7 ms·

Crazy Circuits: An Open Source Electronics Learning System

236 points by skilled 8y ago

VectorLock 8y ago
I'm always skeptical of these 'no solder circuits for kids' systems you see everywhere but building them into the LEGO standard is a refreshingly good idea.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  I yearn for the return of Denshi blocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block I think a modern update with microcontroller/digital-microelectronics would be awesome. I really wonder why this hasn't been mashed with the Maker/rPi crowd, and we don't have Denshi blocks for the kids these days. Seems like a no-brainer ..
- cwingrav 8y ago
  I'd love to see how expressive they are. Many times, these kits are really good at building exactly what's in the directions, and not much else. Would love to see some blogger or other independent to get a kit and play around. Contrasting it to LittleBits and Mindstorm would be useful. That said, this isn't the first time i've seen this company. They had a few other kits that were interesting and I almost bought them but my kids are a bit too young. I hope they continue to grow and are around in a few years.
- borkt 8y ago
  Yeah, I was soldering little kits at a pretty young age. With proper supervision it feels you might as well have the kid really go for it, or have them direct the parent and lead them through the soldering process, while the parent performs the actual connection, showing proper technique and safety, including ventilation etc.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    Not all parents know how to solder.
    - tlrobinson 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure most parents could learn basic soldering in an hour or two.
      - moorhosj 8y ago
        Maybe, but it acts as another barrier.
      - jvvw 8y ago
        I can't see when I'd find an hour or two undisturbed to learn to solder! And it's not something you want to be doing with younger kids around necessarily - even though the older of your children might be old enough to learn to solder, you may still be looking after younger children. Even with something as simple as getting out all the painting stuff, I have to be the right frame of mind to be able to cope with the chaos and mess!
  - dylan604 8y ago
    Soldering would make the toy permanent into whatever configuration it was soldered into. This allows for undoing, redoing, rinse, lather, repeat. That's what makes it fun. You do it once and use solder, you learn that you can follow directions and work a soldering iron. These type of "toys" can lead to experimenting by undoing, and then connecting to something else.
- gambler 8y ago
  I'm not sure why Lego themselves didn't make Lego-based breadboards. Seems like a fairly straightforward idea. Flat breadboard with conductive "lanes". Bricks with electric parts. Flat pieces with conductors. Conductivity in bricks would normally go from top to bottom, so you could easily stack things or connect them from the top side, without adding stuff to breadboard. Would be great even for "adult" prototyping. No more wire spaghetti or bent pins. Bonus points for "empty" bricks you could solder your own parts into. You do it once and get a reusable part.
  - hnuser123456 8y ago
    They've had drag-and-drop programmable controllers for at least 18 years, along with electrical bricks with motors, batteries, speed controllers, lights, light detectors, touch sensors, etc. Lego mindstorms.
  - tlrobinson 8y ago
    Actually... https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4758#T=C&C=1 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4758... Before Mindstorms there was a 9V system. It was really basic though: batteries, lights, motors, sirens, and wires.
    - fenwick67 8y ago
      The Mindstorms RCX used that same contact system and had light, rotation, and touch sensors as well.
cushychicken 8y ago
Do any of these circuit board chips work with the Lego brick separator? https://goo.gl/images/PpEujN https://goo.gl/images/PpEujN
mosselman 8y ago
This is very cool and looks like a lot of fun. The price not so much however. Where does a $200 price tag come from for a pack of parts that should go for around $10-20? Are the PCBs so expensive to create?
- BeefySwain 8y ago
  I'm sure the price comes from a lack of scale. The creators of this should consider something like massdrop.com to see if they can generate sufficient interest to get the prices within a reasonable range. The "Crazy Circuits Makerspace Set"[0] is just about an order of magnitude more costly than I would consider "cheap" for such a kit. That said, as someone who had a lot of fun with Snapcircuits as a child, I agree that this would have been a great way to transition from something that is essentially a "toy" to full blown bread-board tinkering. [0] https://www.browndoggadgets.com/collections/new-classroom-sets/products/crazy-circuits-makerspace-set https://www.browndoggadgets.com/collections/new-classroom-se...
  - mrfusion 8y ago
    I can’t find out what massdrop does without signing up.
    - Afton 8y ago
      Ostensibly, it's a place where multiple people sign up to buy something, so that you get bulk prices. In my experience it's been much more about trying to get you to buy for the same or more than you can get on Amazon using 'limited time' artificial scarcity.
      - BeefySwain 8y ago
        For things like sewing equipment or knives, what you describe is true, but for things like custom keyboards, it is not. For instance, I purchased an Ergodox on Massdrop for less than $300 at a time where sourcing the pieces yourself would have cost well over $1000.
  - 8y ago
pkaye 8y ago
These things always turn out to be every expensive. A breadboard it not much more difficult.
- archgoon 8y ago
  Breadboards hide the connections and require a significant amount of thinking in transforming to and from a circuit diagram. This isn't hard once you've mastered it, but I can understand wanting to ease K-12 classrooms into it.
  - camtarn 8y ago
    Yeah. Connections on heavily-used breadboards can also become very iffy, which is somewhat demoralising: you assemble a circuit on the breadboard and it just flat out doesn't work, or perhaps it works for a bit then dies. While it seems to be a bit of a dead technology now, something like wirewrap would be a much better way to translate directly from diagram to board.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Nicely done. The whole Lego thing is pretty powerful. Even Lego thought so and the whole "mindstorms" product line came from that. However, the really cool stuff as far as I'm concerned is the nylon conductive tape. That is super useful for things like making electrically active textiles and putting circuits into odd places. One ohm per foot isn't too shabby. I ordered a bunch of rolls of that (to make shipping reasonable) and I'm really interested to play around with it.
- Tcepsa 8y ago
  You might also be interested in some of the work that bunnie has done with paper, copper tape, binder clips, and various components in this blog post[1] and also with Chibitronics[2]. That having been said, I'm glad they mention why they didn't use copper tape here before I tried to stick any down on a Lego plate! [1]https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5259 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5259 [2]https://chibitronics.com/ https://chibitronics.com/
felipemnoa 8y ago
If you really want to learn digital electronics you should learn how to design a very simple CPU from scratch. If you can do that then you can build virtually any digital circuit you can think of. And it is not that hard (although it will take some dedication, months of reading and experimenting) Plenty of resources out there that teach you how to do it from scratch. When I was a kid I tried to learn electronics by buying these types of kits. They were totally useless, complete waste of money and they only accomplished in making me feel that electronics was way too hard for me. All I could do was assemble the circuits in the diagrams but there was no understanding involved. The worst part was that they all used some computers chips, like the 555 timer, to do some special effects, etc. When you are starting out any chip is kind of useless in your goal to understanding digital electronics.
- throway88989898 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2...
- zakki 8y ago
  Do you have any link on how to design a simple cpu from scratch? Or a search keyword for it!
  - copperx 8y ago
    Nand2tetris will teach you.
    - felipemnoa 8y ago
      Yes, this is what I was thinking about.
  - myself248 8y ago
    "homebrew CPU" is a good start. You'll find numerous projects, many of whom list the resources they used.
  - 8y ago
cmroanirgo 8y ago
Fantastic! Who would walk past a project like "squishy sounds", "conductive paint piano" or "ugly holiday sweater" [1] (It's linked to in the article) 1. https://browndoggadgets.dozuki.com/c/Project_Guides https://browndoggadgets.dozuki.com/c/Project_Guides

236 points by skilled 8y ago

I'm always skeptical of these 'no solder circuits for kids' systems you see everywhere but building them into the LEGO standard is a refreshingly good idea.

fit2rule 8y ago
I yearn for the return of Denshi blocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block I think a modern update with microcontroller/digital-microelectronics would be awesome. I really wonder why this hasn't been mashed with the Maker/rPi crowd, and we don't have Denshi blocks for the kids these days. Seems like a no-brainer ..
cwingrav 8y ago
I'd love to see how expressive they are. Many times, these kits are really good at building exactly what's in the directions, and not much else. Would love to see some blogger or other independent to get a kit and play around. Contrasting it to LittleBits and Mindstorm would be useful. That said, this isn't the first time i've seen this company. They had a few other kits that were interesting and I almost bought them but my kids are a bit too young. I hope they continue to grow and are around in a few years.
borkt 8y ago
Yeah, I was soldering little kits at a pretty young age. With proper supervision it feels you might as well have the kid really go for it, or have them direct the parent and lead them through the soldering process, while the parent performs the actual connection, showing proper technique and safety, including ventilation etc.
- moorhosj 8y ago
  Not all parents know how to solder.
  - tlrobinson 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure most parents could learn basic soldering in an hour or two.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      Maybe, but it acts as another barrier.
    - jvvw 8y ago
      I can't see when I'd find an hour or two undisturbed to learn to solder! And it's not something you want to be doing with younger kids around necessarily - even though the older of your children might be old enough to learn to solder, you may still be looking after younger children. Even with something as simple as getting out all the painting stuff, I have to be the right frame of mind to be able to cope with the chaos and mess!
- dylan604 8y ago
  Soldering would make the toy permanent into whatever configuration it was soldered into. This allows for undoing, redoing, rinse, lather, repeat. That's what makes it fun. You do it once and use solder, you learn that you can follow directions and work a soldering iron. These type of "toys" can lead to experimenting by undoing, and then connecting to something else.
gambler 8y ago
I'm not sure why Lego themselves didn't make Lego-based breadboards. Seems like a fairly straightforward idea. Flat breadboard with conductive "lanes". Bricks with electric parts. Flat pieces with conductors. Conductivity in bricks would normally go from top to bottom, so you could easily stack things or connect them from the top side, without adding stuff to breadboard. Would be great even for "adult" prototyping. No more wire spaghetti or bent pins. Bonus points for "empty" bricks you could solder your own parts into. You do it once and get a reusable part.
- hnuser123456 8y ago
  They've had drag-and-drop programmable controllers for at least 18 years, along with electrical bricks with motors, batteries, speed controllers, lights, light detectors, touch sensors, etc. Lego mindstorms.
- tlrobinson 8y ago
  Actually... https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4758#T=C&C=1 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4758... Before Mindstorms there was a 9V system. It was really basic though: batteries, lights, motors, sirens, and wires.
  - fenwick67 8y ago
    The Mindstorms RCX used that same contact system and had light, rotation, and touch sensors as well.

cushychicken 8y ago

Do any of these circuit board chips work with the Lego brick separator? https://goo.gl/images/PpEujN https://goo.gl/images/PpEujN

mosselman 8y ago

This is very cool and looks like a lot of fun. The price not so much however. Where does a $200 price tag come from for a pack of parts that should go for around $10-20? Are the PCBs so expensive to create?

BeefySwain 8y ago
I'm sure the price comes from a lack of scale. The creators of this should consider something like massdrop.com to see if they can generate sufficient interest to get the prices within a reasonable range. The "Crazy Circuits Makerspace Set"[0] is just about an order of magnitude more costly than I would consider "cheap" for such a kit. That said, as someone who had a lot of fun with Snapcircuits as a child, I agree that this would have been a great way to transition from something that is essentially a "toy" to full blown bread-board tinkering. [0] https://www.browndoggadgets.com/collections/new-classroom-sets/products/crazy-circuits-makerspace-set https://www.browndoggadgets.com/collections/new-classroom-se...
- mrfusion 8y ago
  I can’t find out what massdrop does without signing up.
  - Afton 8y ago
    Ostensibly, it's a place where multiple people sign up to buy something, so that you get bulk prices. In my experience it's been much more about trying to get you to buy for the same or more than you can get on Amazon using 'limited time' artificial scarcity.
    - BeefySwain 8y ago
      For things like sewing equipment or knives, what you describe is true, but for things like custom keyboards, it is not. For instance, I purchased an Ergodox on Massdrop for less than $300 at a time where sourcing the pieces yourself would have cost well over $1000.
- 8y ago

pkaye 8y ago

These things always turn out to be every expensive. A breadboard it not much more difficult.

archgoon 8y ago
Breadboards hide the connections and require a significant amount of thinking in transforming to and from a circuit diagram. This isn't hard once you've mastered it, but I can understand wanting to ease K-12 classrooms into it.
- camtarn 8y ago
  Yeah. Connections on heavily-used breadboards can also become very iffy, which is somewhat demoralising: you assemble a circuit on the breadboard and it just flat out doesn't work, or perhaps it works for a bit then dies. While it seems to be a bit of a dead technology now, something like wirewrap would be a much better way to translate directly from diagram to board.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Nicely done. The whole Lego thing is pretty powerful. Even Lego thought so and the whole "mindstorms" product line came from that. However, the really cool stuff as far as I'm concerned is the nylon conductive tape. That is super useful for things like making electrically active textiles and putting circuits into odd places. One ohm per foot isn't too shabby. I ordered a bunch of rolls of that (to make shipping reasonable) and I'm really interested to play around with it.

Tcepsa 8y ago
You might also be interested in some of the work that bunnie has done with paper, copper tape, binder clips, and various components in this blog post[1] and also with Chibitronics[2]. That having been said, I'm glad they mention why they didn't use copper tape here before I tried to stick any down on a Lego plate! [1]https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5259 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5259 [2]https://chibitronics.com/ https://chibitronics.com/

felipemnoa 8y ago

If you really want to learn digital electronics you should learn how to design a very simple CPU from scratch. If you can do that then you can build virtually any digital circuit you can think of. And it is not that hard (although it will take some dedication, months of reading and experimenting) Plenty of resources out there that teach you how to do it from scratch. When I was a kid I tried to learn electronics by buying these types of kits. They were totally useless, complete waste of money and they only accomplished in making me feel that electronics was way too hard for me. All I could do was assemble the circuits in the diagrams but there was no understanding involved. The worst part was that they all used some computers chips, like the 555 timer, to do some special effects, etc. When you are starting out any chip is kind of useless in your goal to understanding digital electronics.

throway88989898 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2...
zakki 8y ago
Do you have any link on how to design a simple cpu from scratch? Or a search keyword for it!
- copperx 8y ago
  Nand2tetris will teach you.
  - felipemnoa 8y ago
    Yes, this is what I was thinking about.
- myself248 8y ago
  "homebrew CPU" is a good start. You'll find numerous projects, many of whom list the resources they used.
- 8y ago

cmroanirgo 8y ago

Fantastic! Who would walk past a project like "squishy sounds", "conductive paint piano" or "ugly holiday sweater" [1] (It's linked to in the article) 1. https://browndoggadgets.dozuki.com/c/Project_Guides https://browndoggadgets.dozuki.com/c/Project_Guides