{"id":834,"date":"2016-09-09T12:06:38","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T16:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=834"},"modified":"2016-09-08T16:08:15","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T20:08:15","slug":"build-a-cheap-lil-starter-robot-with-your-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/09\/build-a-cheap-lil-starter-robot-with-your-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Build a Cheap Lil Starter Robot with Your Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr \/>\n<p>Spent the holiday weekend chilling with friends, and we built a few\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=wRUrmQyiPwMC&amp;lpg=PA261&amp;ots=5Os4SvCH2R&amp;dq=jitterbug%20david%20erik%20nelson&amp;pg=PA261#v=onepage&amp;q=jitterbug%20david%20erik%20nelson&amp;f=false\">Jitterbugs<\/a> (tiny, super-simple, super-cheap robots that run away from light, cockroach-style). I&#8217;d totally forgotten how much fun these are. \u00a0Here&#8217;s a video of my 4-year-old sitting in the closet with flashlights and competing at &#8220;reverse sumo&#8221; (first person <em>out<\/em> of the ring wins):<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mq9tXRQ3Y4I\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a set of Jitterbugs built by Stephen Trouvere and his boys, with the addition of LED eyes:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/byeYunCZTxE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nI\u00a0<strong>love\u00a0<\/strong>how those lil guys turned out!\u00a0For the curious, all we&#8217;ve done is built the standard jitterbug, then taken a pair of\u00a0regular ol&#8217;\u00a0red LEDs, wired them in parallel, buffered the positive lead with a 100\u03a9 resistor (brown-black-brown stripes), and soldered the free resistor lead to the positive battery terminal, and the negative LED legs to the negative terminal (it&#8217;s the same way we wire up the LEDs in the &#8220;Switchbox&#8221; project in that same book).<\/p>\n<p>Full build instructions are <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2ce4a56\">in my first book<\/a>\u00a0(which also includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nostarch.com\/download\/SnipBurn_project18.pdf\">cardboard boomerangs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nostarch.com\/download\/SnipBurn_project3.pdf\">sock squids<\/a> that can become Sock Cthulhu, musical instruments, and more).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=daverinel-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=1593272596&amp;asins=1593272596&amp;linkId=91f0c96eeeb931c476311f95c6a06d66&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spent the holiday weekend chilling with friends, and we built a few\u00a0Jitterbugs (tiny, super-simple, super-cheap robots that run away from light, cockroach-style). I&#8217;d totally forgotten how much fun these are. \u00a0Here&#8217;s a video of my 4-year-old sitting in the closet with flashlights and competing at &#8220;reverse sumo&#8221; (first person out of the ring wins): Here&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/09\/build-a-cheap-lil-starter-robot-with-your-kids\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Build a Cheap Lil Starter Robot with Your Kids&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[26,21,35,59,41],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}