Simple project for 10-11 year old.

Pat, 

   I have a grave concern about the Forge Europa RGB LED package fitting onto the bread board properly and can no longer recommend it. 

Since it sounds like maybe you are doing some of this with your own money,  I will share my goto source for parts: taydaelectronics.com.   You can get R,G, & B discrete LEDs for less than $0.05 each.  I would get the Water Clear Ultra Bright ones (just to add some mystery for the kids) in either the 3 or 5 mm.  You need to pay attention to their various current requirements.  I recommend their 220 Ohm 1/2 watt 5% Carbon Film Resistors @ $0.015 each.  For the resistors get 1.3 to 1.5 times the number of LEDs because you can supply more current by adding an additional resistor in parallel causing an increase in lumens output.  And of course you can cut the current by approx. 33% by putting two resistors in series resulting in a decrease in lumens output if needed.  The green leds seem to be much more effiecient at putting out lumens per unit of current.  Check them out for any of the other parts you need.  They did not have the bread boards when I looked.

I wonder if we can get oomlout.com to assist.  I really like their CIRC-xx .pdf layout guides.  I will send them an email with a link to our discussion. 

OBTW, I have heard that you (or the kids) can make great jumper wires out of a retired Cat-5 cable (non-stranded of course).  You can also re-use that stripped insulation to color code the anode/short leg/positive side of the LEDs.

Here is a kit on Amazon.com but you get more colors than you want and the unit cost is 4 times the cost of parts at taydaelectronics.com.

That's fine more than happy to switch to individual LEDs, especially at that price. Yep you guessed right this is a private project, so keeping the costs down is ideal.

oomlout.com is a great site, I'm loving there guides, they are really detailed and it would be amazing if they could help.

Ooh I'd not thought of using Cat-5 cable as jumper wires, I've got some spare at home, I'll have to give it a go.

Well, it's time for the Good News!

Aaron Nielsen of oomlout.com has generously offered to assist in making Pat's arduino project  a truely exciting, well documented, and easy to teach one.

Thank You, Mr. Nielsen!

I second that, a massive thank you to Mr Nielsen, and everyone else who has contributed here I really can't believe the support you have all given on this.

I second that, a massive thank you to Mr Nielsen, and everyone else who has contributed here I really can't believe the support you have all given on this.