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Father's Day Badge-a-Thon: Quality Time King

spannerspencer

Adaptability is the cornerstone of fatherhood. Well, it probably should be. Whether it is or not, I'll leave for mothers and partners to decide upon!image

 

But, in an effort to embrace this notion, today's Father's Day badge has taken a twist. I've adjusted it in accord with some excellent suggestions you guys about creating projects with the kids.

 

"Did anyone else see the title and expect that it'd be "what toys have you made for your boys (or girls)". That's what being a dad's really all about," astutely pointed out, which agreed with.

 

"Perhaps one of the future days will cover Projects on the Dads To Do List," he says. "Cool things like Retro Arcade System, Club house, Doll house and of course expanding the body disposal area for when your girls reach the teen years and you need to get rid of "problems" ;-)"

 

So, other than undetectable methods of dissolving the tormented remains of your daughter's boyfriend in industrial chemicals, tell us about any projects, games, kits or other activities your parents made with you (all those long years ago) that got you into electronics, so we can take some inspiration for enthusing future generations.

 

  • Tell us all about them in the comments below, and maybe include a few photos to really help us set that nostalgic mood!
  • @mention another element14 member in your comment, and nominate them to post their parental project story.

 

And remember you'll need to already have the previous Father's Day badges in order to be crowned a Quality Time King.

Top Comments

Parents

  • I think like many, I started out as an 'un-maker'. I had the job of dismantling old electromechanical office equipment such as Dictaphone voice recorders, early storage and retrieval systems (pre-word processors), etc. and some radios and televisions.

     

    My first electronics kit would have been the Philips 'Radionics x40'

    http://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/philips_gb/radionic_radio_and_electronic_kit_1612739.jpg

    which comprised of a multipurpose reusable PCB which you physically bolted discrete components into in order to create radios etc. Unfortunately the threads on the component carriers were somewhat long and I recall that it was rather time consuming to spin the nuts and washers up using the box spanner provided. It however did mean the components were reusable and you didn't need a soldering iron and as the kit was powered from lantern batteries it was fairly portable. One of the downsides to the kit though was as it was a PCB then it made it more difficult to adapt/build your own circuits. Later kits that followed used spring terminals and jumper wires so more flexible like breadboard. Looking back I think another downside was that it perhaps lacked some of the supporting educational content and I seem to recall that there was a tendency to end up building the circuits 'parrot fashion' as opposed to learning from it. In those days if you didn't understand something, then there was no Internet online community to fall back on.

     

    At the same time I already had access to a number of Fischertechnik construction sets

    fischertechnik GmbH - Products

    and this was taken to a completely new level when Richard Pawson published his 'The Robotics Book'

    http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/PRODPIC-10151.jpg

    as it included robot projects for both Lego and Fishertechnik along with example code for the ZX Spectrum, BBC micro and Commodore VIC 20 microcomputers which were popular at the time. The book included the 'BBC Buggy' mentioned earlier by

    https://www.element14.com/community/community/members/blog/2016/06/17/fathers-day-badge-a-thon-the-maker#comment-86656

    and then went on to show how to turn it into an XY pen plotter. To this day I still think that it was an excellent book published at the right time and it opened up  an alternative avenue to the home micro which were rapidly becoming games consoles for the majority of people. It also had the right balance between history of robotics, practical applications, technologies then allowed you to get your hands dirty by building some which actually worked.

Comment

  • I think like many, I started out as an 'un-maker'. I had the job of dismantling old electromechanical office equipment such as Dictaphone voice recorders, early storage and retrieval systems (pre-word processors), etc. and some radios and televisions.

     

    My first electronics kit would have been the Philips 'Radionics x40'

    http://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/philips_gb/radionic_radio_and_electronic_kit_1612739.jpg

    which comprised of a multipurpose reusable PCB which you physically bolted discrete components into in order to create radios etc. Unfortunately the threads on the component carriers were somewhat long and I recall that it was rather time consuming to spin the nuts and washers up using the box spanner provided. It however did mean the components were reusable and you didn't need a soldering iron and as the kit was powered from lantern batteries it was fairly portable. One of the downsides to the kit though was as it was a PCB then it made it more difficult to adapt/build your own circuits. Later kits that followed used spring terminals and jumper wires so more flexible like breadboard. Looking back I think another downside was that it perhaps lacked some of the supporting educational content and I seem to recall that there was a tendency to end up building the circuits 'parrot fashion' as opposed to learning from it. In those days if you didn't understand something, then there was no Internet online community to fall back on.

     

    At the same time I already had access to a number of Fischertechnik construction sets

    fischertechnik GmbH - Products

    and this was taken to a completely new level when Richard Pawson published his 'The Robotics Book'

    http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/PRODPIC-10151.jpg

    as it included robot projects for both Lego and Fishertechnik along with example code for the ZX Spectrum, BBC micro and Commodore VIC 20 microcomputers which were popular at the time. The book included the 'BBC Buggy' mentioned earlier by

    https://www.element14.com/community/community/members/blog/2016/06/17/fathers-day-badge-a-thon-the-maker#comment-86656

    and then went on to show how to turn it into an XY pen plotter. To this day I still think that it was an excellent book published at the right time and it opened up  an alternative avenue to the home micro which were rapidly becoming games consoles for the majority of people. It also had the right balance between history of robotics, practical applications, technologies then allowed you to get your hands dirty by building some which actually worked.

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