Makers on a Plane!
While packing to head home, I kept the littleBits Arduino setup and the NeoPixel ring in my carry-on bag. We used our long wait time in the airport and our time on the plane to code a reaction-time game.
The game is simple – as the red pixel goes around the ring, you stop it in between the two blue pixels. As you advance through the game, the red pixel moves faster, and the blue target area gets smaller.
The game was fun to code, and I spent about 20 minutes at the lunch counter in the airport talking to a 9 year old girl and her parents about the Maker Movement, Maker Faire, and learning to code :)
A Very Fun Week
In all, we had a great week in Cancun which included some fun family learning. Here’s a quick beach pic to prove that we didn’t spend the entire week inside!
Final Thoughts
I’m impressed with the littleBits Arduino module (although I really wish they had an easier way to connect non-littleBits devices like NeoPixels without soldering on headers & guessing which pins are power & ground) and I love that you can snap together a quick Arduino circuit with buttons and potentiometers in a few seconds without having to get out a breadboard and jumper wires. I expect that we will be making many, many, more projects using our littleBits with the addition of the littleBits Arduino module.
If you have any questions about these projects, want the code, or want ideas for geeky vacations with your family, comment below, or shoot me an email! BTW, I did a TEDxOrlando talk a few years ago on the Science of Vacations – check it out!
Oh, and we also stopped by a street vendor that had a sign “Any design on a coin” – so I pointed to my Son’s maker faire shirt and said – can you do that robot?
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