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Suggestions for the kids.

Former Member

What are your simple ideas for kids to get them into doing this for fun.
Hardware interfacing and software.

 

 

I was thinking about doing an led project with mine to get my kid into it.
Easily visualized results rewarding and fun.

  • LEDs are a great idea, my 9 year old has already set out his wish list for his slot racing (Scalextric). He wants a set of starter lights like they have in Formula 1.  He also wants to hook up the the RPi to his TV and put a lap timer on there - so I'm scratching my head how to cheaply and easily detect which car is which (just to add to the complexity both cars can be on the same lane at once!).  Any ideas would be welcome.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Have you contemplated short range RFID devices? You can even just tape them to the inside of the bodies of the slot cars since they are passive. Stuff from real race events to runners use these to keep accurate time at events. They are also used in some credit cards now.

  • in reply to Former Member

    What about an optical sensor under the track for each lane.

    You can use the reflective ones, and add something white/shiny to the underside of the cars.

     

    mark

  • Bar codes may be a possible and could also be used to extract car speed from the re-constructed clock! :-)

     

    For a simpler method, you could use a white light and two photo diodes on the track with diferent coloured filters.

     

    Coloured stickers on the underside of the cars would then trigger a different photo diode if the colours were correctly chosen.

     

    Coloured filters may be found wrapped around "Quality Street" and other sweets, which would need to be bought in large quantities for experimental purposes. :-)

     

    Coloured stripes on the stickers could also be used to record the speed of the cars over the photodiodes.

  • in reply to Former Member

    At school we did a project where a robot shone a light and when it hit the black tape it reflected and it triggered part of the picaxe program to follow the tape.

    You could have a sensor off the robot on different parts of the track, and when different types of light are shone on it it updates the times for the car that has that light(the car would have a light shining on the side 24/7)

    Thoughts?

  • I am working with my son by modding his diorama project for school.  It is the basic shoebox paper masche scenery (we got Utah) but we added buttons that trigger LEDs and audio describe points of intest like you would see on a larger display for a national park or something.  Using Raspberry Pi / Python tied into a breadboard with LEDs.  He is in 5th grade and I told him that he can't include anything he can't build himself and explain to his teacher.  Fun project so far, will post some pics when finished.