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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the keeping-off-video-games dept.

Hi folks,

As much as I loath the winters in New England here is where I'll be. Outdoor activities, while doable, can only be for short periods of time. Therefore I'm looking for projects that can be completed indoors that are interesting and take 6 months to complete. :) (Long winters up here...)

My son has shown an interest in both electronic and mechanical type projects. He'd like a hammer for his birthday so he can break rocks. Cool, geologist. Can't find rocks too well under the snow and ice, sand and salt, in the wintertime.

He'd also like an electronics kit but I'm not sure what to to get him that will last a long while. I think at this point he's more interested in building something, electronic or not, rather than learning theory. He often mentions robots but to get something that would last for months would cost me more than the budget allows.

I'd certainly appreciate suggestions and I'm sure there are other parents who might benefit from your experiences!


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  • (Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday October 13 2016, @07:09PM

    by Snow (1601) on Thursday October 13 2016, @07:09PM (#414044) Journal

    I've been wanting to do this one for a while....

    Imagine a 20x20 grid filed with marbles. There would be black and white marbles. An elevator would bring the marbles to the top and then the marbles would be dropped into the grid to create a picture. Once the grid is full, the bottom drops out and the whole process starts over again. I imagined after the elevator, there would be a sensor to examine the color of the marble, then a runway with a series of actuators that would steer the marble into an appropriate column. You could set different fill patterns for fun. There would probably have to be a bypass path too just in case there are no valid slots for that particular color.

    Anyway, I thought that would be a neat project.

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