TimeOut

Submitted my law essay early, so I get two weeks of hobby time!   

How about repurposing a shoe box into a "smart" watch box?  This is a great project for kids, where they can learn a little bit of woodworking, electronics, and programming. 

Here are the phases:

Box - use balsa wood, glue, and a hobby knife to first cut some half lap joints, and then glue everything together to make watch compartments. 

Tilt sensing - connect an arduino board to a tilt sensor and wifi module.  Write necessary code to tweet a message when the box is moved.  

Smile for the camera - add a camera module and relevant code so that the box takes a picture each time it's opened. The picture is then also tweeted. 

This reminds me of all the small projects we used to build during electronics class in school.  Only, back then we had to build everything from scratch.  No fancy arduino boards to take shortcuts!  It's become like electronic Lego these days, but this way I also learn a bit of programming.  What a great time for kids still in school that can now connect their projects with code, and have them talk to the internet!

  login to reply