Beginning Arduino – SparkFun’s Redboard

My son and I have been wanting to mess around with an Arduino ever since we broke the Raspberry Pi.  — It didn’t really break it – we just fried the SD card and need to re-install the software. All easy to do – unless you are nine and need your parent to do this for you. —  As we’ve discovered, the Pi is a bit advanced for a young user and requires a lot of adult help (at least for the 12 and under set), so I was looking for something that was a little more robust and kid-friendly. I did some searching and happily picked up a copy of the book, Sylvia’s Super Awesome Project Book – Vol. 2, hoping that it would be as kid-friendly as it looks.

The kit was $30 – nice and affordable.

I’ve known about Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show for a couple of years now, but this was my family’s first foray into watching and trying out one of her projects. I have to say – I was a little disappointed.

Not that her enthusiasm and knowledge isn’t comprehensive – it is. She’s a great role model for kids (and girls) everywhere and she looks like she is having fun. I was disappointed with the actual execution of her book (and to some extent the video).

The video got us excited – though we still didn’t understand most of the info – and the book seemed doable for Arduino beginners like my 10-year-old son and myself.

I read through the book and was completely distracted by all of the random, irrelevant, but fun, tidbits. I passed it along to my son, who read it, liked it and felt comfortable working with this new technology (of course). I ordered the recommended Redboard kit from MakerShed, downloaded the IDE software, and worked through the problems of installing the IDE software. I have a Macbook and had to download some extra drivers.  We then went to choose our device from the drop-down menu and the Redboard wasn’t there.

What? Huh?

But, the book specifically recommended the Redboard!  However, it didn’t have any instructions on how to choose the Redboard in the IDE software (just the Arduino Uno). Did I make a mistake? Well, thankfully there’s a librarian-researcher in this house (it’s me! it’s me!). A quick search for Redboard and IDE and up popped SparkFun’s Redboard Guide. Thank goodness.

Sparkfun explained our Redboard compatibility and told us that we can just choose the Uno as our device. Whew. It would have been nice for the book to mention this fact.

Following along with Sylvia’s Super Awesome Project book – blinking LED

The first project was simple and we got it working after we copied the code from her web site. Although she says that copying code is “for wimps,” I have to disagree for a 10-year-old with mediocre spelling and poor typing skills. In this case, copying code is a great path to continuing with robots without getting too frustrated. (I’m kind of curious if she typed up all of that original code when she was eight?)

We completed the simple project and wanted to mess around with the coding. So, we turn the page – and nothing. There’s a completely different project about taking apart a fan to see the strobe lighting, which was all very cool in the name of science, but not really a good way to delve into learning about Arduino. It seemed more of a distraction – at least in the beginning of the book. Instead, I was hoping for more detailed instructions on how to mess around with the code. Which variable should we start with first? If we mess with the startup code, will it still work?*

I like the idea of the book because it makes the Arduino accessible without having advanced electrical knowledge. But, if the book is truly for kids, then there needs to be better instructions and less distractions (oh yes, irrelevant information “bots” – I’m talking to you). They need an instructional designer, or perhaps a teacher, to help translate that “expert” knowledge and guide a beginning Arduino user. I didn’t like the strong focus on completing a project without knowing how to mess with it. It was like buying a lego kit, building it, and never taking it apart to make something new.

In order to make the jump from the very simple, first project to the second, more advanced project, we made a beginner project from this book (which I happened to have on hand). We needed to learn a little bit more about the Arduino language and how it worked so we could manipulate the code in later projects. We also watched the first part of this video from AdaFruit.

I was disappointed because the end-product approach really distracted my 10-year-old from wanting to learn more.  While the projects were relatively easy to put together, he didn’t really understand how they actually worked, so it lost his interest once he was “done” with them. And, he is a “building robots” type of kid. He knows Scratch forward and backward and he builds crazy working Lego machines.  Another mark against it – the book required WAY too much of my input and help. That made this MY project and not his.

So, he decided to table the Arduino for awhile. Not because the projects were too hard. They weren’t. He easily completed all of them from the book and the last two we worked together to type up the code (with me doing 75% and him doing 25%). So, in that respect – the book was well-written and the difficulty level was spot on for his age. Unfortunately, it ended there. Right now, he’s not interested in taking the learning further because he has decided that he needs to become a faster typist before continuing with text-based programming. I’m happy he’s recognized that learning to type fast needs to be his next step. He’s guiding the learning – not me.

In the meantime, I’m planning on reworking the projects in her book and coming up with simple extensions that can be used to increase the Arduino-programming knowledge – without a lot of extra work. And, I want to dive deeply into the Scratch for Arduino extension and see if it is compatible. I still have hopes to offer an Arduino class for middle schoolers, but I have some work to do.

*Footnote
I know what the constructivist educators are saying – well, why don’t you just mess around and figure it out on your own? And, of course, that’s one possibility. And, you could take notes and work on it for hours and figure out what part is important and what’s not. Unless you are a kid and you aren’t quite that methodical with regards to text-based programming. Though, I have seen a lot of kids do this with Scratch. Maybe that means that he just isn’t ready for it – and that’s okay too. For me, messing around is really important, but with some things, you need to have a good foundation of knowledge. And, since we busted our Raspberry Pi from messing around with it – we are a little more hesitant to do so until we understand how sturdy the technology is – or isn’t.