Tinkerability of kits | Valentijn.xyz

During the previous lecture we had the opportunity to try out different materials and building kits. We got some time to play with each of the following kits, and I have ranked them in different categories based on my thoughts.

My favorites from this list is still cardboard & hot glue. Ever since i was a child I have just loved the simplicity of cardboard and how easy it is to shape. I can still remember the birthday that I got a hot glue gun which changed my entire style of crafting. To this day I still use it to quickly build out ideas, mechanisms and prototypes. My least favorite of the list is the makerbeam set, I found it hard to work with and it only allows you to construct in a certain way and a square shape.

Material	Price (€)	Main focus	Ease of first use	External Requirements	Ease of accidental irreversible destruction	Interoperability
Cardboard & hot glue	Very cheap	Quick Physical Building	Easy, cardboard is easily manipulated and hot glue is quite self explaining.	None	Low, as many accidents can be fixed easily	High, using glue anything can be connected
Arduino starter kit	Cheap	Programming & electronics	Hard, as software and drivers need to be installed. The room for error when connecting electronics is large	Laptop with arduino software and drivers	High, connecting components can easily go wrong	High, just about any electronic component can be connected in some way or another
Microbit	Cheap	Visual coding & electronics	Medium, device with microbit app is needed	Phone or laptop with software	Medium, as inbuilt components and microbit components dock together, with alligator clips anything can be connected though	High, the microbit can be placed in a docking station or any other component can be connected using the alligator clip connector
Littlebits	Expensive	Electronics	Extremely easy, pieces snap together seamlessly	Mostly none as most pieces work when you snap them together	Low, pieces only snap together in certain ways which makes the system extremely safe to use	Low, littlebits only snap together with other parts within the littlebits eco system
Makeblock	Mid-range	Robotics	Medium, easy connection of electronics but software on device is needed	Phone or laptop with software	Low, custom connectors ensure that components can be connected incorrectly	Low as only custom components made by mblock can be used
Totem	Expensive	Physical Building	Extremely easy as screws are self explanatory as to where they fit	None, screwdriver and all other parts to get started are included
Makerbeam	Expensive	Physical Building	Easy as it consists of only screws and beams	None	Low as pieces are very sturdy	Low, there are almost no points to connect other items using the included screws
Metal Mecanno	Cheap	Physical Building	Easy, the screws and plates are self explanatory	None	Low, pieces screw together, bent pieces can be bent back.	High, anything with a hole can be screwed on with long enough screws

Besides playing with these kits we also had the opportunity to try out animatronics. Using cardboard, hotglue and servos we build small creatures that could move. Together with my partner invisioned an insect that could move around, so we started trying to build some legs.

When testing the legs, they accidentally walked themselves off the table

At the end of the workshop our creature could (kind of) walk around and we had a lot of fun trying out new things and making it.