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DuinoKit Helps Teach Students About Electronics (Video)
This is something Timothy Lord ran across a few months ago at a Maker Faire near Atlanta: The DuinoKit. Think of it as a fancier (and pricier) version of the venerable Radio Shack Electronic Learning Labs and you won't be far off. Plus, as the name DuinoKit implies, it's based on an Arduino, which means that right off the bat it packs a lot more learning punch than the Radio Shack kit. DuinoKit was financed by a KickStarter campaign that asked for $19,500 and raised $57,478 from 250 backers. And for those of you who worry about being called nerds because you're carrying a DuinoKit around, you can relax. It comes in a 'Secret Agent Carrying Case.' Really. Read their What is the DuinoKit? Web page carefully and you'll see. (Alternate Video Link)
It doesn't teach you electronics. It teaches you the arduino IDE platform and pinouts. Stop calling it electronics. If you really want to learn electronics, you would fab your own board and solder the microprocessor to it yourself.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Good job, guys. You broke it. At least I was able to load one page before the DB rolled over and died.
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Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
I seriously wonder why RS hasn't embraced the maker culture. It seems to me that they can only last another year trying to compete in consumer products and batteries.
That's not electronics either. Electronics is about physics, you'd like to play with a vacuum tube to actually see a hot cathode and measure currents.
Everything descends from [the physics concept] power.
Electricity is moving power from place to place (using electrons, to distinguish it from steam engines, plumbing &c).
Electronics is adding power to signal (again, using electrons to distinguish it from other forms such as hydraulics and pneumatcs).
Calculating the maximum load on your 15 amp circuit is electricity. Most of the wiring in your house is electricity, because it's concerned with moving power from place to place.
Amplifying an audio signal to put through a speaker is electronics. Amplifying a sensor to be read by a micro is electronics. You're adding power to the signal for various purposes.
DuinoKit until you try it
I would've killed someone for that thing when I was 7. And I'm only 30 years old.
Maybe you didn't grow up in the West? Radio Shack was all over the place here in Montreal when I was a kid. It must have been all over North America as well.
Mostly random stuff.
Not only the product looks great. He really seems like a nice guy. I wish him the best.
And for those of you who worry about being called nerds because you're carrying a DuinoKit around, you can relax. It comes in a 'Secret Agent Carrying Case.' Really.
Because nothing says, "I'm not a nerd," like toting a Secret Agent Carrying Case.
You made that all up.
I observed, noticed a trend, and came to a conclusion. You should try it some time.
Minor exceptions don't make a rule less useful. Check out Newton's Laws sometime.
A rule is useful to the degree that it conveys [read: compresses] information. We teach that the world is round because as a rule that statement is pretty accurate, and only later do we admit that it's an oblate spheroid or use other, more accurate representations.
I can't say "leaves are green" without some idiot on the internet pointing out that Poinsettia leaves are red.
So I have to say "tree leaves are green" until some idiot on the internet points out that Chinese maple tree leaves are red.
So I have to say "most tree leaves are green" at which point some idiot on the internet points out that tree leaves change color in the fall.
So I have to say "most tree leaves are green most of the time..." and the statement is mushy and filled with weasel words.
Newton's laws compress the almanac of cannon ball weights, forces, angles, and the subsequent arc of travel into a half page of information. That's pretty good compression for a rule, even though there are exceptions.
Saying "electronics is adding power to signal" is also a pretty good rule, except for obscure corner cases that don't matter in everyday experience.
Branly converter? Do I *really* have to worry about Branley converters in my electronics lectures?
Leaves are green. Get over yourself.
It's dreadful. Seriously.
... fffffffffffffffffuuuu~
I bought it. Lesson 1 was, "here's how you light up an LED! Connect the LED, a resistor, and the power source!"
So I think, great! I've got this. Okay, what's next? Lesson 2, "build this IR transmitter that communicates with your personal computer"
(not exactly that, been a while so I don't recall the specifics, but it was about that bad. It's the art instruction equivalent of this.)
FWIW, in the UK the chain was named Tandy.
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Don't give it too much credit. The circuit book was a bunch of wiring diagrams (connect pin 30 to pin 57) with schematics of the finished product, but it didn't actually explain what you were doing, why it worked, or why it was important. Decades later, I realized that it was actually capable of creating some pretty cool stuff (recognized the names of circuits), but by then it was long gone.
The old Philips EE kits were much better and provided a lot of theoretical background in understandable language along with each project. A lot of the projects were geared to demonstrate what things like transistors or capacitors actually do. Check out the book for this kit; it's in Dutch but you'll get the idea.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You have to be old enough to be trusted with a soldering iron. Next up, we live in exactly the sort of sue crazy society that would turn a small solder burn into a grave injury (for legal purposes).
Even adult makers often breadboard before they solder.