Xmas present for teenager - tinkering/engineering/robotics computer project?

Vince said:
And not crazy expensive either. if your sons thing is minatures etc as well a resin is the way to go.. messy as all hell but fun :)
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Neat. He's not got into miniatures yet, but he has been talking about him and his friends getting tabletop gear to represent their encounters so that might be a good route to explore with him. Thanks again!
 
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strumpusplunket said:
Neat. He's not got into miniatures yet, but he has been talking about him and his friends getting tabletop gear to represent their encounters so that might be a good route to explore with him. Thanks again!
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Having some table top resin characters all painted up representing the D&D game they are playing would be a pretty cool project in itself. You could literally use a xbox kinect or something similar, scan yourself and your mates into the pc and make a 3d model of yourself :D add some daggers, staffs and stuff like that and you could have a little array of characters printed up that represent your in game characters. I have never personally played a game of D&D so don't know quite how it works but that does sound pretty cool.
 
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strumpusplunket said:
My youngest is 14 and can't think of a Christmas present request, so I'm trying to get some advice to focus what I'm thinking of.

He is very keen on D&T at school and is set on the ambition of pursuing electrical or computing engineering. He has a decent gaming PC and doesn't really need any upgrades, but a side-project related to computing and engineering would be ideal, I think.

We've been looking at starter kits for things like soldering and circuitry, but a lot of it looks a bit young or a bit gimmicky.

I was wondering if there were any home project kits that would be good for him getting his teeth into? I've been looking at the Raspberry Pi kits, and they look interesting. I note there are robotics add-ons too. But... I really know very little about this area of computing.

If anyone more in the know could offer some pointers that would be great. Is a Pi kit and accessories the best bet? Any alternatives? What should I be looking to get? We don't have any specific projects in mind, just something he can build, tinker with, set up to do interesting things, so ideally a bit flexible and something he can pursue his own reserach into.
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You sound like a great dad. I wish you and your son all the best. I wish I had the time,patience and togetherness to do things like you. Merry Christmas.
 
Vince said:
Having some table top resin characters all painted up representing the D&D game they are playing would be a pretty cool project in itself. You could literally use a xbox kinect or something similar, scan yourself and your mates into the pc and make a 3d model of yourself :D add some daggers, staffs and stuff like that and you could have a little array of characters printed up that represent your in game characters. I have never personally played a game of D&D so don't know quite how it works but that does sound pretty cool.
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This is getting quite exciting. I was talking to him about this over dinner last night. He said he hadn't considered 3D printing because he thoght the kit was really expensive, but I could see his eyes lighting up thinking about it. He's going to have a think about whether he'd rather get stuck into a Pi type project or get into design and printing.

Cheers!! :)
 
strumpusplunket said:
This is getting quite exciting. I was talking to him about this over dinner last night. He said he hadn't considered 3D printing because he thoght the kit was really expensive, but I could see his eyes lighting up thinking about it. He's going to have a think about whether he'd rather get stuck into a Pi type project or get into design and printing.

Cheers!! :)
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Let us know what you decide and how you get on :)
 
Looking into printing a bit more, I am now a bit concerned about the toxicity of the resin. I didn't realise it was such unpleasant stuff. It looks like it's not ideal to have it in a room where people will be living during printing, and then there is washing and curing to think about, which I had no awareness of either. It's looking like my plan of him having a 3D printer next to his PC on his bedroom table won't work out well.

It does look like there are some filament printers using PLA are much safer, though I'm not 100% sure if they're any good for the kind of things he'd want to print or that they don't release at least some level of harmful airborne particulates.

Kind of veering back to the Pi ideas after looking in more detail into all that, I think, although keeping an eye on FMD printer possiblities too.
 
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