What do you get when you mix a bunch of creative kids with copper wire, glue guns, and dead toy parts? Roller-skating bears and a Two-Hump Wump, to name just a few things. More than 500 families registered for yesterday’s Open Make at San Francisco’s hands-on Exploratorium science museum. The event, a collaboration between the Exploratorium, Make magazine, and Pixar Animation Studios, was aimed at giving young makers a forum for learning new skills, collaborating with peers, and showing off their talents.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.