Electronics Project #1

Recently I have been feeling the need to build something tactile. I create and work on projects everyday on the computer and online, but nothing analog. I have been very interested lately in building and programming robots. A large part of the robot is the code you write to control the robot, but the part I am going to be working on first is the actual fabrication of the robot. As you may or may not know, robots can grow to be very expensive hobbies, so I am going to start off on some cheaper projects to work on skills without harming expensive parts.I recently went to the local Fry's to look for some robot kits and came across some really cool little electronics soldering kits. Needless to say I picked up a couple to practice soldering!

I picked up 2 kits:
Sound-to-Light Kit
Dual Electronic Dice Kit

The first project (this post) I did was the Sound-To-Light kit. It is a pretty simple kit that only serves one purpose, not totally useful in daily life, but fun none the less! So lets get into it.\

Kit Maker: VellemanKit
Name: SOUND-TO-LIGHT Kit
Price: $5.99
Items Needed: Soldering Iron, Solder, 9V Battery.

Four high-intensity LEDs light up and react simultaneously on every sound. For different funny and practical applications, such as : sound indicator, simple sound-to-light unit for music, for the hearing impaired : can be used to indicate the telephone, door bell. Adjustable sensitivity with potentiometer. Built-in microphone.

From start to finish this kit took me about 30 minutes to complete. The instructions were a little confusing as first, but are actually really well laid out. You do really need to pay attention to how they lay the instructions out. There are minimal written instructions, most of the instructions are in picture form. The kit came with everything you need as far as parts go. If you are looking to get into electronics or just want to learn more about soldering and electronics, these kits are a great place to start. They have MANY different kits to choose from, check out their catalog.

I will be posting more projects as I get through them and try out some more kits. It was very fulfilling working on this project. I can't express how good it feels to get away from the computer for a while and get into the analog world of building something with your hands.

Here are a couple pictures of my finished project and a short video of it working.