Looking for suggestions on computing demo for Cub Scouts.

RobotWorkshop

I need to talk about computers for my sons cub scout den meeting. Besides covering the basic parts of a computer (mouse, keyboard, CPU, monitor, drives, etc) I thought it would be good to show off some of the microcontrollers and how little computers are so pervasive in out everyday things. Also, perhaps some things that demonstrate simple logic (AND, OR, etc) and simple program demos. Has anyone here had to do a similar demo? Any suggestions?

Tony B.

I just finished a 3 week session of teaching electricity to the two 4th grade classes at my son's school. To get the session started I brought in a robot and run it and finish the session by running a different robot. I show them all the parts and give simple descriptions of the parts and how they work together. The children really like the robots. They really like the ones that have Parallax Ping sensors because they think they are the robot's eyes. I run the robot in roaming mode in a circle made by the children and they just love it when the robot comes up to them stops, backs up, determines which way to go, turns and moves on. As I said in another post if I could just make it come up to every child that would be great! Maybe some day I'll get that code worked out.

Tony

RobotWorkshop

I have definitely thought about bringing a robot to demo. Every year I usually take them to the school and do demo's in each one of my kids classroom. It is always a hit. Some of my son's friends still remember the demo I did for them a couple years ago. It made quite an impression!

bill190

Perhaps explain a bit about 1's and 0's

Show a bit of binary math like...

DEBUG "0001", CR
DEBUG "0001", CR

DEBUG BIN4 %0001 + %0001



Then maybe show some LEDs or a 7 segment display and show how 1's light them up like...

DIRS = %11111111
OUTA = %00001101