A family build lab
Learning to build things that think, sense & move.
We're learning robotics, electronics, fabrication and physical AI by making things together. Grown-ups included.
On the bench
What we're building
BUILD 001
In progress
Make the needle move
A magnet, a coil of wire and a multimeter. We move the magnet and watch the meter.
Open buildBUILD 002
Up next
Break it, fix it
Our first circuit, and every way we can think of to interrupt it: switches, loose wires, bad joins.
Open buildBUILD 003
Queued
Make something spin
Connect a battery to a small motor. It is the first thing we build that moves on its own.
Open buildBUILD 004
Queued
What lets electricity through?
Turn the first circuit into a tester and try metal, graphite, water, wood, foil and anything else we want to try.
Open buildBUILD 005
Queued
Build a battery
Use two different metals and a simple electrolyte to make a tiny source of voltage we can measure ourselves.
Open buildBUILD 006
Queued
Turn a bolt into a magnet
Wind wire around an iron bolt and send current through the coil. The bolt picks up paper clips until we disconnect the battery.
Open buildBUILD 007
Queued
Dim the light
Add resistance to a light circuit and control how bright the LED is.
Open buildBUILD 008
Queued
Let one circuit switch another
Use a relay to control a second circuit. Inside it, a small electromagnet moves a switch.
Open buildBUILD 009
Queued
A switch with no moving parts
Replace the relay's click with a transistor and use a tiny signal to control a brighter light.
Open buildLab log
Things we're figuring out
We got a cup of water ready.
The kids expected fire. The resistor got hot first, and the LED died quietly.
Prints for the bench.
Most beginner robots were too far ahead of us, so we went looking for parts our builds can sit on.
A magnet, a wire, and a multimeter.
We started simpler than we planned, with the coil experiment from The Magic School Bus.
Our lab
Just enough to build.
A Mac mini for AI + code, a Bambu printer for making physical parts, and a growing bin of motors, sensors and microcontrollers.
Tools we're trying
Design
Describe a part in words, get a parametric model we can tweak by changing one number. How we plan to design our own bobbins, holders and switch bases.
Trying
An unofficial, community-built bridge that lets an AI assistant talk to a Bambu printer. Grown-ups only, because it controls a hot machine.
Not yet
In the bin
- Boards
- An Elegoo Mega 2560 starter kit, a large Makeronics breadboard, mini breadboards
- Power
- 9V batteries and clips, a breadboard power module, a small lithium pack (grown-ups only)
- Wire and leads
- Alligator clip leads, banana-plug test leads, hookup wire, speaker wire
- Parts
- LEDs, resistors, capacitors, push buttons, buzzers
- Motion
- A small DC motor with a fan, a stepper motor
- Measuring
- A digital multimeter
- Still to buy
- Magnet wire and a strong magnet for Build 001, copper and zinc for Build 005, an iron bolt for Build 006
On the shelf
Make: Electronics — Learning by Discovery
Charles Platt · the book we're starting with.
