Soldering and Arduino

After taking a month off for everyone to get back into their school schedules, we started up with a few new members! One of the last things we did before the break was to take a member survey. The mentor team felt this would be the best way to figure out what direction to go for the next few months. The feedback was great and the areas that really stood out as key interests for the kids were soldering, Arduino, and robotics/electronics. In the open feedback area, we had a bunch of great ideas from the kids. A couple of my personal favorites were ‘game hacking/Minecraft modding’ and ‘Raspberry Pi’. They really provided some great feedback, and the sum I took away from it was this; they are having fun with each of the projects, and, they have good ideas to take their own knowledge forward. This was so great to hear from them!

On October 5th, we had a soldering session for our new members, and an Arduino session for existing members. The new members walked through safety, building a simple circuit using a kit, and making their first soldering connections. Existing members had a refresher on Arduino. Both groups will eventually be joining together to build their own robots!