Fearless Experiments With Microcomputers

Fearless Experiments with Microcomputers will guide you through the amazing world of very low-cost microcontrollers that you program from your laptop or desktop. You'll control light, sound, music and motion using a variety of sensors. The software is free and the hardware is so inexpensive that you or your children or students can be completely fearless as you play and learn by doing. You can master the basic building blocks of modern exponential electronic technology that power our world. You can put the power of a computer into art projects, toys, models and gadgets around your home for less than $5. You can learn the basics of software coding using the same simple software that many of today's computer wizards used to master their craft. And you can learn these things in a few hours of play, even if you have never studied electronics or computer programming.

You can understand and command the digital world The smartphone in your pocket is more powerful than the supercomputers of just a few years ago. How can we and our children possibly learn the digital magic that underlies our modern electronic world? The key is finding a way to learn microcomputers the natural way, by playing. Exponential advances in technology have driven the cost of full-fledged but tiny computers to less than three dollars. Imagine adding a real computer to an art project or a teddy bear for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You can program these little computers from your laptop or desktop computer using the same simple computer language that the founders of Google and the inventor of the LINUX operating system first used to learn their craft. Even if you have never written a line of code or built an electronic circuit, the simple projects in Fearless Experiments with Microcomputers will guide you to success. You’ll control music, light, power and motion and gain the confidence that comes from acquiring a new superpower! Best of all, the low cost of the parts lets you experiment fearlessly and playfully. In just a few hours, you will discover that you can do things you had once thought impossible or out of your reach.

Gregg Maryniak is the Co-founder of XPRIZE Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors as well as Corporate Secretary of the Foundation. He served as the Foundation’s first Executive Director from 1997 through 2005. He Co-Chairs the Energy and Space tracks of Singularity University, hosted by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is the Vice Chairman of the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation. He formerly served as Vice President for Energy and Aerospace of the St. Louis Science Center, Director of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium, Senior Scientist of the Futron Corporation, Managing Director of the International Space University and Chief Executive Officer of the Space Studies Institute of Princeton. He also served as a member of the Director’s Council of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography An Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Maryniak received the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality Award for his role in creating the Lunar Prospector Mission launched in 1998 which discovered ice at the moon’s North and South Poles. He was awarded Russia’s Tsiolkovsky Medal for his work on the use of energy and material resources of free space.