like this, just as I would :) Is there some kind of guide available? I've never built something like this before, but have some XP with Rpi and breadboarding. Oh, and I don't have a 3D printer.

Thanks!

There is a guide available in the repo's wiki: https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public/wiki

Our contributors' forks and extensions may also be useful:

https://github.com/interaction-lab/blossom-public

https://github.com/interaction-lab/BlossomNav

Regarding sourcing the parts, there are online services available to order 3D-printed parts as you would a PCB. The *.stl files are available in the wiki. Though with how accessible 3D printers have become — the well-supported Ender 3 is available for under $100 at Micro Center — you may want to consider taking up printing as a family activity.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#93

Post by jes5199 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #78
lnsru wrote: post #65

My advice as a parent and electrical engineer. Buy kits. Don’t go to electrical engineering. There is nothing interesting there. Only lots of wasted time. Your son is not interested how to calculate resistor’s value in motor control circuit. Your son needs no frustration with failing printed circuit boards. He needs something spectacular what moves (and is visually appealing) and causes light errors to learn from. My…

The main thing I got out of teaching myself how to do it from scratch is the discovery that there's possibly nothing more frustrating and less satisfying than spending days and weeks designing and building relatively simple electronics projects from scratch and then discovering all the fascinatingly inscrutable ways your designs can completely fail to work. This isn't to say that there aren't people who love it. But…

I feel the opposite! I can usually get components next-day on Amazon, and I can get entire circuit boards _assembled_ from China in about a week. Maybe I'm not trying to do anything particularly hard, but I keep being pleasantly surprised when things work on the first or second try

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#95

Post by cobbaut »

jeroenjanssens wrote: post #79
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I was going to recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms but is is discontinued. In terms of easy of build and programming these were great. This kit is still available https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spi...

You can probably get these sets second hand. I just revived a bricked one (hah!) myself. Had to use the Lego software to update the firmware for that, which only runs on Windows 7, 8, and 10. I just got NXT-Python [1] working on macOS via a USB cable. No luck pairing the brick to my MacBook via Bluetooth yet. Nevertheless, I can't wait to get building robots with my kids! [1] https://ni.srht.site/nxt-python/latest/ha…

> Had to use the Lego software to update the firmware for that, which only runs on Windows 7, 8, and 10.

You can do that on Debian, hint "apt search nxt". Or go here https://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#96

Post by cobbaut »

bena wrote: post #21
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I was going to recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms but is is discontinued. In terms of easy of build and programming these were great. This kit is still available https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spi...

Spike Prime and Mindstorms use the same Hub just different colors. Spike Prime has a large motor, 2 small motors, a distance sensor, color sensor, and force sensor. The Mindstorms set had 4 small motors, a distance sensor, and color sensor. Mindstorms retailed for about $400 as does Spike Prime currently. Spike Prime is Mindstorms for all intents and purposes. You can even get either the Spike Prime or Mindstorms app…

Maybe parent refers to Mindstorms NXT, which imho is much more fun than EV3 or Spike.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#97

Post by timst4 »

So as someone who teaches robotics to middle school Students, FIRST lego is still the best program for kids. If you would like to learn CAD, EE, 3D printing, and microcontrollers, then certainly go the battle bots route. However, this will be a steep learning curve for your son and he may get frustrated. With FIRST, he will move from FLL to FRC in late middle school which has much more open road. He will also learn to work as a part of a team and solve problems in concert with peers which is different than a father son team. FLL is intense and almost a year round pursuit. Find a good home school team for him to join and he’ll get the best experience.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#98

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

They've pivoted away from the consumer market heavily, but you can grab some used LittleBits systems to get the initial absolute basics. Gizmos & Gadgets would be ideal but you could potentially get away with their star wars kit (which people seem desperate to get rid of) and one of their programming boards (microbit and Arduino)

You could then pivot from this by reusing the code you've already done and switch over to custom circuitry.

Am not sure how it compares to Mindstorm but I'd suspect they haven't held their value used in the same way as Lego products tend to.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

#100

Post by hersko »

astroid wrote: post #75

This isn't quite what you asked for, but as a kid who grew up on Lego Mindstorms I would have loved to have Spintronics back then: https://upperstory.com/en/spintronics/ This is more about learning about electicity in a tangible physical way, using puzzles to learn -- so it's maybe a level lower than your intent, but it is for kids 8 and up and seems like even adults could learn quite a bit from it. It's really hard…

This is amazing
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