{"id":374,"date":"2012-01-04T09:49:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T14:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jetmore.org\/john\/blog\/?p=374"},"modified":"2012-03-27T13:37:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T17:37:54","slug":"fun-for-young-and-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jetmore.org\/john\/blog\/2012\/01\/fun-for-young-and-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun For Young and Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my goals for the 2011\/2012 Christmas break was having fun stuff to do with my daughters to cut down on the boredom and minimize slack-jawed TV watching. \u00a0While planning this out I stumbled across the Wayne and Layne kits, and the Blinky POV<\/a> kit looked really nice. \u00a0It looked like a great kit to use to teach my daughter Mary (5) how to solder – it didn’t have too many components, it looked like it would be fun to play with when it’s finished, and I’m really, really intrigued by the “hold it up to the screen” programming method<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Right before I ordered the kit my Mom contacted me and asked for gift ideas for the girls. I immediately suggested this kit for Mary and sent my Mom the link to the project. \u00a0She said it looked like a great gift for Mary (which I expected) and she also said she really liked the idea of the Tactile Metronome<\/a> kit (which I did not expect). I couldn’t pass that up, so I bought both kits.<\/p>\n

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We decided that both Mom and Mary could learn together, so Mom brought the Metronome kit over with the intention of both of them working on it. \u00a0We started with soldering some resistors onto a junk PCB I got in an order from Evil Mad Scientist Labs<\/a>. \u00a0I added these to an order (for free) on a whim last fall and they were perfect to practice with. \u00a0It’s very cool that EMSL offers them. \u00a0I did a resistor to show them the basic action, then they each did a resistor.<\/p>\n

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I admit, I forgot she was left handed when I set this up...<\/p><\/div>\n

This isn’t really a build report as I didn’t take many pictures of the steps, but the kit was pretty straightforward. \u00a0The seven segment displays were a little difficult to get positioned properly, and both Mom and Mary were not completely comfortable with how close the pins were, but they accomplished it.<\/p>\n

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Wow she looks older than she is in this picture.<\/p><\/div>\n

Both Mom and Mary did great. \u00a0At the beginning they traded components and it went really well. \u00a0Mom needed no real help with the soldering and she definitely got more comfortable as we went. \u00a0Mary did really well. \u00a0We started with her attempting the solder on her own but we found she didn’t quite have the motor control yet to control both the iron and the solder, so we ended up doing them together, where I would hold the iron and she would apply the solder. \u00a0I’m really proud of how well she did.<\/p>\n

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Ta-da!<\/p><\/div>\n

We finished the kit in the time we had allotted and actually managed to get it to work! \u00a0Woo! \u00a0We didn’t have a lot of time to play with it (Mom took it home with her) but it definitely worked. \u00a0We initially tried using our fingers to tap the piezo but it didn’t really work. \u00a0We ended up using the handle of the angle-cutters, which worked great. \u00a0We got it to recognize steady rhythms and patterns, and the tempo up\/down worked as advertised. \u00a0One thing I couldn’t figure out is the result of holding the buttons down while powering on. \u00a0First, I couldn’t tell a noticeable difference in the resulting tone when doing so (though I was in a very busy environment by the time I got to try it) and second, the W&L use page seems to confuse pitch and volume, so I’m not 100% sure if I should be expecting a pitch change or a volume change.<\/p>\n