My seven year old nephew is super interested in robotics, and I want to buy him an arduino and go make a cool project with him, then leave it for him to play with as a future part of his first robot. My budget is about $50, which includes $20 for a chinese arduino on ebay. What cool projects do you guys suggest? I was thinking either an Auduino noisemaker (my brother would love it!) or something that displays messages via the cheap LCD shields on ebay. I want a simple project with little setup, programming and mostly play time. Any ideas? Maybe go as far as cobbling together a robotic arm with cheap servos? Could I do a full robot for $50? I tried doing the make robot build but ran out of budget myself.
you dont really need an lcd shield unless you want niceness just find a 4 or 8 bit lcd screen and use the library contained in the arduino programing program.
a stepper motor controller is also a fun one to do you wont get much power out of the motor itself just on the arduino alone but its fun to see how stepper motors work.
if you were to really get into motors you will have to buy or build other electronics to control the high watts needed to power the motors because the arduino only puts out 5v.
led although seemingly lame can be fun to control as well and if you get photo resistors or photo transistors you can have a lot of fun with that.
one project i did was a pinewood derby track timer although that wouldnt be a good first project it was way fun and has a practical application.
I've tried for YEARS to get my son to be interested in this stuff and he's never really been able to catch on to most normal development enviropnments like Arduino.
The one thing he did "get" and has stuck with for about 4 years (he's 15 years old now) is MIT's 'Scratch' system. http://scratch.mit.edu/
He just loved making video games with it although he didn't get into the 'scratch board' input device like I wanted him to.
So I would recommend against Arduino. I can't imagine a 7 year old being able to program in 'C' unless he's a genious.
You're right. As inquisitive as he is, he just won't be able to do C at this stage in his life. His nerdy Dad, my brother, probably can handle it better. My idea is to show up with an arduino and a few discrete components, play all weekend, fill his head with a bunch of crazy ideas, and sit at home and wait for the tech support calls from my brother...
Lately I've done some audio stuff that's been pretty fun. I don't think annoying my brother's family is a good idea though... :)