Success the first time out of the bag is pretty important, so I recommend
the GrowBot or one of the projects at www.lynxmotion.com .  Go for a sure
thing the first time and if they find they really like this stuff, they will
expand to other cool things (like PICs, assembler, PID controllers .. etc).
I think challenging a father/son team with PICs and assembler might be a bit
heavy duty - but I say that without really knowing the exact circumstances.

The Tamiya parts for the tank robot are quite cheap and don't produce a very
sophisticated looking end product - the tank treads look awful.  Combine
that with the need to use PWM and an H-bridge (which takes the Stamp out of
the scene unless you want a simple on/off controller) and you have a lot of
work for what you get.

I haven't seen the breadbot but I've read a few things about it - it sounds
like a fun project.

The lynxmotion robots will be cheaper than the GrowBot, but won't be as
complete. However, some of the lynxmotion 'bots look a bit kewler than the
GrowBot - IMHO.

Dan

> I have a brother-in-law who has expressed interest in a father-son
robotics
> project for him and his son.  (Finally!)  They're both pretty smart but
have
> no experience in electronics.  His son is 13.  I'm debating what to direct
> them to.  I'm looking at 3 projects:  1)  Robert Nansel's breadbot robot
> series of articles in Nuts & Volts, 2)  Myke Predko's IR Tank robot using
> Tamiya parts or 3) Parallax's Growbot.  For a brain they could use
> Stamps/clones (BX-24?) or PICs.  My strategy would be to provide them a
> project with software they could build & get up and running and then go on
> to learn to modify the software.  Stamps may be easier to learn since they
> use BASIC but couldn't they also use the PICs with the help of the Easy
Pic'
> n books?  Any of these options I think are within their budget.
>
> Has anybody been down this path or know what might work best?  Any
> recommendations would be appreciated.  Thanks.  Dave Scott