Ji Sun Lee - Make: Tech DIY: Easy Electronics Projects for Parents and Kids

Copyright 2016 Ji Sun Lee and Jaymes Dec. All rights reserved.

Printed in Canada.

Published by Maker Media, Inc., 1160 Battery Street East, Suite 125, San Francisco, California 94111.

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Publisher: Roger Stewart

Editor: Rebecca Rider, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Elizabeth Welch, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Interior Designer and Compositor: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Cover Designer: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Indexer: Valerie Perry, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

September 2016: First Edition

Revision History for the First Edition

2016-08-19 First Release

See oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781680451771 for release details.

Make:, Maker Shed, and Maker Faire are registered trademarks of Maker Media, Inc. The Maker Media logo is a trademark of Maker Media, Inc. Make: Tech DIY and related trade dress are trademarks of Maker Media, Inc.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Maker Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps.

While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.

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Make: unites, inspires, informs, and entertains a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements, and garages. Make: celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your will. The Make: audience continues to be a growing culture and community that believes in bettering ourselves, our environment, our educational systemour entire world. This is much more than an audience its a worldwide movement that Make: is leading and we call it the Maker Movement.

For more information about Make:, visit us online:

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• To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to bookquestions@oreilly.com.

The authors would like to dedicate this book to our good friend Robert Moon, who loved working with technology, crafts, and children.

Special thanks to Ji-Sun Lees daughter Hannah Kim, without whom this book would not exist.

Thanks to our family, friends, and colleagues for their support: Chris Hyun-Chul Kim, Baek-Young Lee, Myung-Ja Na, Ji-Hyun Lee, Sang-Hoon Lee, Young-In Na, Kyung-Jin Jang, Cindy Seungwan Yoo, Gretchen Dec, Hsing Wei, Oya Kosebay, Lesa Wang, Maureen Reilly, Eric Walters, and Concepcion Alvar. Thank you to our publisher, Roger Stewart, our editor Rebecca Rider, and our book designer, Maureen Forys.

The idea for this book came during Ji Sun Lees first visit to Maker Faire in 2007. Held at the San Mateo County Event Center in California, this was the second annual festival of making, craft, and technology projects organized by Make Media. Ji Sun was at the Faire to exhibit a project called the Interactive Cake. Inspired by her then two-year-old daughter building cakes with her blocks, this project was a three-dimensional puzzle that formed a cake when assembled. Electronics embedded in the cake lit up, played songs, and even sensed when the candles were blown out.

While at the Maker Faire, Ji Sun noticed that many of the projects on display were not as appealing to girls as they were to boys. She also reflected on the fact that in her 15 years of working in information technology, she had met very few other women in the field. In response, she came up with the idea for Tech DIY, a series of sewing circuit projects that are meant to attract and teach technology to girls and their mothers. Later on, Tech DIY expanded its audience to include all kids and adult electronics hobbyists. This book is the culmination of nine years of research and workshops with Tech DIY projects.

There was a time when kids could take apart the technological world around them. In garages, basements, and other makeshift makerspaces, children would disassemble, poke around, and occasionally reassemble radios, telephones, and VCRs. Many influential scientists and engineers attribute their desire to enter their professions to tinkering around and playing with the parts of these devices to discover how they work.

Sadly, these opportunities to take apart and then repurpose, or hack, contemporary technologies are becoming less frequent. As modern devices shrink in size, they are made up of more embedded circuits and integrated electronics. Good luck finding any screws to open your modern smart phone, for instance. And if you do expose the circuits in your laptop, it is very difficult to isolate and reuse the tiny components and besides, by doing so, you just voided your warranty. The fact is that most new technologies are not meant to be taken apart, or repurposed. They are designed to become obsolete and be discarded for the next great thing.

At the same time, we live in a world where learning about technology is important for everyone, not just budding computer scientists or electronic engineers. We are surrounded by technology and it plays an increasingly important role in our lives. If children dont have opportunities to tinker and play with technology, they become more alienated and unfamiliar with how their world works. Thankfully, there is a movement afoot that could solve this dilemma.