On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 6:42 AM, Michael Watterson wrot= e: > I taught 5 of my kids... Your children are pretty blessed to have such good teachers as parents. I met university students who were assembling them at the Mini Maker Faire who had a difficult time understanding how the switch worked. This was after they had assembled it themselves and tested it, and it turned out they were beginning engineering students. I met a lot of kids who didn't care how it worked, but the fact that it worked was just as exciting to them as, I suspect, you found building your own radio or your kids found building their own boat engines. I went to last year's maker faires with PIC32 projects, RFID stuff, and multiplexed LCDs. I even brought an oscilloscope to the first faire to expose kids to that tool and let them see what the signal to the multiplexed LCD looked like. It was far, far, far above the majority of their heads. I realized that as much as I loved the more complex systems people use every day, the majority of the population are non-technical, and honestly even Arduino is beyond them. As an engineer I can't imagine not knowing and being able to apply all the stuff that I know. I can't put myself in their shoes. Perhaps you're right - I may have set the bar too low. But everyone has to start somewhere, and in two and a half weeks I'm hoping that several thousand people will get excited about a simple switch. And if only a very small portion start wondering how to do more than a little switch, it will have been worth the $2,000. -Adam --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .