This is a project I am setting up for a client. Originally I was asked for something Eco and suggested a solar powered light. I investigated the lights and found out that those cheap £1 garden lights are not easy to make in schools, and certainly not cheaply. They are very highly mass produced and include components, such as the curiously named 'Joule Thief' that are not going to be easy to make with 12 year olds in a few hours! So I developed a simple light Jar using small cheap solar panels that charges up two AA batteries and turns on and off when you turn it upside down, but the total cost of all the bits still came to over £7 each! If I had wanted to buy a million kits they would probably have been £0.50- including the jar...
Also the teacher in charge didn't think her staff would have the skills to assemble the connector block based circuit and troubleshoot any problems.
So I went back to the sketchbook, simplified it again and still it looked too complicated for the time now available which had shrunk to around 2 hours!
So I started thinking about the project from the other end, not starting with the electronics.. The core skills were building something using hand skills, becoming used to manipulating simple electronic components and producing a circuit that would enhance a garden, and thus the Electric Lizard project was born. This one is made of 3.2mm aluminium wire, joined together with connector blocks and uses a 2 x AA switched battery box driving 2 x 3mm Rainbow LED's as eyes. Hung on a wall, the eyes illuminate the area around the head and slowly cycle through the colours of the rainbow. There is no need for any resistors or other components and a simple sleeve protects the led legs from short circuiting. I showed it to the teacher in charge and she was delighted, and now I have used some wonderful coloured wire from www.wires.co.uk to create a multicoloured version which will have 2 x AAA batteries, and the 2mm aluminium wire will be easy for little fingers to bend into shapes.
This original prototype in the photo has been passed around loads of students and they are very excited at the prospect of making them, which is a valuable asset in the classroom. It may not be the last word in electronics, but it is a positive learnng experience that is relatively cheap to make (£1.75) and will hopefully inspire the students to investigate electronics in more detail in the future
