July 08, 2013

"LEGOduino" - making Arduino accessible to younger children

 While working on electronics projects, Dutch enthusiast J. Benschop's son was bothering him to see what was going on. After working with the youngster and teaching them the basics of electronics, he wanted to know about microcontrollers. However instead of handing over some bare parts, the creator instead fitted some customised Arduino-compatible circuitry inside LEGO enclosures, and created a simple interface system to allow connection of sensors, USB programmer and other devices. 

No part of the required system has been left to chance, even the portable battery supply "brick" has been designed to protect the circuitry from incorrectly-inserted cells - and the sensors have their own unique connector which is easily used with the main "processor" brick. And instead of the Arduino IDE or Atmel Studio 6 (certainly not for kids) they've instead used the Minibloq graphical programming environment. With all this working together, a lot of fun and interesting devices can be made - for example:


That's an incredible project, and a fine effort for an individual. Find out more from the project wiki. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well. 

If you're new to Arduino and want to join the fun, the first step is a solid board for your projects - our Freetronics Eleven - the Arduino-Uno compatible with low-profile USB socket, onboard prototyping space and easy to view LEDs:


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