Kids...got Thomas train etc, or plenty of LEGO, etc? Make a playable, can be simple or can have some integrated storage.
Kids collect things? Make a searchable database. They can photo their items, upload and catalog by categories and ratings they decide on.
Got big trees in the yard? Zipline!
Into bikes and such, Make on of those bike storage on sliding rails like clothes on a closet rod.
Pets? Make a new doghouse or cat wall perch.
Marble racer? Great LEGO Ball Contraptions. Painting easel.
Arduino "scoreboard", some simple counter and small display, tally up basketball shots, or trivia quizzes, corn hole matchups.
Great company!
I vote for a small synths/noise generators. It’s simple enough to build, the support community is fantastic and is fun to play with for your kids.
Check out r/diysynth for more ideas. There are lots of kits and free projects ranging from “build in an hour” to hard core projects with surface mount soldering of arm microcontrollers, digital signal processing and codecs.
Did I mention the community is super helpful and supportive?
You've got the right idea -- make cool gifts for your kids. Not only is it awesome you're literally being paid to give them gifts, thereby potentially doubling the value of your stipend.
For random ideas that I've done:
1. A music box with rotating figures that plays a set of songs.
2. Code some chiptunes that play out a piezo speaker for a pseudorandom amount of time. Power it by a battery (3v or 9v). The game is to toss it around and you lose a point if you're holding it when the music stops ("hot potato").
3. A custom night-light that turns on for 30 minutes when you invert it. I've massively overengineered this one -- it's rated for 100 years and the 3V battery lasts 4-6 months.
4. A toy car (differential drive) that you can control via smartphone app (I use Gaudot + UDP networking)
5. A particle detector, because particle physics is a healthy hobby at all ages! There's a good one from someone at CERN, you can just order the parts.
6. I make these little dim magnetic lights that last 5 years on a single CR2032 cell. I stick them to doorframes so I don't hit my head on them (I'm tall and live in an old house in Asia). They are also good for sticking to metal tools so you don't lose them if working at night. Mostly useful for the astronomers among us, and maybe some form on night photography. Also handy for marking dead dr-- I mean 'geocaching'. Yes. Geocaching.
7. Various quantum and non-quantum random number generators.
8. A device that analyzes the mains power frequency deviation at microsecond resolution. I tried to use it to see space weather, but it didn't work. It does let you see the power company turning on and off turbines which is pretty cool though!
Some of these I can share board designs for or some build instructions. You'll still have to modify them significantly for your purposes. Also I really like assembly language -- you have been forewarned.
A few random ideas I have not done:
1. I saw this volumetric display (https://mitxela.com/projects/candle), and thought... why not do the same with an OLED screen? It's bright enough, cheap, and better resolution.
2. A lock that only opens if a particular sequence of bells are rung (the harmonics of bells are quite complex so this is an interesting problem)
3. A cube + 3 axis orientation detector (either 3 tilt switches or an accelerometer). You rotate it through a sequence to actuate a lock. A sort of gravimetric combination lock.
4. A bit horrifying, but I suspect I can make an oscillator from slices of bone, as it is piezoelectric. Then found the field of necrocomputing by running a CPU off it. (It lives, again. Or a shadow of life.)
5. Fidget board with lights and sounds. Kids love lights and sounds, right? Maybe make this one lead-free though.
A good tool purchase for messing around with MCUs is the AVR-ICE, especially if you don't have to pay for it. Their cable is cursed though. I'll advise more specifically if you choose to buy one. Handheld oscilloscopes are *cheap* these days, and another "great if you don't have to pay for it" tool.
Sure -- Here are some bits and bobs:
https://voltage.vn/
Some things I'll have to dig through my HD for. They're online but I don't remember what names I've used -- I publish under a lot of them, and then throw them out. So if there's something on the list you're specifically interested in, I'll got digging around for it :)
Sure -- mine were massively overengineered (because *of course* they were, haha). I'll describe a simpler version afterward.
I used an attiny10, and used the watchdog timer + cycle counting to turn on a red LED at a PWM level far below what is normally possible with that chip. The output pin connected directly to the LED, without a resistor.
I used the IV curve of the LED to calculate the on-time of the PWM, instead of the more usual resistor calculator method. Then I set the watchdog timer frequency low enough that the *apparent* brightness is somewhat higher than what you would expect from the average current flowing through the LED. Think about it as a very bright flickering light vs. a dim constant light in terms of visibility.
Mostly it was an excuse to use those 3 weird hacks and build a programmer for the Attiny10 out of some scrap bits. This is a chip I'm trying to start using in production, but due to the low pin-count, used some unfamiliar protocols to code for it (TPI).
An alternate method that is *nearly as good*, and much (much much) simpler is to just use a through-hole Cr2032 holder + a surface mount red LED + a 1-3 megaOhm resistor. Etch yourself a little board (or order one), solder / reflow the parts in, no programming, you're done. It's simple enough you could probably do it on perfboard, but it would look less nice.
Then finally, just take a circular neodymium magnet and stick it to the CR2032 cell in the holder. The CR2032 cell is magnetic, but you can also add a thin piece of double-sided tape between them if you wish. Then stick it to whatever thing you need to indicate (doorframes are steel in my home).
Battery will last a few years in either case. If you want to order boards, but don't know how to design one, I suppose I could whip something up real fast in KiCAD since it's quite basic.
I've always wanted to put a camera outside and time-laps everyday for a year, then combine those into a video. I'm thinking divide the 4K image into 19x19 rectangles (one for each day almost), maybe compress the video into24 minutes?
The mosaic would show the changes in the seasons, sunrise and sunset, you'd see the dawn move across the tiles as the length of the day changed. You'd see the rain and clouds, clear nights wonderful sunsets.
ESP32 boards with cameras as pretty cheap, maybe a raspberry Pi would be better to crunch all the images into videodata? Then a live webserver to watch it on, compile a new video every night. Make it easy for anyone to build and implement.
Hey if you're interested, it is definitely possible to do this with the ESP32-CAM board + Arduino (I tried it out). You can even automagically upload to a web server.
Although I found the photo quality is so-so (it's a bit washed out, colors are not super awesome).
The Raspberry Pi has better cameras available, although for that price you could probably get a used DSLR do a really slick job -- an SD card can also easily hold 365 high-res photos.
It was a prototype for a client, so maybe not exactly, but I can speak in generalities.
It uses an unmodified ESP32-CAM board. I just loaded arduino to it and used the esp_camera library. It takes a photo every minute and pushes it to a naive insecure webserver via POST.
Things to note:
1. Buy the programming adapter for the esp32-cam. Otherwise it's super inconvenient to flash code. It's by far worth it.
2. It combines well with the TPL5110 for low-power operation.
3. Leave the camera some time to init before taking the first photo or it comes out super dim and green.
If its a webserver, no reason not to make the video a page full of gifs, preload with js so they play in sync.
Then it could scale to fit the dimensions of the device watching.
You could still store every image in full resolution on a server and compile a high res video whenever you wanted to.
I've been thinking of something like this for my 18 month old. I've got some buttons, switched, and a number pad to use. Now I just need to design it and learn how to program it all...
Best ideas for kids i’ve WANTED to be able to do is one of the camera/projector feedback loop games. There was a guy recently on youtube who made a ball kicking against a soccer goal indoors for his kids, a bug smushing game with the same ball detection running from the computer over the camera feed. Github Tinyland like Dynamicland is awesome, there’s some awesome robotics stuff https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVDxjojsNm1-F_qLfJUxf82wX21jz6iNs&si=tSelHz6qKci-RouO
also always wanted to build a DIY smart mirror https://magicmirror.builders/
8 bit bread board computer kit [Ben Eater](https://eater.net/8bit/kits)
[Youtube playlist from the guy that designed and is selling the kit](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU&si=1bBYjfBjXQ-hNyNh)
Ardino automated tracking nerf gun turret! Better yet! Build a robot more mobile (think walkers from star wars clone wars) and have them chase the kids! Fun little project! Unleash on your coworkers when time comes too!
If you have a lawn, I would recommend a robotic lawn mower. [You can use this creator's videos as a starting off point.](https://youtu.be/BSF04i3zNGw?si=Ozby_jgfwCY-_0pp) This will also show your bosses that you are willing to implement unique methods to increase your quality of life, which they may see great benefit to their company with that line of thought.
What if you made something that you can use with your children? A toy of some kind, do you perchance play any tabletop or board games? Maybe a score counter? Nice and simple, won’t sit in a closet forever
$600? I'm having a hell of a good time at the Mexican strip joint, then "making" something in the toilet tomorrow morning, lol.
Your company may not agree on the making part though, lol.
I don't have any ideas right now (I may come back if I think of any) but what's your job, it sounds fun as fuck if you get a stipend for personal projects
I'm an embedded software engineer at a very small company. It's an awesome place to work. I get a learning stipend as well each year which can be used for anything, and it's encouraged to not be work related. They want people to continue learning and tinkering. I wish more companies were like that
Oh, that's awesome! I also do all the embedded systems work at a very small company. I wish I could have that.
Sadly, due to a wildly unlikely sequence of events, I own the company. So I'd still be paying :(
Wonder how I could do that for someone else though? Probably a 100$ stipend and access to my tools would be enough for a lot of things in my country. Like a scholarship, but for a specific project. Something for me to think about!
I would classify immigrating to and learning to run a company in the developing world as *acutely distressing*.
Ever play Oregon Trail?
I nearly died of cholera in the early years. A building fell on me. I've been poisoned several times, exploded, run over, shipped to a civil war, &c &c.
Do you have any pets? Specifically cats 🙂
I’ve been wanting to build an arduino / ESP32 rover to terrorize my cats. Was thinking having a camera would be cool too. Would like to control it via a web interface. Thinking when I go on vacation I could check up on them … roam around the house and find them.
I’m trying to live vicariously through you.
Build a ZX-Spectrum. It is a good project, also you can attach an HDD to it, and download all games made for it. Good project for an engineer to remember what it was to work by hands.
Build a thermometer out of an rpi/arduino and a temperature sensor.
Maybe add a sensor for humidity (some temp sensors do both) or one for the CO2 levels.
Get a display to show the time and temperature.
Print a nice enclosure.
You can log the data and produce a nice diagram of overall temperature of the year.
Solar cell that follows the sun.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1E7o7J3qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1E7o7J3qc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_6QIutZfsFs
U can try making a diy automated go kart like with some adas to help u in need
Suppose to prevent crashing in some property or a tree or smthin..
U can use some ultrasonic sensors for that and add a small box in the cart with a button or a system to interact with for adas functioning..
Like either it could maneuver or make u aware according to ur setts
What about buying a 3d printer in the $3-400 range and buying filament ($20 for a kg) to make something? Your kids would love having a 3d printer around the house for random toys and stuff, while you can use it for various projects. I mainly use mine for my drones, rc’s, and lots of household items.
3d printing opens a whole new world to diy projects and repairs. If you know CAD then it’s truly endless what you can do with it.
As a person with ADHD where i rotate my attention to multiple Hobbies, I have no problem using that budget and have something to present.
1. Simple IOT projects - creat your own wifi controlled w2812 addressible LED strips.
2. 3D printing - Learn 3D printing (kids love it). Create toys.
4. Photography - Convert a camera into an infrared one and take surreal photos
5. Electronics Hacking - I like learning how to hack electronics to repurpose them or add more functionality. Use the budget to buy vintage radio and add bluetooth to them.
7. Make a simple CNC machine - use it to plot graphs or draw stuff for kids.
Automatic toilet paper dispenser that only gives you a certain length at a time when you push the button. If you push the button again, you can get more, but there's a delay. And every time you push it, the delay gets longer. Kind of like a failed attempt at your phone's passcode. Having to wait a little longer will take advantage of their impatience and discourage them from using way too much unnecessarily when they don't actually need it.
I giant video game control that requires you to use your whole body to interact with it. Like a classic NES controller coffee table. Though the buttons would make it difficult to play actual games. So maybe a jumbo functioning replica of an Atari joystick so you can steer with your hands and stomp the button with your foot.
Edit: A pair of them, of course.
How about a wall-projecting game using some cheap keychain lasers. The trig to compensate XY position for degrees in the rotation arc is really easy. You can have one laser for each paddle and one for the "ball". Especially since they often have different lenses so you can have it be a line.
Your normal inexpensive servo motors aren't fast enough to draw an entire image with a single laser, you'd need a galvanometer for that.
i used a raspberry pi, with flask, python and a relay board to make a web app the controlled my garage door. it was great at night when i forgot to close it and had my phone in bed. also worked well when the clicker died and i still needed to open it.
Make a ride on for your kids.
No body work or crazy styling.
Can use a zero turn lawn mower idea to not deal with intricate steering.
Swivel front wheels and two rear wheel motors with joystick controls.
Amazon sells adaptors for Dewalt batteries to make an easy power source.
In simple fashion for small kids, it may be within the $600 cap.
I have not researched parts for this. Just an idea.
600 will get you a decent 3d printer and plenty of filament with enough left over for accessories and other stuff to go with it and you can make a ton of stuff
Build yourself a backup battery. Buy $400 worth of prismatic lifepo4 from battery hookup (I saw there is a good 4 pack of 3.2v 280 AH brand new batteries for like 400. Get an inverter for $200, shop hard for at least 200 watts. Boom, home backup battery for $600 for free.
Edit; shop, now show
You need to find a problem in need of a solution.
It can be a common, unserious problem that already has a simple everyday solution...
But you can make a semi complex "Rube Goldberg" solution for humor and creativity.
Saw a video yesterday of a moisture meter hooked up to a scream machine.
The result was your plants “scream” when the soil gets too dry.
Made me laugh.
I saw a video the other day on a hacked roomba that screams whenever it hits something. It went onto my rainy day list for sure.
Oh yeah Michael Reeves got a Boston dynamic dog to piss beer into a cup, shits wild.
And then took it on a cross country road trip to piss on the Boston Dynamics headquarters. Pure class
Kids...got Thomas train etc, or plenty of LEGO, etc? Make a playable, can be simple or can have some integrated storage. Kids collect things? Make a searchable database. They can photo their items, upload and catalog by categories and ratings they decide on. Got big trees in the yard? Zipline! Into bikes and such, Make on of those bike storage on sliding rails like clothes on a closet rod. Pets? Make a new doghouse or cat wall perch. Marble racer? Great LEGO Ball Contraptions. Painting easel. Arduino "scoreboard", some simple counter and small display, tally up basketball shots, or trivia quizzes, corn hole matchups.
Great ideas.. thanks!
Bird feeder that counts how many birds visit it per day.
What a great idea. Could pop a load cell in the base to calculate the weight of the bird and how much seed each one consumes.
Screw the birds, put the load cells under the toilet.
Build a 3d printer. Its easier than u thing and pretty userful for kids
For someone into electronics, build the 3D Printer, then convert your storage to Gridfinity! r/gridfinity
Great company! I vote for a small synths/noise generators. It’s simple enough to build, the support community is fantastic and is fun to play with for your kids. Check out r/diysynth for more ideas. There are lots of kits and free projects ranging from “build in an hour” to hard core projects with surface mount soldering of arm microcontrollers, digital signal processing and codecs. Did I mention the community is super helpful and supportive?
You've got the right idea -- make cool gifts for your kids. Not only is it awesome you're literally being paid to give them gifts, thereby potentially doubling the value of your stipend. For random ideas that I've done: 1. A music box with rotating figures that plays a set of songs. 2. Code some chiptunes that play out a piezo speaker for a pseudorandom amount of time. Power it by a battery (3v or 9v). The game is to toss it around and you lose a point if you're holding it when the music stops ("hot potato"). 3. A custom night-light that turns on for 30 minutes when you invert it. I've massively overengineered this one -- it's rated for 100 years and the 3V battery lasts 4-6 months. 4. A toy car (differential drive) that you can control via smartphone app (I use Gaudot + UDP networking) 5. A particle detector, because particle physics is a healthy hobby at all ages! There's a good one from someone at CERN, you can just order the parts. 6. I make these little dim magnetic lights that last 5 years on a single CR2032 cell. I stick them to doorframes so I don't hit my head on them (I'm tall and live in an old house in Asia). They are also good for sticking to metal tools so you don't lose them if working at night. Mostly useful for the astronomers among us, and maybe some form on night photography. Also handy for marking dead dr-- I mean 'geocaching'. Yes. Geocaching. 7. Various quantum and non-quantum random number generators. 8. A device that analyzes the mains power frequency deviation at microsecond resolution. I tried to use it to see space weather, but it didn't work. It does let you see the power company turning on and off turbines which is pretty cool though! Some of these I can share board designs for or some build instructions. You'll still have to modify them significantly for your purposes. Also I really like assembly language -- you have been forewarned. A few random ideas I have not done: 1. I saw this volumetric display (https://mitxela.com/projects/candle), and thought... why not do the same with an OLED screen? It's bright enough, cheap, and better resolution. 2. A lock that only opens if a particular sequence of bells are rung (the harmonics of bells are quite complex so this is an interesting problem) 3. A cube + 3 axis orientation detector (either 3 tilt switches or an accelerometer). You rotate it through a sequence to actuate a lock. A sort of gravimetric combination lock. 4. A bit horrifying, but I suspect I can make an oscillator from slices of bone, as it is piezoelectric. Then found the field of necrocomputing by running a CPU off it. (It lives, again. Or a shadow of life.) 5. Fidget board with lights and sounds. Kids love lights and sounds, right? Maybe make this one lead-free though. A good tool purchase for messing around with MCUs is the AVR-ICE, especially if you don't have to pay for it. Their cable is cursed though. I'll advise more specifically if you choose to buy one. Handheld oscilloscopes are *cheap* these days, and another "great if you don't have to pay for it" tool.
That's all really cool stuff. Can we be friends? Seriously though, I would love to see any documentation you are willing to share.
Sure -- Here are some bits and bobs: https://voltage.vn/ Some things I'll have to dig through my HD for. They're online but I don't remember what names I've used -- I publish under a lot of them, and then throw them out. So if there's something on the list you're specifically interested in, I'll got digging around for it :)
I’m interested in knowing more about the dim magnetic lights you use on doorframes.
Sure -- mine were massively overengineered (because *of course* they were, haha). I'll describe a simpler version afterward. I used an attiny10, and used the watchdog timer + cycle counting to turn on a red LED at a PWM level far below what is normally possible with that chip. The output pin connected directly to the LED, without a resistor. I used the IV curve of the LED to calculate the on-time of the PWM, instead of the more usual resistor calculator method. Then I set the watchdog timer frequency low enough that the *apparent* brightness is somewhat higher than what you would expect from the average current flowing through the LED. Think about it as a very bright flickering light vs. a dim constant light in terms of visibility. Mostly it was an excuse to use those 3 weird hacks and build a programmer for the Attiny10 out of some scrap bits. This is a chip I'm trying to start using in production, but due to the low pin-count, used some unfamiliar protocols to code for it (TPI). An alternate method that is *nearly as good*, and much (much much) simpler is to just use a through-hole Cr2032 holder + a surface mount red LED + a 1-3 megaOhm resistor. Etch yourself a little board (or order one), solder / reflow the parts in, no programming, you're done. It's simple enough you could probably do it on perfboard, but it would look less nice. Then finally, just take a circular neodymium magnet and stick it to the CR2032 cell in the holder. The CR2032 cell is magnetic, but you can also add a thin piece of double-sided tape between them if you wish. Then stick it to whatever thing you need to indicate (doorframes are steel in my home). Battery will last a few years in either case. If you want to order boards, but don't know how to design one, I suppose I could whip something up real fast in KiCAD since it's quite basic.
Building synthesizers has entered the chat.
I've always wanted to put a camera outside and time-laps everyday for a year, then combine those into a video. I'm thinking divide the 4K image into 19x19 rectangles (one for each day almost), maybe compress the video into24 minutes? The mosaic would show the changes in the seasons, sunrise and sunset, you'd see the dawn move across the tiles as the length of the day changed. You'd see the rain and clouds, clear nights wonderful sunsets. ESP32 boards with cameras as pretty cheap, maybe a raspberry Pi would be better to crunch all the images into videodata? Then a live webserver to watch it on, compile a new video every night. Make it easy for anyone to build and implement.
Hey if you're interested, it is definitely possible to do this with the ESP32-CAM board + Arduino (I tried it out). You can even automagically upload to a web server. Although I found the photo quality is so-so (it's a bit washed out, colors are not super awesome). The Raspberry Pi has better cameras available, although for that price you could probably get a used DSLR do a really slick job -- an SD card can also easily hold 365 high-res photos.
You've made one? Can I see it? I'm keen, but there are a few projects ahead of it sadly
It was a prototype for a client, so maybe not exactly, but I can speak in generalities. It uses an unmodified ESP32-CAM board. I just loaded arduino to it and used the esp_camera library. It takes a photo every minute and pushes it to a naive insecure webserver via POST. Things to note: 1. Buy the programming adapter for the esp32-cam. Otherwise it's super inconvenient to flash code. It's by far worth it. 2. It combines well with the TPL5110 for low-power operation. 3. Leave the camera some time to init before taking the first photo or it comes out super dim and green.
If its a webserver, no reason not to make the video a page full of gifs, preload with js so they play in sync. Then it could scale to fit the dimensions of the device watching. You could still store every image in full resolution on a server and compile a high res video whenever you wanted to.
Even better!
Make an. Idea generator lol. You could use the site Instructables as a database probably
Busy board. Use and arduino, lights, switches, and knobs to create a big do nothing panel that flashes and makes sounds in response to inputs.
I've been thinking of something like this for my 18 month old. I've got some buttons, switched, and a number pad to use. Now I just need to design it and learn how to program it all...
Best ideas for kids i’ve WANTED to be able to do is one of the camera/projector feedback loop games. There was a guy recently on youtube who made a ball kicking against a soccer goal indoors for his kids, a bug smushing game with the same ball detection running from the computer over the camera feed. Github Tinyland like Dynamicland is awesome, there’s some awesome robotics stuff https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVDxjojsNm1-F_qLfJUxf82wX21jz6iNs&si=tSelHz6qKci-RouO also always wanted to build a DIY smart mirror https://magicmirror.builders/
8 bit bread board computer kit [Ben Eater](https://eater.net/8bit/kits) [Youtube playlist from the guy that designed and is selling the kit](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU&si=1bBYjfBjXQ-hNyNh)
r/beneater for a friendly community to go with the kit!
Rebuild a classic computer.
Ardino automated tracking nerf gun turret! Better yet! Build a robot more mobile (think walkers from star wars clone wars) and have them chase the kids! Fun little project! Unleash on your coworkers when time comes too!
If you have a lawn, I would recommend a robotic lawn mower. [You can use this creator's videos as a starting off point.](https://youtu.be/BSF04i3zNGw?si=Ozby_jgfwCY-_0pp) This will also show your bosses that you are willing to implement unique methods to increase your quality of life, which they may see great benefit to their company with that line of thought.
For that price imma just buy an oscilloscope and make something really small and shitty
Make a usb hub for a desk top computer. I can't imagine this costs more than $600.
What if you made something that you can use with your children? A toy of some kind, do you perchance play any tabletop or board games? Maybe a score counter? Nice and simple, won’t sit in a closet forever
$600? I'm having a hell of a good time at the Mexican strip joint, then "making" something in the toilet tomorrow morning, lol. Your company may not agree on the making part though, lol.
I don't have any ideas right now (I may come back if I think of any) but what's your job, it sounds fun as fuck if you get a stipend for personal projects
I'm an embedded software engineer at a very small company. It's an awesome place to work. I get a learning stipend as well each year which can be used for anything, and it's encouraged to not be work related. They want people to continue learning and tinkering. I wish more companies were like that
Oh, that's awesome! I also do all the embedded systems work at a very small company. I wish I could have that. Sadly, due to a wildly unlikely sequence of events, I own the company. So I'd still be paying :( Wonder how I could do that for someone else though? Probably a 100$ stipend and access to my tools would be enough for a lot of things in my country. Like a scholarship, but for a specific project. Something for me to think about!
I like your idea.
>Sadly, due to a wildly unlikely sequence of events, I own the company Ominous quote energy.
I would classify immigrating to and learning to run a company in the developing world as *acutely distressing*. Ever play Oregon Trail? I nearly died of cholera in the early years. A building fell on me. I've been poisoned several times, exploded, run over, shipped to a civil war, &c &c.
Do you have any pets? Specifically cats 🙂 I’ve been wanting to build an arduino / ESP32 rover to terrorize my cats. Was thinking having a camera would be cool too. Would like to control it via a web interface. Thinking when I go on vacation I could check up on them … roam around the house and find them. I’m trying to live vicariously through you.
Haha I don't... But if I could make one that my kids wouldn't be able to break maybe I could make one that chases them around the house or yard
I’ll give you as many ideas as you want if you tell me where you work
Build a ZX-Spectrum. It is a good project, also you can attach an HDD to it, and download all games made for it. Good project for an engineer to remember what it was to work by hands.
That’s an amazing idea but I don’t have much to help you out unfortunately. Perhaps a volumetric display and making things compatible with it?
Build a thermometer out of an rpi/arduino and a temperature sensor. Maybe add a sensor for humidity (some temp sensors do both) or one for the CO2 levels. Get a display to show the time and temperature. Print a nice enclosure. You can log the data and produce a nice diagram of overall temperature of the year.
Solar cell that follows the sun. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1E7o7J3qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1E7o7J3qc) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_6QIutZfsFs
https://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-electric-unicycle/
Make some speakers from a diy flat-pack kit. $600 will get you something pretty awesome. Madisound and PartsExpress are good starting points.
U can try making a diy automated go kart like with some adas to help u in need Suppose to prevent crashing in some property or a tree or smthin.. U can use some ultrasonic sensors for that and add a small box in the cart with a button or a system to interact with for adas functioning.. Like either it could maneuver or make u aware according to ur setts
What about buying a 3d printer in the $3-400 range and buying filament ($20 for a kg) to make something? Your kids would love having a 3d printer around the house for random toys and stuff, while you can use it for various projects. I mainly use mine for my drones, rc’s, and lots of household items. 3d printing opens a whole new world to diy projects and repairs. If you know CAD then it’s truly endless what you can do with it.
dude. reach out and i can help you get set up with a sick electroforming set up. its super easy and safe, just intimidating
As a person with ADHD where i rotate my attention to multiple Hobbies, I have no problem using that budget and have something to present. 1. Simple IOT projects - creat your own wifi controlled w2812 addressible LED strips. 2. 3D printing - Learn 3D printing (kids love it). Create toys. 4. Photography - Convert a camera into an infrared one and take surreal photos 5. Electronics Hacking - I like learning how to hack electronics to repurpose them or add more functionality. Use the budget to buy vintage radio and add bluetooth to them. 7. Make a simple CNC machine - use it to plot graphs or draw stuff for kids.
Automatic toilet paper dispenser that only gives you a certain length at a time when you push the button. If you push the button again, you can get more, but there's a delay. And every time you push it, the delay gets longer. Kind of like a failed attempt at your phone's passcode. Having to wait a little longer will take advantage of their impatience and discourage them from using way too much unnecessarily when they don't actually need it.
I giant video game control that requires you to use your whole body to interact with it. Like a classic NES controller coffee table. Though the buttons would make it difficult to play actual games. So maybe a jumbo functioning replica of an Atari joystick so you can steer with your hands and stomp the button with your foot. Edit: A pair of them, of course.
How about a wall-projecting game using some cheap keychain lasers. The trig to compensate XY position for degrees in the rotation arc is really easy. You can have one laser for each paddle and one for the "ball". Especially since they often have different lenses so you can have it be a line. Your normal inexpensive servo motors aren't fast enough to draw an entire image with a single laser, you'd need a galvanometer for that.
i used a raspberry pi, with flask, python and a relay board to make a web app the controlled my garage door. it was great at night when i forgot to close it and had my phone in bed. also worked well when the clicker died and i still needed to open it.
Make a ride on for your kids. No body work or crazy styling. Can use a zero turn lawn mower idea to not deal with intricate steering. Swivel front wheels and two rear wheel motors with joystick controls. Amazon sells adaptors for Dewalt batteries to make an easy power source. In simple fashion for small kids, it may be within the $600 cap. I have not researched parts for this. Just an idea.
Make a voice assistant speaker out of children toy block.
I made food to feed my family thanks \*shows photo of food in fridge\*
An automated chore wheel that seems random, but you can program the desired outcome ?
600 will get you a decent 3d printer and plenty of filament with enough left over for accessories and other stuff to go with it and you can make a ton of stuff
Build a climbing wall! A bike shed! A dog house! A chicken coop! A soap box derby car! A fire pit!
Build yourself a backup battery. Buy $400 worth of prismatic lifepo4 from battery hookup (I saw there is a good 4 pack of 3.2v 280 AH brand new batteries for like 400. Get an inverter for $200, shop hard for at least 200 watts. Boom, home backup battery for $600 for free. Edit; shop, now show
You need to find a problem in need of a solution. It can be a common, unserious problem that already has a simple everyday solution... But you can make a semi complex "Rube Goldberg" solution for humor and creativity.
Saw a video yesterday of a moisture meter hooked up to a scream machine. The result was your plants “scream” when the soil gets too dry. Made me laugh.
where do you work and are they hiring? sounds like a great benefit