That was the amateur geek electronics project of the 1950s and 1960s.

For younger kids, there is also the more recently developed Snap Circuits, which are pretty good and fun until you are about 8.

But today, with inexpensive microcontrollers like the Arduino and small computers like the Raspberry Pi,and significant advancements in LED technology, the game has been upped, and with the mere ability to follow instructions, you can make a plethora of projects that blink, whirr, and amaze your neighbors.

DIY 10 LED Projects for Geeks: Build Light-Up Costumes, Sci-Fi Gadgets, and Other Clever Inventions by Jon Baichtal (ed) provides instructions to get you up to speed with LEDs, to make a UFO, a dice roller, a music visualizer, an automated infrared remote control, an optical screwdriver, an LED costume, and numerous other things. Since you will want to solder many of these things (though you could get away with not for several of them) there is even a chapter on soldering.

This is not the most basic electronics book. Watch this space for a review of a recent and excellent volume that serves that niche. These projects are challenging, but they are also very adaptable. Though these are LED projects and thus light up, LEDs also admit infrared, so you learn to handle that technology as well. All project books have a couple of LED projects. This brilliant book focuses on the bright lights themselves.

The instructions are clear and VERY well illustrated. Each project comes with a very clear set of parts you’ll need. Many projects use Arduino controllers.

You will learn about available electronic components you may not have known about but will suddenly need. For example, there is a tiny card that goes on the end of a USB cable and allows serial output directly to an infrared stream. How cool is that? You can take over the world, with that!!!

10 LED Projects for Geeks: Build Light-Up Costumes, Sci-Fi Gadgets, and Other Clever Inventions is not for the absolute beginner, but frankly, the unafraid beginner can do these project with some patience.

Just so you know, here is the list of contributors and their brief bios:

John Baichtal has written or edited over a dozen books, including the award-winning Cult of Lego (2011 No Starch Press), LEGO hacker bible Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects (2012 Maker Media) with Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler, as well as Robot Builder (Que 2013), and Hacking Your LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Kit (Que 2015). He’s hard at work on his latest project, a compilation of Minecraft projects for Maker Media. John lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children.

Contributors to 10 LED Projects for Geeks:

Kaas Baichtal became interested in computers and electronics around age 12, taking every available electronics class. As a technician Kaas worked mostly in the entertainment industry, doing equipment repairs and travelling system installs for theatrical dimmer manufacturers AVAB America and Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) as well as multimedia integrator BBI Engineering. Kaas has run her own servers at home since 1998 and specializes in writing custom code to solve real life problems.

Matthew Beckler is a computer engineer who lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats. His day job usually consists of writing firmware for fancy microcontrollers, and he is a co-founder and engineer of a fun side-hustle called Wayne and Layne, where he and Adam Wolf design and sell electronic kits and help create interactive museum and art exhibits.

Kristina Durivage is an independent software developer by day and a hardware hacker by night—specializing in data visualization and making the world a brighter place with LEDs. Her work is collected at portfolio.gelicia.com and her opinions and cat pictures can be found on Twitter, @gelicia.

Lenore M. Edman is a co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a family run company that designs, produces, and sells hobby electronics kits, drawing machines, and retrotechnological objects. She writes for the accompanying project blog on the topics of electronics, crafts, cooking, science, robotics, and anything else that catches her fancy. Many of the blog’s projects have been featured at science and art museums and in Make, Wired, and Popular Science magazines. She holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies; English and Greek.

Mike Hord has been working at SparkFun Electronics designing products and projects for makers for six years. His making skills run the gamut from metalworking, woodworking, and 3d printing to coding and circuit design. When not creating his next Big Hack, he’s raising two small children to question the veracity of everything except the need for toothbrushing.

James Floyd Kelly is a full-time technology writer in Atlanta, Georgia. He has written over 25 books on a mix of topics that includes Open Source software, LEGO Robotics, basic electronics, Arduino programming, and more. He and his wife have two young boys who are showing the early signs of Maker-ness.

Michael Krumpus has a master’s degree in computer science and 25 years of experience as a software engineer. He discovered a passion for electronics design later in life and formed a small electronics company, nootropic design, where he designs and manufactures innovative electronics for hobbyists, designers, educators and industry. Michael is based in Minneapolis, MN.

Windell H. Oskay is the co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a Silicon Valley company that has designed and produced specialized electronics and robotics kits since 2007. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories also runs a popular DIY project blog, and many of its projects have been featured at science and art museums and in Make, Wired, and Popular Science magazines. Windell was also a founding board member of OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association. Previously, Windell has worked as a hardware design engineer at Stanford Research Systems and as a research physicist in the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He holds a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Lake Forest College and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Adam Wolf is a cofounder of and engineer at Wayne and Layne, where he designs DIY electronics kits and interactive exhibits. He also does computer engineering and embedded systems work at an engineering design services firm in Minneapolis, MN. When he isn’t making things blink or helping computers talk to each other, he’s spending time with his wife and sons.

Like the previous volume, Volume II is for people first exploring the world of homemade DIY microcontroller fun.

The idea is very simple. An Arduino is the same sort of device that is hidden inside most modern things you plug in or that have batteries and that are more complicated than a flashight or an electric toothbrush. But some electric toobrushes have pretty complicated controllers in them too. It is called a “prototyping” device because it is generalized, has lots of inputs and outputs, runs a powerful but very learnable computer language, etc. So you can take an Arduino, a handful of resistors and other parts, and build a thermostat, or an alarm clock, or a temperature sensor for your garage, or a mini web site that displays video of the people who come to your front door, or a brethalyzer, or a computer game, or whatever.

Both of the “Handbooks” assume nothing, you don’t have to get Volume 1 to use Volume 2. Both provide the information you need to start messing around with the Arduino, and both provided details on how to build several projects. Most of the projects are designed to help you learn how to use the Arduino system, and a few produce actual useful results that you can deploy, such as a device that detects when something is near and the sprays water on it. Everybody needs one or two of those in the house!

Most importantly, the projects are well documented, clearly spelled out, and specifications are well done and accurate. You won’t get part way through a project and realize that you are missing something or that some instruction is unclear.

Also, the illustrations, which are critically important, are extremely well done. Also, No Starch publishers backs up its technology and coding books with excellent on line support, to download code, to pass information on errors to the book owners, etc.

Just so you know what you are getting yourself into, an Arduino Uno controller, which by itself does very little but can be hooked up to inexpensive parts to make projects like the ones in this book, costs about $30. You can get cheaper knockoff clones, which are not considered reliable, but if you are making several projects, buying a bunch of clones and expecting some of them to not work is an option. The Uno is only one of several controllers, the are advanced, larger and more powerful versions, but Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2 uses only the Uno, which is the archetype of all others.

You can, however, design circuits that use the same logic but a much simpler board, if you want to come up with your own power supply and other dodads included with the Uno. This can be done with the Nano, a miniaturized and scaled down Arduino. You can get tiny Nanos in groups of ten for the same price, roughly, as one Uno. You will need to be somewhat more expert and know how to solder, but note that many projects in books and on line use Nanos, so the expertise part is not necessarily a big deal.

People starting out with this often buy kits that include an Arduino and a bunch of wires, resistors, breadboards, etc. One of the better kits out there now is the Elegoo UNO Project Super Starter Kit , but there are many others.

You can also buy Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2 and look on page 11-12 where there is a list of parts, and get the parts you need there. For instance, go to Amazon, enter “6 AA Battery Holder With 2.1mm x 5.5mm Connector 9V Output 2 Pack by Corpco” and you will find “6 AA Battery Holder With 2.1mm x 5.5mm Connector 9V Output 2 Pack by Corpco” and then you can buy that part.

Have fun on your Arduino adventure!

Author Bio

Mark Geddes is a lifelong tinkerer and gadget enthusiast from Dumfries, Scotland. Frustrated with the lack of practical, visual guides to help him teach his ten-year-old how to build with Arduino, he set about recording his own experiments, and Arduino Project Handbook is the result. Geddes has a bachelor’s degree from Edinburgh College of Art.

Table of contents
Part 1: LEDs

Project 1: LED Light Bar
Project 2: Light-Activated Night-Light
Project 3: Seven-Segment LED Countdown Timer
Project 4: LED Scrolling Marquee
Project 5: Mood Light
Project 6: Rainbow Strip Light
Project 7: NeoPixel Compass

Part 2: Sound

Project 8: Arduino Piano
Project 9: Noise Level Meter

Part 3: Motors

Project 10: Old-School Analog Dial
Project 11: Stepper Motor
Project 12: Temperature-Controlled Fan

Part 4: LCDs

Project 13: Ultrasonic Range Finder
Project 14: Digital Thermometer
Project 15: Bomb Defusal Game
Project 16: Serial LCD Introduction
Project 17: People Counter
Project 18: Nokia LCD Pong Game
Project 19: OLED Mini Breathalyzer

Part 5: Security

Project 20: Utrasonic Soaker
Project 21: Finger Printer Scanner

Part 6: Advanced

Project 22: Arduino Robot
Project 23: Internet-controlled LED
Project 24: Bluetooth Voice-controlled LED
Project 25: GPS Speedometer

A Makey Makey is a device that allows a do-it-yourselfer to create a closed loop electrical signal, that the Makey Makey device converts into a specific serial signal that is sent via USB to a computer. The signal is a keystroke or mouse event. So, you can hook the Makey Makey to, say, a banana and a laptop, then when you touch the banana the laptop gets a mouse button click or a space bar or something. The kit is designed to give easy access to the key signals most used in gaming, but I think it allows the full range of keystrokes, and it can also interface as a sensor to an Arduino or similar, so you can use a banana to control, say, your robot. Or whatever.

I’ve not used it yet, so this is not a review, just a note that I’ve got one. Do you have one? This should be fun.

OK, off to get the bananas.

Micro-controllers are everywhere. When you “turn on” a machine in your house, chances are there was already a micro-controller sitting there, running on a minute bit of juice from a built in battery, waiting for you to push a button. Then, you turned a dial or selected an option on your dishwasher, or changed the setting on your thermostat, or picked some alternative mode on your coffee pot, or shifted into a different gear using a “gear shift” in your fly-by-wire Prius, or you opened up the birthday card and cats meowed out “Happy Birthday.”

All of those events involved a micro-controller, which consists of thee parts. There is a brain inside it, there is a set of sensors or actuators (a thing that detects that the greeting card has been opened, and an actuator that is the thing that makes the meowing sound by playing an WAV or MP3 file), and some software. The software gets in there by hooking an in production version of the micro-controller, likely once in its life, to a regular computer via a COM port (the same kind of interface used by your mouse, or a USB connection, etc.), and stuffing the software in there.

The Arduino Uno is a micro-controller that is very generalized, very large (a bit larger than a credit card), has a well behaved power supply, lots of connectors for either sensor or actuators, and a pretty fancy brain for a micro-controller, with lots of room for code written in a very powerful and fairly easy to use language similar to objective C. You can hook the Arduino up to most computers, using freely available software to communicate with it and compile your code. For the most part, you don’t have to actually write code, it is provided by the developers of projects you are poaching, but if you want, you can go to town with it.

There are hundreds and hundreds of sensors and actuators, from thermostats to motors, gyroscopes to myriad things that light up, available for the Arduino, and in fact, anything that runs on low voltage can be hooked one way or another to it (if you know what you are doing). High voltage uses (like shifting a car or opening or closing a garage door) are done, of course, by using relays that are switches operated by a micro-controller but that pass any voltage level you want, if you get the right one.

The Arduino and its associated equipment can thus be used to replicate, design, and experiment with pretty much any thing a micro-controller can do. After “prototyping” it is trivial, for an expert, to rebuild the circuit using a less capable but perfectly adequate bunch of parts, and solder instead of just sticking things together (called “breadboarding”) and so on. But no one really does that with Arduino. With Arduino you may leave the final product at it is (like the robot we built a few weeks ago) or, as in the case of the projects in an introductory book on how to use and have fun with an Arduino, you may just take the thing you built apart and build another thing.

So, this new book, The Arduino Inventor’s Guide: Learn Electronics by Making 10 Awesome Projects, is sitting on my workbench ready to go to work.

Of all the intro Arduino books I’ve seen, this one is unique in a way I’ll explain below.

The book gives detailed, understandable, and learning-oriented instructions for a home stoplight (helpful with toddlers in the house), a reaction time garme, a balance beam game, a diminutive greenhouse, an small piano, and a handful of other projects.

The coolest project might be a living breathing Logo turtle. Logo is a computer programming environment developed years ago to serve several functions including helping kids get interesting in coding. Logo is actually one of the oldest computer languages still in use (dates to the late 60s) and it is a general programming language, but it is mainly adapted to running the Logo turtle. The turtle is a curser that is moved around on the screen, and instructed here and there to drop a specific pen (it can have several different pens) so as it moves along it draws.

This project, from The Arduino Inventor’s Guide: Learn Electronics by Making 10 Awesome Projects, is a physical turtle that draws on your rug! Or, hopefully, a big piece of drawing paper you put down for it.

I mentioned above that this book is unique. Here’s how. I’ve looked at a Lot of Audrino project books, and there are no introductory books that provide detailed information on how to make interesting project enclosures and cases. The projects in this book rely heavily on the stuff you built the electronic into. The project enclosures are generally made of simple corrugated cardboard that you can get from an old box, or, if you want, from a craft store (for more interesting colors, better quality materials, less cat hair, etc.)

You can build all the projects in this book with parts you have acquired in the usual manner, but the book suggests you get the Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit for Arduino, which is about 75 bucks. Note: This book is produced by No Starch Press and Spark Fun, so of course they suggest the Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit for Arduino as a way of getting all the parts. But, by the time you add up an Uno or equivalent micro controller for 19 bucks, LCD display for nine bucks, fancy breadboard holder for 9 bucks , a shift register for 8 bucks, and miscellaneous other parts, you might be over $75 anyway. Or maybe not. You’ll have to check around.

There is plenty of preliminary information to get a total novice started, and each project is rich in detail and very fully and expertly, clearly and helpfully, described.

This is an absolutely excellent choice, perhaps my favorite at the moment (and totally up to date) Arduino starter book.

You need to construct these things in a way that ensures they won’t easily fall apart, and that requires a certain amount of engineering. There are some fairly expensive and specialized Lego Technic pieces that you may not have on hand, and this book can help you emulate them. How do you matcha motor or servo to a specific task? You need to know some stuff to make that decision sensibly. How do you make a transmission? Or an independent suspension?

And, very importantly, how do you manage the backlash that is “the gaps between mating components.” That seems important.

From the publisher:

This thoroughly updated second edition of the best-selling Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide is filled with tips for building strong yet elegant machines and mechanisms with the LEGO Technic system. World-renowned builder Pawe? “Sariel” Kmiec covers the foundations of LEGO Technic building, from the concepts that underlie simple machines, like gears and linkages, to advanced mechanics, like differentials and steering systems. This edition adds 13 new building instructions and 4 completely new chapters on wheels, the RC system, planetary gearing, and 3D printing.

You’ll get a hands-on introduction to fundamental mechanical concepts like torque, friction, and traction, as well as basic engineering principles like weight distribution, efficiency, and power transmission—all with the help of ­Technic pieces. You’ll even learn how Sariel builds his amazing tanks, trucks, and cars to scale.

…

This beautifully illustrated, full-color book will inspire you with ideas for building amazing machines like tanks with suspended treads, supercars, cranes, bulldozers, and much more. What better way to learn engineering principles than to experience them hands-on with LEGO Technic?

New in this edition: 13 new building instructions, 13 updated chapters, and 4 brand-new chapters!

We’re only starting to mess around with techincs but there is a lot of hope for it. People are starting to combine arduino and traditional robotics, Lego and robotics, and arduino and LEGO Technic. Pretty soon, someone will be combining Arduino controllers, Raspberry Pi computers, LEGO technics, and the Cyberdyne Systems hardware, and we’ll all be history…

But in the meantime, The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide will be our guide for the immediate future.

The first several projects in the book involve making electricity, or using it to make light bulbs shine or to run an electromagnet. [/caption]The most complicated projects are the ones where you make interactive games using LED lights and buzzers.

Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity! does almost no electricity theory. Thankfully. It simply delves in to messing around with electricity (and in so doing, provides basic theory, of course).

This is a book about how to play with electricity, not how to get a Masters Degree in electricity. In other words, any kid, the ones who seem destine for a career in electronic engineering and the ones who don’t, can get along in this book because it does not assume itself to be a building brick to a greater career. Yet the projects are interesting and informative and educational, and any kid who does a dozen of these projects is going to learn.

This kind of activity, which should involve parents for most kids, is the cure for the sense of depression you feel when you go to the toy store and look at the “science” section and everything you see is crap. Just get this book, order 50 bucks worth of parts, and get to work-fun. Then order some more parts, probably.

No kids’ book on electronics would be complete without a batter made from something you get in the produce section.[/caption]This book for kids is very kid oriented, as it should be. One of the first practical projects you build is an alarm system to keep your parents the heck out of your room. You can make a noisy musical instrument. You can make a device that makes sounds some humans can hear (the kids, likely) and some can’t (parents).

Although soldering is done, it is minimal and, frankly, can probably be avoided by using alternative techniques. But really, it is not that hard and one should not be too afraid of it.

A lot of the projects use and develop logic circuits. Kids actually love logic circuits, I think because they end up rethinking a bit about how tho think about simple relationships. And, it is good to know this stuff.

Unlike many electronic kits you can buy (which can be quite fun and educational in their own right) this approach does not rely on ICs (integrated circuits) that produce magical results with poorly described inputs and hookups. There are some basic ICs, including gates, an inverter, flip flops, and a timer. These are very straight forward circuits that are mostly (except the timer) really just very fancy switches.

The web site that goes with Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity! gives you a list of all the parts used in the book, with enough information to find them easily on line or at a hardware or electronics store. The book suggests a multimeter, which is probably the most expensive thing on the list. (this one is perfectly good and is about 35 bucks.) Other tools include a soldering iron and related bits, a wire cutter, some scissors, tape, etc.

Many of the parts, including a breadboard, LEDs, hook up wires of various kinds, and pretty much all the resistors, capacitors, etc. etc. can also be used with the more sophisticated Arduino projects, should you end up going in that direction.

This is a really fun book. If you have a kid of the right age (maybe from six to 12, with 100% adult involvement under 10 years) get it now, secretly, get some parts, and work your way through several of the projects. Then, make it (and the parts) a holiday present. Then look really smart.

This chapter-end section give you an idea of the level of the projects. There is a lot of stuff in here. All doable, but it will take a while to get through it all. [/caption]Here is the overview table of contents (the book is much more detailed than suggested by this top level TOC):

PART 1: Playing with Electricity
Chapter 1: What Is Electricity?
Chapter 2: Making Things Move with Electricity and Magnets
Chapter 3: How to Generate Electricity

PART 2: Building Circuits
Chapter 4: Creating Light with LEDs
Chapter 5: Blinking a Light for the First Time
Chapter 6: Let’s Solder!
Chapter 7: Controlling Things with Circuits
Chapter 8: Building a Musical Instrument

PART 3: Digital Electronics
Chapter 9: How Circuits Understand Ones and Zeros
Chapter 10: Circuits That Make Choices
Chapter 11: Circuits That Remember Information
Chapter 12: Let’s Make a Game!

Appendix: Handy Resources

Obviously, I’m talking about The Big Book of Hacks: 264 Amazing DIY Tech Projects, which is just now available, just in time for Christmas.

Pro gift giving tip: Bundle this book with a nice new soldering iron, or some other tool mentioned and used in the book.

I tried to give a good overview of the vast range of hacks presented in this book, but that is almost impossible. They are divided into categories: Geek Toys, Home Improvements, Gadget Upgrades, and Things That Go. The book starts out with some basics (such as how to solder) and then jumps right into beer brewing and drinking booze from a watermelon. One of the coolest things ins a mod for your toaster that lets it make special toast. Like, with a happy face, or a picture of Jesus, or whatever. There are a lot of hacks involving fire and minor explosions, or that involve propelling things great distances. I suppose one could argue that one learns a lot of physics and chemistry and stuff while working through these various DIY project ideas. Whatever. Just keep the first aid kit handy and make sure you know where your cell phone is. Hack #163 is a solar charger for your cell phone.

Did you know that there is such a thing as a “touchscreen overlay” that you can put on any screen to make it a touchscreen? DID YOU?

It goes on and on. I love this book. I’ll probably never do any of the things in it, but what is true of most porn is just as true of DIY porn.