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The Ultimate Project Kit?

dougw

The question is what constitutes an ideal project kit?

Of course it is going to be impossible to come up with a universal set of building blocks that covers every application, but given a fairly generic set of basic building blocks, what would be the most common solution that you would propose - to fit more applications than other solutions?

Assume a generic project would include a microcontroller, a sensor, an actuator, a user interface, and a power supply.

What else? Would you include signal conditioning circuits or amplifiers? Would you include audio components? Would you include LEDs?

To get the ball rolling, I would suggest 2 scenarios - a high end kit and a lower end kit.

For the high end kit I would go with an Arduino Giga with its touch LCD, a ToF Laser Ranging Sensor, a servo motor, and a USB C power module. The Giga could use a small powered speaker as a nice option.

For the lower kit I would go with an Arduino Nano R4 and a 1" OLED display instead of the Giga but keep the ToF sensor, servo and USB C power.

I expect others will prefer a Raspberry Pi to a Giga, but we will find out in the comments.

Leave a comment to elaborate on your thinking.

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  • One very important part of any kit would be instructions or tutorials on how to use each of the items in the kit. At the very least sample code needs to be there.

    for the board, I would go for something with wifi, to open up Internet possibilities. Does the Arduino Giga Wifi have Bluetooth too? I’ve noticed some of the nicer project kits (like the Elegoo car) come with a nice phone app.

    On a more affordable level, esp32 based boards will do that.

    As for the rest of it, it really depends on the skill level of the user - I’ve always liked the ardx kit because it covers the basic building blocks that the student can then combine into a lot of possibilities.

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  • One very important part of any kit would be instructions or tutorials on how to use each of the items in the kit. At the very least sample code needs to be there.

    for the board, I would go for something with wifi, to open up Internet possibilities. Does the Arduino Giga Wifi have Bluetooth too? I’ve noticed some of the nicer project kits (like the Elegoo car) come with a nice phone app.

    On a more affordable level, esp32 based boards will do that.

    As for the rest of it, it really depends on the skill level of the user - I’ve always liked the ardx kit because it covers the basic building blocks that the student can then combine into a lot of possibilities.

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