@ShrimpingIt - Programmable Electronics
We document free project designs using prototyping materials
supporting STEM teachers and hobbyists in the UK and worldwide.
We document free project designs using prototyping materials
supporting STEM teachers and hobbyists in the UK and worldwide.
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We design high-impact programmable electronics projects, freely documenting how to source, build and teach with them. Our builds are Arduino-compatible using cheap components on solderless breadboard. More about Projects
We offer pre-bagged kits, to simplify the task of sourcing and preparing our projects for the classroom and to support the development of more @ShrimpingIt projects. We offer schools their first example of any kit at cost prices. More about Kits
We run workshops for learners and teachers, introducing solderless breadboard and programming tools, with project kits to take away. We also design bespoke workshop series for a host's subject-specific needs. More about Workshops
Blink is the first build we complete in our workshops.
It is the simplest possible Arduino-Uno-compatible circuit, made on
solderless breadboard. You can attach it to your computer and program it to
Blink its LED.
Once you have Blink working, you can go on to make a whole universe of projects.
The @ShrimpingIt projects all follow on from Blink, with build
diagrams, software, bagged kits and teaching materials. For example you can build
a Persistence of Vision display to paint your name in the air,
a Conductive Keyboard for interactive games driven playfully by
touched objects just like a MakeyMakey,
an Alarm Clock to explore time-driven applications,
or a Memory Game as a high-impact demonstrator of physical computing
to wow friends and family.
Since our layout is binary-
and pin-compatible with an Arduino Uno, you can also take advantage of the
huge collection of projects already shared for free by the Arduino
community, but in a cheaper and more educational way than using an official Arduino board.
Finally, learners can reinforce the success of any of their prototypes by completing a
Stripboard build and deploying it permanently with its own power supply
in a housing they have designed.
More about this Project
Once you've completed Blink, just another 7 LEDs and a battery pack and you can paint your name in the air with our Persistence of Vision project. After changing the text, a more advanced lesson plan incorporates learning binary and designing your own 8-pixel-high glyphs to replace characters in the original Commodore 64 font provided with your own icon designs. More about this Project
The Conductive Keyboard project allows human touch of conductive objects, like bananas, foil, pencil drawings and other people to trigger USB keystrokes, substituting for the popular MakeyMakey for high-impact interactive classroom projects and game controllers. More about this Project
Our Alarm Clock circuit demonstrates a simple use for a clock module with backup watch battery, allowing remixes which trigger arbitrary events according to time of day, week, month, year and epoch. More about this Project
Our LED Clock circuit builds on the Alarm Clock project, adding a display of the time with two rows of 12 LEDs - one row for hours and one row for minutes. It allows remixes which change the way the lights are used to represent the time in different ways. It has enough controllable LEDs to make a Word Clock, which lights words to tell the time, such as [It's] [twelve] [thirty] [five]. More about this Project
Our Memory Game project has backlit buttons, and plays tunes through a small Piezo transducer, challenging you to recall melody sequences, just like M.B.Games' Simon from the 80s. More about this Project
Try building a Stripboard project! You can make any of your Shrimp projects permanent by soldering the same components in an identical layout onto copper stripboard. More about this Project
This table shows how our kits can be reused and recombined to make different projects.
Complete project bundles are as low as £10-£12 pounds, but that only scratches the surface of the savings
you can make.
The Shrimp Bundle and breadboards can be reused between projects, making your second and
third projects truly pocket-money prices.
Within the Shrimp Bundle, the £3.30 USB UART modules are only needed when programming. If money is really
tight, they can be held as a classroom resource, with learners taking programmed projects away which
run from battery or hacked USB cables (allowing them to re-program at home is the ideal).
Finally projects can be transferred from breadboard to stripboard from just £0.44 per circuit, freeing
a classroom's solderless breadboards for the next year group.
More about Kits
@ShrimpingIt has wide-ranging experience running workshops at schools and special events.
We have a variety of formats to help learners and educators with their first steps. Workshop attendees build their own circuits
and program them, getting familiar with the components they will be taking home. In a full-day workshop format,
for example, we learn how to connect inputs and outputs to build their own personal invention ideas.
constructing programmable projects with cheap electronics prototyping material.
Venues or learners without computers can rely on our 24-laptop mobile hacking studio, configured to operate without dependencies on local network or computing infrastructure.
More about Workshops