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Lee Felsenstein Launches Educational Hardware
- lfelsenstein 11y agoI'm starting a segment of STEM hardware to allow middle-school kids to learn digital logic design in an interactive, visual-tactile way, in order to build a basis for learning software. My official product crowdfunding is still in preparation - meanwhile I committed to teach a class on March 12 so I've designed a smaller, crude version that will work for the purpose. The device is a reverse-engineered version of the first programmable logic chips with the fuse matrices replaced by a diode matrix. Users express logic equations by placing diodes at matrix junction points - this provides a tactile experience and visual feedback. The logic and-or trees thus created control latches whose outputs go back to the matrix. The user can create state machines this way - it's microprogramming since the underlayment is hardware only. And it allows users to grasp how symbols can control physical structure. My Patreon fundraising page for the temporary stopgap device is www.patreon.com/lfelsenstein . The larger project webite is www.andorbit.com . This will be an open project - I'm counting on others to develop courseware, peripherals and a web-based structure for mentoring support.