Rewind: 27 STEM kits from 2015

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These STEM toys from 2015 are helping to inspire the next generation of Makers.

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STEM education has been a growing venture in schools across the country, with even the President himself making it a priority to encourage students as young as grade-school to pursue the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines. After all, these fields are changing the world rapidly within the areas of innovation, economic growth and employment. But let’s face it; these subjects don’t come easy to everyone, so how do we instill STEM in kids?

With this in mind, many startups have sought out new and exciting ways to entice the younger generation to explore their creativity and develop an interest in hands-on learning. Testament to that, here are several products from 2015 looking to inspire the next generation of Makers.

littleBits Gizmos & Gadgets

The Gizmos & Gadgets Kit is the ultimate invention toolbox, complete with motors, wheels, lights , switches, servos, buzzers and even the tools to build a remote control.

Jewelbots

Jewelbots are programmable friendship bracelets that teach girls the basics of coding.

Thimble

Thimble is a monthly subscription service that delivers fun electronic projects with guided tutorials and a helpful community.

Touch Board Starter Kit

Bare Conductive’s Touch Board Starter Kit contains everything you need to transform surfaces, objects or spaces into sensors.

Makey Makey GO

Small enough to fit on your keychain, backpack or bracelet, Makey Makey GO turns everyday objects into touchpads and combines them with the Internet. Say hello to the world’s first invention kit.

RePhone

RePhone from Seeed Studio allows Makers to create a phone themselves in minutes and hack a new way to communicate with things.

mBot

mBot is an all-in-one, Arduino-compatible robot that supports wireless communication and employs Scratch 2.0-like coding.

Ringo

Ringo is a miniature digital pet robot equipped with an accelerometer, a gyrosocope, six RGB LEDs, as well as sound and communication sensors.

Wink

Wink is an Arduino-driven robot designed to help transition students from graphical programming to more powerful written code languages. It’s also the sibling of the aforementioned Ringo.

Kano

Kano is a computer and coding kit for all ages that’s as simple as LEGO, powered by Raspberry Pi.

Primo Cubetto

Primo Cubetto is a smart wooden robot designed to teach kids the basics of coding away from the screen.

Petduino

Petduino puts a DIY twist on the old-school Tamagotchi.

STEMI

STEMI is a hexapod that can be built right at home and controlled via smartphone.

mCookie

mCookies are quarter-sized, stackable modules from Microduino that enable young Makers to bring their LEGO projects to life.

Modulo

Modulo is a set of tiny modular circuit boards that takes the hassle out of electronics.

The Crafty Robot

The Crafty Robot is a paper toy unlike any other — plug it into a USB port for 30 seconds, unplug it and you’ve got a moving robot.

Kamigami

Kamigami is an origami-style robot you can construct and program by yourself. Each one can be configured with a unique set of behaviors and characteristics through a drag-and-drop interface.

Phiro

Phiro is a LEGO-compatible robotics toy that children can play with, code and innovate in various ways.

Quirkbot

With Quirkbot, young Makers can devise and configure quirky robots (hence its name), blinking outfits and weird sounding creatures out of regular drinking straws.

Cannybots

Cannybots are LEGO-compatible, smart toy cars that introduce kids to the worlds of robotics, programming and 3D printing.

3DRacers

3DRacers is a Mario Kart-like indoor racing game that lets anyone design and 3D print their own car.

Volta Flyer

Volta Flyer is the world’s first DIY airplane kit that is solely powered by the sun.

Roby

Roby is a 3D-printed robotic machine that not only drives on four wheels, but can walk on two. If it falls, it can even pick itself up again with its pair of arms.

O Watch

O Watch is a DIY smartwatch for a kid, by a kid.

LocoRobo

LocoRobo is a cute, inexpensive robot capable of being wirelessly programmed.

KamiBot

KamiBot is a programmable, smartphone-controlled paper robot.

Pixel Pals

Pixel Pals are easy-to-build, fun educational kits that grow from a project to a friend you can program.

Fiat Lux

Fiat Lux is an Arduino-compatible kit specifically designed for unique wearable projects.

AZIBOt

AZIBOt is an open source, 3D-printed robot kit for STEM education in Africa.

Rewind: 50 boards you’ll want to know about from 2015

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Here’s a look at a bunch of boards that caught our attention over the last 12 months. Feel free to share your favorites below! 

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“Hardware becomes a piece of culture that anyone can build upon, like a poem or a song.” – Massimo Banzi

Arduino Zero

A 32-bit Arduino powered by the Atmel | SMART SAM D21.

Arduino Wi-Fi Shield 101

An IoT shield with CryptoAuthentication that enables you to wirelessly connect your Arduino or Genuino with ease.

Arduino MKR1000

A powerful board that combines the functionality of the Zero and the connectivity of the Wi-Fi Shield.

Atmel | SMART SAM L21

A game-changing family of Cortex-M0+ MCUs that deliver power consumption down to 35 µA/MHz in active mode and 200nA in sleep mode.

BTLC1000

An ultra-low power Bluetooth Smart SoC with an integrated ARM Cortex-M0 MCU and transceiver.

Atmel | SMART SAMA5D2

An ARM Cortex-A5-based MPU that offers great features integrated into lower pin count packages, making it ideal for applications where security, power consumption and space constraints are key considerations.

Atmel | SMART SAM S70/E70

An ARM Cortex-M7-based MCU with a floating point unit (FPU) that’s ideal for connectivity and general purpose industrial applications.

ATmegaS128

A space-ready version of the popular ATmega128.

Adafruit Feather

A new line of development boards that, like it’s namesake, are thin, light and let your ideas fly. Expect Feather to become a new standard for portable MCU cores.

Adafruit METRO 328

An ATmega328-driven processor packed with plenty of GPIO, analog inputs, UART, SPI and I2C, timers, and PWM galore – just enough for most simple projects.

Arduino GEMMA

A miniature wearable board based on the ATtiny85.

Adafruit Bluefruit LE Micro

A board that rolls the versatility of the ATmega32U4 and the wireless connectivity of the SPI Bluefruit LE Friend all into one.

SparkFun Stepoko

An Arduino-compatible, 3-axis control solution that runs grbl software.

SparkFun SAM D21 Breakout

An Arduino-sized breakout for the ATSAMD21G18.

Bosch Sensortec BMF055

A compact 9-axis motion sensor, which incorporates an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer along with an Atmel | SMART SAM D20 ARM Cortex M0+ core.

BNO055 Xplained Pro

A new extension board, which features a BNO055 intelligent 9-axis absolute orientation sensor, that connects directly to Atmel’s Xplained board making it ideal for prototyping projects for IoT apps.

SmartEverything

A prototyping platform that combines SIGFOX, BLE, NFC, GPS and a suite of sensors. Essentially, it’s the Swiss Army knife for the IoT.

Qduino Mini

A tiny, Arduino-compatible board with a built-in battery connector and charger built-in, as well as a fuel gauge.

Tessel 2

A dev board with a SAM D21 coprocessor, reliable Wi-Fi, an Ethernet jack, two USB ports and a system that runs real Node.js/io.js.

LattePanda

A Windows 10 single-board computer equipped with an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 Cherry Trail processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and an ATmega32U4 coprocessor.

LightBlue Bean+

An Arduino-compatible board that is programmed wirelessly using Bluetooth Low Energy.

Makey Makey GO

A thumbdrive-shaped device that can transform ordinary objects into touch pads.

Hak8or

An uber mini, DIY board based on an Atmel | SMART AT91SAM9N12 that runs Linux via a USB drive.

Modulo

A set of tiny modular circuit boards that takes the hassle out of building electronics.

Microduino mCookie

A collection of small, magnetically stackable modules that can bring your LEGO projects to life.

The AirBoard

A compact, open source, wireless and power efficient dev board designed to learn, sketch and deploy prototypes out in the field.

Autonomo

A matchbox-sized, Arduino-compatible MCU powered by a small solar panel.

Helium

An integrated platform that brings the power of the cloud to the edge of the network, enabling you to observe, learn and capture actionable insights from existing physical ‘things’ in your environment.

Sense HAT

An add-on for the Raspberry Pi equipped with a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a temperature sensor, a barometric pressure sensor and a humidity sensor, as well as a five-button joystick and an 8×8 RGB LED matrix — all powered by an LED driver chip and an ATtiny88 running custom firmware.

Ardhat

A HAT with an Arduino-compatible processor that responds quickly to real-time events, while letting the Raspberry Pi do all of the heavy lifting.

Wino

A cost-effective, Arduino-compatible board with built-in Wi-Fi.

pico-Platinchen

A little board designed for wearable devices that features a BNO055, an ATmega328P and a CR2032 coin-cell battery.

 XeThru X2M200 and X2M300

A pair of adaptive smart sensor modules that can monitor human presence, respiration and other vital information.

LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo

An Arduino Yún-friendly platform powered by an ATmega32U4 and MediaTek MT7688 SoC.

Piccolino

A small, inexpensive controller with an embedded OLED display and Wi-Fi connectivity that you can program using existing tools like the Arduino IDE.

ZeroPi

A next-generation, Arduino and Raspberry Pi-compatible dev kit for robotic motion structure systems and 3D printers that boasts an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 at its core.

CryptoShield

A dedicated security peripheral for the Arduino and was made in collaboration with SparkFun’s previous hacker-in-residence, Josh Datko. This shield adds specialized ICs that perform various cryptographic operations which will allow you to add a hardware security layer to your Arduino project.

ZYMKEY

An add-on board that makes it easy to secure your Raspberry Pi and Linux applications.

Flip & Click

A two-sided, Arduino-like board with an AT91SAM3X8E for its heart.

ChipWhisperer-Lite

An open source toolchain for embedded hardware security research including side-channel power analysis and glitching. The board uses a Spartan 6 LX9, along with a 105 MS/s ADC, low-noise amplifier, an Atmel | SMART SAM3U chip for high-speed USB communication, MOSFETs for glitch generation and an XMEGA128 as a target device.

KeyDuino

An Arduino Leonardo-like board with built-in NFC that lets you replace your keys with any smartphone, NFC ring or proximity card.

Neutrino

An inexpensive, open source and shrunken-down version of the Arduino Zero that boasts a 32-bit ATSAMD21G18 running at 48MHz and packing 32K of RAM.

WIOT

An open source, Arduino-compatible board with an ATmega32U4, ESP8266 Wi-Fi module and lithium-ion battery support.

Obscura

An ATmega32U4-powered, 8-bit synthesizer that enables you to create NES, C64 and Amiga-style chiptune music by simply connecting a MIDI device.

Zodiac FX

An OpenFlow switch that is powerful enough to develop world-changing SDN apps yet small enough to sit on your desk. Based on an Atmel | SMART SAM4E, the unit includes four 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports with integrated magnetics and indicator LEDs along with a command line interface accessible via USB virtual serial port.

Goldilocks Analogue

A board that brings sophisticated analog and audio input, output and storage capabilities to the Arduino environment.

NodeIT

A super small and expandable IoT system for Makers.

Pixel

A smart display that features an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 MCU operating at 48MHz and packing 32K of RAM, along with a 1.5” 128×128 pixel OLED screen and a microSD slot.

SDuino

An Arduino crammed inside an SD card.

… and how could we not mention this?

The WTFDuino!

Do you feel like today’s MCUs are too simple and sensible? Well, one Maker decided to take a different approach by “undesigning” the Arduino into a banana-shaped processor whose form factor is impossible to breadboard and whose pins are incorrectly labelled.

 

mCookies are Arduino and LEGO-compatible modules

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These quarter-sized, stackable, Arduino and LEGO-compatible modules allow Makers to bring their ideas to life. 

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If there’s one trend that is continuing to evolve throughout the Maker Movement, it’s modularity. DIYers are constantly seeking expedited and efficient ways to piece together their projects, all while bringing their ideas to life without the hassles of soldering and wiring messes. Joining the likes of littleBits and Modulo, the Microduino crew has launched mCookie — a small, stackable electronic hardware kit for designers, engineers and curious tinkerers of any age and skill set.

You may recall their first Kickstarter campaign from back in September 2013, which went on to garner well over its pledge goal in just a matter of days. Since then, Microduino has developed over 50 blocks and 30 sensors, and has granted users access to more than 100 basic tutorials, 500 project samples and a burgeoning online community.

Hoping to continue riding its wave of success, the next-generation of Microduino consists of quarter-sized hardware components inspired by the incredibly popular Arduino platform that not only connect magnetically, but can be built into predesigned projects or used to innovate new ones as well. Each open source module is color-coded and is designed to be stacked on top of a main processor to perform one core function — whether that’s expanding Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities, GPS and sensor hubs, audio and battery management, or a core USB.

As its creators note, there are three microcontroller modules in the mCookie series, all of which powered by Atmel. The CoreUSB is built around the ATmega32U4, while the Core and Core+ are driven by an ATmega328P and ATmega644PA, respectively.

Ultimately, these components will provide users with the ability to build any number of projects, ranging from drones and robots to wearables and smart gardening gadgets. Helping speed up the development process, these devices can be programmed using Arduino IDE and integrated into existing Arduino sketches of all kinds. Aside from that, the modules are even LEGO-compatible and only fit together when the right connection is formed, making them more accessible to people of all ages and eliminating the need for soldering.

Meanwhile, for projects that require a little more reinforcement, spring pins offer rugged surface-to-surface linkage between circuit boards for an extended usable lifetime, and M2 screws can be employed to securely fasten more robust designs. Not only geared towards beginners, experienced and well-seasoned Makers can write their own programs in the Arduino IDE and transmit that program to the hardware via USB, too.

mCookie comes in a variety of packages, including Basic, Advanced and Expert kits, each of which bundles different boards and sensors. So whether you’re looking for a fast and simple way to devise a remote-controlled LEGO car, a Wi-Fi weather station or even a DIY quadcopter, mCookie is for you. With its incredibly popular crowdfunding campaign complete, Microduino expects to begin shipping units by the end of July 2015.