Hi, my son is 7 years old and I want to teach what Arduino offers but not sure where to start.
Is there a learning path somewhere that tells me where to start, what to order ..... like an end to end learning/educational program for do it at home learners.
Thanks in advance
Terry King produces educational material for schools, both Arduino kits and tutorials on how to use them. His site is here: ArduinoInfo
If my experience with my youngest son when he was much younger - he is now 31) is anything to go by, if your son is interested, all you need to do is buy him an Arduino and then try to hold him back.
If he is not interested just accept it.
...R
PS .. in case of doubt my son didn't have an Arduino.
Personally I need the structure that a pre-made kit and it's parts for me to easily learn. The last thing I want to do when starting is to try ans source all the bits and pieces. There are a lot of starter kits out there, I got mine from Sparkfun but i think this site also sells starter kits. I have also seen some books aimed at younger kids.
I think getting some good basics down at the start saves much frustration later on. One the basics are mastered then things are only limited by one's imagination
Good luck
Check Amazon for books with kids children arduino kit
and see what you get.
Start playing cards if you haven't, games that use patterns and math just to develop number-muscles. Start simple.
Terry's shop has modules for Arduino. Those are assembled parts on as small as board as possible. More board more price.
Terry's shop has extensive support pages and very low prices on parts but shipping... I buy a lot of components to justify the shipping because at 5/$1 for so many I wind up filling the envelope just to spend more on parts than shipping. The starter kit is perhaps of size to make a jump in shipping is why I didn't order one in 2012, I bought component assortments and got covered compartment trays at Harbor freight and filled 3 out of 4 to start. Now, that's about 1/4 of the total when I did box it all up just months ago, and pulled some back out since.
Buy extra breadboards and jumpers. There are flexy jumpers and there are thinner stiff jumpers that have bare copper wire ends, not pins or sleeves (male/female jumper ends, both useful). The stiff jumpers are a bit of a pain but once set in a breadboard they don't come loose easy. I usually have to use fine needlenose pliers to get the ends in or out. I curve the wire between the holes it connects if it's longer than the distance so that the wire lays flat on the breadboard. bendy jumpers get loose in breadboard holes easily but they're indispensible for many things.
For bendyjumpers buy DuPont cables with different ends, M-M, M-F, F-F and you get a 40-wire multicolor ribbon cable with individual wire ends. If you want to make a serial cable with RX/TX/GND you peel 3 wires off the ribbon and you have wires that stay together. Peel 1 wire off for a jumper. The female ends fit on header pins you find on modules and the legs of Nanos and Micros with pins. OTOH male pins fit into breadboards and header pinholes.
If you get into led strips, you will need an extra power supply to run more than a few addressable RGB leds. Do regular leds first anyway.
Window shop eBay and Aliexpress for Arduino things. Don't buy, just look.
all you need to do is buy him an Arduino and then try to hold him back.
I bought a young man an Arduino for his birthday once, and I got an update a couple years later...
"He made the LED blink, and then he made it blink faster, and slower. And that was about it."
The point is that there is only so much you can do with "just" an arduino, unless you live in a household that already has a significant "electronics hobbyist" presence. For that reason, I'd recommend one of the more complete "starter sets" - for youngsters without much existing background, one of the "well supported" starter sets from Terry, or Arduino, or Adafruit, or Sparkfun, that comes with a project book and all of the needed parts. For more advanced beginners, one of the eBay/Aliexpress "grab bag" type sets (with clone arduino) is cheaper and might even be a better choice (more opportunities for "educational research!")
I'd recommend an mBot. It's an Arduino based, expandable robot kit, that is especially made for youngsters. Most Arduino kits are very open ended, which can often lead to frustration and/or burn out on the part of the kid. A robot kit has a definite goal and it's an easy project, but one that can be continually added to, including lego compatibility. If my kids were a little younger, or grand kids a little older, I'd get 'em one!
Just to be clear, I agree completely with what others have said about extra parts alongside a basic Arduino board. My comments in Reply #2 were only about the "learning path"
...R
Most every starter kit has a breadboard and enough to do at least 20 different things.
There's bigger kits loads of parts and modules that can be learned about and combined with prices to match.
Wherever you would buy, check the onsite help and see if you will like it. Does it fit you?
I only started with Arduino this year, and found a cheap kit by Elegoo on Amazon which was good - lots of components to play with, and code to make them work. This course on YouTube was the other thing I used - really well taught and pretty funny in places! I'm still pretty hopeless, but these two things definitely got me started.
pallen33:
I only started with Arduino this year, and found a cheap kit by Elegoo on Amazon which was good - lots of components to play with, and code to make them work. This course on YouTube was the other thing I used - really well taught and pretty funny in places! I'm still pretty hopeless, but these two things definitely got me started.
Have you gotten to arrays and loops yet?
Have you been to this page before? https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Foundations
You can add print statements in a sketch to show what path was executed or what value a key number has at the print line. This is a major tool to debug Arduino sketches or gain understanding of a sketch.