Dave - DO NOT Let Sagan See This!! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 04:30:35 pm
content: If you start now you should have it finished by May 11th 2015

author: robrenz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 04:40:38 pm
content: Wow, that guy has way to much spare time

author: con-f-use
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 08:18:51 pm
content: Or really really wants his son to become an astronaut.

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:00:25 pm
content: One huge pet peeve of mine stands out, although only shown briefly in the video. The builder(maker?) dad puts a breadboarded circuit as a finished component in the control panel. Why-o-why do people do this on a project that is expected to be more or less long lasting? At least use a perf board and some point to point enameled wire. He is some-how associated with Make magazine, he shouldn't be promulgating that practice. Think of the childrens.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:05:22 pm
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on August 09, 2014, 10:00:25 pmactually he's doing it right... in video he's mentioning reconfiguration of the setup - nothing easier than replug some wires in the permanently installed breadboard. and after all - it's a kid's toy... no one will get hurt when few leds will stop working .. and if it happens , the he will just replug the wires

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:28:18 pm
content: Quote from: rob77 on August 09, 2014, 10:05:22 pmWell field re-configuration is what God invented microprocessors,software and wire wrap sockets for. I can wire-wrap a board about as fast as I can do a "beauty wiring" bread board because I'm fast at the former and slow in the latter. Breadboard in the final product? (shudder) Just no. The main problem with breadboards isn't a hard stuck on failure, it is the damm intermittent time wasters.

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:35:56 pm
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on August 09, 2014, 10:00:25 pmOr something likehttp://busboard.com/breadboards#solderBut that is maybe not available in the Makezine shop, so he can't promote it.

author: ThomasDK
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:47:26 pm
content: Quote from: Bored@Work on August 09, 2014, 10:35:56 pmI think that's what he's using - he's soldering it @02:06-Edit:-Here we go:https://www.adafruit.com/products/591

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:50:14 pm
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on August 09, 2014, 10:00:25 pmThat also annoys me, but I think in this case it's a prototyping PCB that's the same layout as a plug-in breadboard and is the same colour- Adafruit sells thesehttp://www.adafruit.com/products/239

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2014, 10:58:55 pm
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on August 09, 2014, 10:28:18 pmplease read your own comment a decade or two later, then you'll probably get itno offense, just an advice

author: deth502
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 01:54:13 am
content: im gonna have to agree on this being bad practice. if you want it to be reconfigure-able, solder it up and put in some headers to run jumper wires from. no need to stuff a breadboard in a "finished project"

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 07:50:49 am
content: One thing you may have all forgotten. When in a couple of years the two boys have got tired of their toy he can pull it apart and reuse the breadboard and chips. OK, all those switches might need a pair of wire cutters but the leads to the LEDs are still nice and long.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 08:30:09 am
content: Quote from: German_EE on August 10, 2014, 07:50:49 am+1and furthermore when someone is building such a thing, it takes time... the more time someone saves doing tradeoffs, the less the risk that the little guys will grow up faster than the project is finishedand exactly those facts are the reason why i replied to chickenHeadKnob the way i replied - sooner or later everyone will realize the life is full of tradeoffs.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 08:32:12 am
content: Definitely looks to me like a solderable protoboard and not a simple plug-in breadboard.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 04:50:45 pm
content: I've seen this before, I love the idea but unless this guy works for a switch manufacturer who can get him parts at cost, he probably had to get a second mortgage on his house to buy all the switches.The time machine display that I've been working on has really clued me in to the cost of switches. Heavy looking toggle switches are 3 or 4 dollars each with the flip cover being almost as much.If you look at some of the switches that are used for E-Stop they go even higher because they are then sold by companies like Allen-Bradley.

author: Dave Turner
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 07:42:54 pm
content: The cost of a load of switches etc. to keep his offspring entertained, and himself by the sound of it - priceless! Not to ignore the fact that their friends will be so envious. A bespoke toy like this beats anything off the shelf.

author: corrado33
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 08:09:38 pm
content: I think that's awesome! I would have loved this as a kid! I bet those kids will grow up to be engineers or scientists. Stimulating creativity is one of the best things you can do for a kid!As they get older he can program in actual challenges to be won or lost once they get old enough to deal with losing. That's super cool.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 09:34:04 pm
content: i don't think the material was more expensive than let's say an ipadand actually those $$ were very well spent on an awesome project

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2014, 09:40:42 pm
content: Would be funny if after all this the kids decided they wanted to be footballers & preferred playing outside....

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 02:18:33 am
content: I am not going to watch the video again, I trust Ian and Mike’s eyes that I raised a false alarm and the dad did indeed use a solderable perfboard, my bad.I don’t want to make an argument with Rob, I just would like to share a cautionary experience from my University days when I was tasked with helping to deliver and fix the hands-on lab portion of an intro digital logic/ computer interfacing course. The Professor warned me he was having problems with the apparatus (that he designed) in previous runs of the course. On the surface it looked quite reasonable and well designed for what you could accomplish with the chips at the time (~1980). There was a breadboard section, a set of I/O module boards which implemented Keypads and such. and a portable computer; a Tandy-Radio shack with a 4 or 8 line display, Basic in Rom, CMOS 8085 processor. It was all interconnected with ribbon cable with female header or male dip terminations. To use aDave Jones-ism, the whole thing was a riot ofDICKYconnections. For the Prof, the most surprising problem was generated by the I/O modules. He had farmed out their layout and construction to other students and in typical DIY fashion of the day they returned with un-plated through hole double sided boards. They worked fine initially but since everything in the lab was heavily manipulated by the students the boards would be flexed often, eventually cracking the thin ring-area contact where the pin of the component was soldered to the pad. As is usual in education there was never enough lab equipment for everyone so there was additional wear and tear as units were shared, torn down and reconnected. The female ribbon cable header connectors were a real prize, they would fail in as little as 3-10 mating cycles. I fixed that right away, by replacing them all with Samtec connectors which lasted much longer, thankGodspaghetti monster. I couldn’t really fix the frustrations the students were having with worn out breadboards. With respect to the failing I/O modules, I carried around in class a few known good units I could swap in as a test. I was more or less continually checking and reheating the solder joints on those as the course progressedNote that I am deliberately conflating an adult educational apparatus with a child’s toy, that is because play in its purist definition IS auto initiated and auto directed learning, that is its biological function. So what are the features of a game-play that make it appealing? I would say one basic element it needs to respect and never violate is the challenge-verify-positive reward cycle. With electronic noobs and children a positive reward might just be the feeling of accomplishment of lighting a led in a predictable and consistently verifiable way. As Ian Lesnet of dangerous prototypes has said “those arduino peeps can’t seem to get enough of led blinky” (paraphrasing) Dicky wiring performs a capricious interference of the reward cycle. The student or child justifiably says “Hey, I did everything right! this stupid shit-box doesn’t work”. Or they doubt themselves and say what did I do wrong. You might logically think that adding the variability of dicky wiring to the child’s spaceship adds a high note of realism, after all real astronauts fly in spaceships built by the lowest bidder, but it is the wrong kind of variability. For children and electronic noobs alike electronics are very “black box” and opaque, Once the student understands circuits and components better you can introduce dicky wiring in measured way as a challenge. Before then it is just sand in the gear-box and tremendously DE-motivating for both play and learning.Pro-tip for dads not up to building a spaceship: Give your child what my father gave me. One day he came home from work and handed me 2 large and somewhat chipped ceramic toroidal magnets and took me to the garage where there was a bench grinder. He swept up all the ferrous filings with one and I was amazed as it grew a spiky-furry coat. He brushed the filing off into a cut off cardboard box and moved the magnet underneath revealing the classic force lines. Total dad involvement time was about 2 minutes, cheapest best toy ever. In the 60’s when I was growing up a boy could only look forward to 2 “electronic” toys. One was the aforementioned magnets and filings the other was a crystal cat-whisker radio, my brother got that. My brother became a ham, I am still wondering at magnets, how the hell do they work? I realize now that my father liked my brother better! bastard.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 05:19:57 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on August 10, 2014, 09:40:42 pmHmm, be an EE and make 70K a year or play for Madrid and make 1.5M ? Hmmm.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 07:38:54 am
content: Well, in my case there was no toy rocket ship, just copies of 'The Pegasus Book of Radio Experiments' and 'The Pegasus Book of Electrical Experiments' aged about eight or nine, then my father brought home an old TV set (minus the tube) and set me loose.Nearly fifty years later I'm still experimenting.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 09:50:34 am
content: Quote from: Stonent on August 11, 2014, 05:19:57 ami would rather not absolve a lobotomy in order to become a footballer(no offense, just kidding)

author: Lee697
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 12:42:19 pm
content: I take my hat off to him.....But by the time I had that built my two boys (5 & 2) would be off chasing girls rather than playing astronauts....

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 12:47:06 pm
content: For the kids?, yeah right!I'm thinking an Apollo LM backyard cubbyhouse...

author: VK5RC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 12:51:31 pm
content: While I take my hat off for the huge effort, I have found the best toys are truly malleable, lego, mechano come to mind. The child makes the toy.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 11, 2014, 12:56:30 pm
content: Quote from: VK5RC on August 11, 2014, 12:51:31 pmAgreed.Sagan loves his Duplo.