Howdy!

As an educator, I am constantly trying to improve. The kits I find through our 'approved vendors' always seem to fail to grab student (and my) interest. Therefore, I decided to make my own. I'd like to share them with you, in the hopes that you can get some use out of them as well. I will strive to provide enough documentation and instructions so you can easily assemble and understand each of them, maybe modify them in an interesting way.

I'd like to explain a bit more about my inspiration for this project to document projects, after the break.
Concepts of Engineering is one of my favorite classes to teach. The absolute best part is the last eight to nine weeks of the school year. At this point, the students know how to follow the Engineering Design Process (we use a five step model), they have learned a little about mechanics, electricity, and biotechnology, and they have worked as a part of an engineering team for most of the year. Now they are ready for the fun stuff. For their final projects, they get to decide what they are going to do. We've made trebuchets, ping pong ball launchers, and solar death rays. I tell them that they are allowed to make anything that we can design, document and build in these eight weeks, with a few minor rules:

• Nothing lethal, flammable or explosive.
• Nothing too expensive.
• Nothing that will require me to purchase additional tools, as much as I would like a new plasma cutting robot.

Two years ago, I had one team step outside of the "trebuchet or ping pong ball launcher" box. They saw what my Robotics and Automation class was doing with Arduinos, and wanted to try it out. They decided on a graphic equalizer display, which we dubbed "The Audio Visualizer". They researched the parts they would need, and I helped them figure out the rest. We used our Epilog Laser (and plenty of ventilation) to cut out foam board for the frame and LED support. I helped them with the circuitry, soldering and programming. In the end, we got this:



This was the project that got me thinking about doing kits. I am currently polishing up the design of a PCB for the Audio Visualizer, as well as commented code. When it is done, expect to see a post and a video about it.