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Comment by hsshah | Hacker News Reader

Arduino geeks,

Not sure if this will be considered off topic here; but I will ask anyways.

I am looking for recommendation on how to start with Arduino.

As a hobby, I teach kids 10-14 yrs (started with my nephews) about Computing technologies. I teach programming concepts using 'Scratch'. But I also want to introduce them to Hardware and Communications side of it. For my nephews, I got them Lego Mindstorm NXT and taught them about sensors, motors etc.

However, Mindstrom NXT kit is not cheap. And I cannot expect every kid's parent to fork out that much money. Do you think Arduino can help here? The selection of boards seems confusing to me. Anyone you would recommend for starters?

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I can heartily recommend a starter kit like the ones that oomlout sell - http://www.oomlout.co.uk/arduino-experimentation-kit-ardx-p-... for example. I bought one in summer 2010. They come with a good selection of examples that you can assemble with the various parts that it comes with, so takes a lot of the uncertainty out of what you need if, like me, you're more of a software than a hardware guy and not sure what resistors should be paired with which LEDs etc.

In my case, I am the one buying the kits. I have many NXT 2.0 kits and also a nice environment for hardware production with the arduino platform (with everything even an oscilloscope). Usually, the Legos are used for the younger kids, and if they are more attracted to building stuff than programming then they fork into the open hardware tracks. My advice is to work through projects. Just how real life works, and what the kids find more interesting: there is a problem to solve or an specification on what they want to build, and from that you and them sit down, organize your thoughts, make the design, and then build it, test it, improve it. They love it, it works very well, and keeps you doing very very interesting stuff always with something different. A completely hands on experience, and they learn by doing. As for which arduino kit you would use, anyone will do it. But when they are just starting with arduino, maybe it's better to keep it simple (but always as a part of solving a problem, not doing it to "learn how to turn a LED on"). The best thing is to locate a store and work always with them, so look at what kits they have and choose from there. That's how I do it here in Germany, and worked very well. If you yourself have no experience on arduino or open hardware, I recommend you to choose some book to build little projects from it, so your choice of the kit will be dictated by the kit used on the book. Anyway, congrats for the teaching!

The oomlout kit mentioned is the best place to start for you. You probably won't need one of those for every kid though, the guides that come with it are on their website and once you know what activities you want to teach you can just buy the components required. The Arduino to start with is the Arduino Uno (£22, $30)

Have a look at the (well illustrated!) examples provided with the Arduino software too: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage

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