Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?

My advice as a parent and electrical engineer. Buy kits. Don’t go to electrical engineering. There is nothing interesting there. Only lots of wasted time. Your son is not interested how to calculate resistor’s value in motor control circuit. Your son needs no frustration with failing printed circuit boards. He needs something spectacular what moves (and is visually appealing) and causes light errors to learn from.

My path: Chinese 3 wheel chassis, Arduino and I2C color sensor. Line follower robot to be extended to multiple color sensors. It sounds easy, but it will occupy you with your sine for few weekends. Afterwards you’ll see what part is most interesting for your son. Bigger robot, bigger processor, bigger wheels, more speed, a camera instead of color sensor. Maybe just cool paint.

Good luck with your project!

bunderbunder · 2 years ago

The main thing I got out of teaching myself how to do it from scratch is the discovery that there's possibly nothing more frustrating and less satisfying than spending days and weeks designing and building relatively simple electronics projects from scratch and then discovering all the fascinatingly inscrutable ways your designs can completely fail to work.

This isn't to say that there aren't people who love it. But I'd guess that for every one person who does there are 100 people where immediately diving in at such a low level kills all the joy. Maybe compare it to trying to get a 10-year-old into games development by starting them off on z80 assembly language.

Tangentially, my time learning electronics straddled the demise of Radio Shack, and I think that might be part of what made it less fun than I expected. With Radio Shack, if I realized I needed a component I had a decent chance of being able to acquire it that day, probably for less than $1. Now that sourcing components almost always has to be done by mail order, realizing you're out of that one size capacitor stalls your project for a week or two and might involve being willing to pay $10 shipping and handling for a $0.15 part.

jes5199 · 2 years ago

I feel the opposite! I can usually get components next-day on Amazon, and I can get entire circuit boards _assembled_ from China in about a week. Maybe I'm not trying to do anything particularly hard, but I keep being pleasantly surprised when things work on the first or second try

Fatnino · 2 years ago

There are still some mom and pop shops that carry that sort of stuff. Try to find one near you and then give them a lot of business

delduca · 2 years ago

When I was a child, I loved electronics. I would take apart various electronic devices, but as you said, it was just frustration with no feedback. Then my father, seeing this, took a speaker and made a circuit that emitted noises. I loved it.

JR1427 · 2 years ago

Yes, and the OP's son also just wants to have fun with his parent!

Dowwie · 2 years ago

instructions unclear about Chinese 3 wheel chassis

Many of these comments are about robotics as it's taught now, focusing on code and cameras and algorithms and motion planning.

As someone who's built both BattleBots and Professional Robotics for work, BattleBots is a great way to get out of equations and hands on fabrication, manufacturing, testing, and scrappiness that is so hard to reach in mechanical and electrical engineering. And unlike FIRST or Lego robots, it's much more open ended and "guardrails off" engineering, which I found really freeing from the tyranny of academic-style competition robotics. You can still incorporate all the sensors and algorithm-stuff (many folks build their own motor controllers like "brushless-rage" or have sensors like Chomp), but if you just love seeing things move and love mechanical design, it's a great thing.

For BattleBots in particular, the easiest way to get into it is to find some guides online for a simple bot[1] with DC motors and a 3D printed body, and just enter it into a local combat robot competition! You'll learn the basics of a motor, speed controller, selecting wheels and other interfaces, as well as designing a chassis and fabricating it. At a competition you get the thrill of the fight, and afterwards you can sweep your robot scraps into a dustpan, make friends with other bot builders and go from there.

[1] A quick search on instructs Les and I found this, though there are many more great robot tutorials: https://www.instructables.com/Naked-Singularity-Beetleweight... . Here is one that overviews all the basic steps in a BattleBots https://www.instructables.com/How-to-design-and-build-a-comb...

ijustlovemath · 2 years ago

The main issue with this is cost, few can afford the thousands it would take to build a competition bot like that.

However! I do think you could easily adapt it to a smaller embedded form factor and do like a beyblades style battle in a tiny arena.

Definitely agree about being hands on and open ended, the skills you learn will take you very far in engineering but also just in life!

thereisnospork · 2 years ago

I can't say I've looked into it in any detail, but I've seen 'antweight' and other extremely small/lightweight battle bot videos pop up on my youtube feed from time to time. Stuff that mostly looks 3d printed fighting in more or less an aquarium tank.

lnsru · 2 years ago

potatomaster2 · 2 years ago

JoblessWonder · 2 years ago

I know that you said you don't want a premade kit and following instructions and this is *close* to that... but I think it might still be a great fit.

Mark Rober has a new product where they ship a new robot every 2 months. They give you the basic instructions on how to build/program it but the idea is that you take that knowledge and then expand on it yourself by adding features. My daughter is still a little too young for it so I haven't used it personally. The biggest issue is that it is a subscription and not a one time purchase.

Here is the link: https://www.crunchlabs.com/products/hack-pack-subscription

And here is a brief video explaining how it expands beyond the normal "premade robot kit." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtdOdUi9b_s

Loughla · 2 years ago

We got this for our youngest. Can confirm that it's easy to follow and absolutely encourages exploration of the post build abilities or modifications. Mark is doing great things for kids science. Phat Gus caused my middle child to start exploring zoology as a career!

Also, the subscription is worth it even if a single purchase option would be nice just to try things out. Go ahead and do it if your kid is at all interested in hardware, robotics, or tinkering in general.

darksaints · 2 years ago

I had a really bad experience with crunchlabs. They silently renew your subscription without any warning, which is really bad form in 2024, and they didn’t have an option for cancelling online, forcing you to call a call center which took over an hour just to get someone on the phone and then they had the gall to try high pressure tactics to get me to not cancel. Left a really bad taste in my mouth.

tadbit · 2 years ago

> NOTE: The IDE works only on Mac or Windows (if you want to code)

Boo! hiss

danielheath · 2 years ago

Proprietary tooling that doesn’t work the way you want is unfortunately a great introduction to hardware work :/

glasss · 2 years ago

FIRST (https://www.firstinspires.org/) is a more structured program intended to be organized through schools or similar communities (homeschooling groups, 4H, etc.). I have more experience with the bigger robots intended for high schoolers, but they have programs all the way down to kindergarten.

Doing something similar at home is very possible, and if you are nearby an existing team or program they are usually more than happy to have a conversation with parents about how to get their kids started even if it doesn't mean joining the team.

RyanOD · 2 years ago

+1 for FIRST. This is your path as it is structured and can also help your child build friendships with other kids interested in robotics.

Additionally, participants who stick with the program through high school learn every aspect of robotics - problem solving, design, fabrication, testing, coding, presentation, teamwork, etc.

That is a great point, the things I value most from my time in FIRST are the friendships, connections, and soft skills I built. The engineering is fun, but I definitely use my teamwork, leadership, research, and presentation experience more on a regular basis.

Additionally to the OP, if you want this to be something that you and your kid do together, you can volunteer as a mentor for the team if your schedules align. You can have a very large impact beyond just your kid by doing so.

PaulHoule · 2 years ago

I was going to recommend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms

but is is discontinued. In terms of easy of build and programming these were great. This kit is still available

https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spi...

bena · 2 years ago

Spike Prime and Mindstorms use the same Hub just different colors.

Spike Prime has a large motor, 2 small motors, a distance sensor, color sensor, and force sensor.

The Mindstorms set had 4 small motors, a distance sensor, and color sensor.

Mindstorms retailed for about $400 as does Spike Prime currently.

Spike Prime is Mindstorms for all intents and purposes. You can even get either the Spike Prime or Mindstorms app and use it with either Hub.

cobbaut · 2 years ago

Maybe parent refers to Mindstorms NXT, which imho is much more fun than EV3 or Spike.

germinalphrase · 2 years ago

There are rumors that Lego is working on a future Mindstorm system. Haven’t heard any hard news about it though.

manishsharan · 2 years ago

Are you referring to Lego Spike Prime ?

jeroenjanssens · 2 years ago

You can probably get these sets second hand. I just revived a bricked one (hah!) myself. Had to use the Lego software to update the firmware for that, which only runs on Windows 7, 8, and 10.

I just got NXT-Python [1] working on macOS via a USB cable. No luck pairing the brick to my MacBook via Bluetooth yet. Nevertheless, I can't wait to get building robots with my kids!

[1] https://ni.srht.site/nxt-python/latest/handbook/overview.htm...

> Had to use the Lego software to update the firmware for that, which only runs on Windows 7, 8, and 10.

You can do that on Debian, hint "apt search nxt". Or go here https://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/

autokad · 2 years ago

I agree, I think those Lego sets are a great way to go

Dead Comment

Dnguyen · 2 years ago

This was how I started with my son, who was also 10. Have him learned Scratch from MIT, learn how logic is constructed in a program Then I got him a couple of Snap Circuit kit. I know you said no kit, but this is just to learn basic circuit and electricity flow. Then we used a Raspberry Pi to learn Python. Once he's comfortable with Python a bit, I set up an environment to program micro controller, specifically the ESP32. I flash Micro Python on there and we started to program some LED string lights. Then control motors with H-Bridges. After that, it's onto robotics and anything we can get our hands on. I repurpose a baseball pitching machine to launch pickleball, with bluetooth connectivity to boot! All with an ESP 32, I can control the speed and rotation of the ball, which the original machine only had one speed and no rotation. It took my son about 2 years to get from zero to building robots. Good luck!

sgt · 2 years ago

My kid asked me the other day to build him a radio, so I took his request kind of seriously and I showed him an AM radio circuit that we could put together. Then he started screaming and crying because he wants it now. Like in this instant. So I'll do something else instead. He's only 3, so his attention is definitely not like a 10 year old :)

astroid · 2 years ago

This isn't quite what you asked for, but as a kid who grew up on Lego Mindstorms I would have loved to have Spintronics back then:

https://upperstory.com/en/spintronics/

This is more about learning about electicity in a tangible physical way, using puzzles to learn -- so it's maybe a level lower than your intent, but it is for kids 8 and up and seems like even adults could learn quite a bit from it.

It's really hard to describe though - I strongly recommend watching the video at that link or at least looking at a picture.

hersko · 2 years ago

This is amazing