It seems like an idea ripe for revolution, at least in the Arduino/maker space. I know there are similar systems - but I think very little competes with Denshi block in terms of form factor and its appropriate use by little fingers.
Come on, hackers! Make a 21st Century Denshi block system! :)
The pre-Arduino days were just expensive. I was using HC11 development boards quite a bit, and when I did something wrong, it would burn a hole in my pocket.
Also, good books or people who knew what they were doing were hard to come by. This went for software development too. A book would cost me $30-$50, a development board would cost $80, there were no reviews to know whether what I was buying was even worthwhile.
Kids these days have it really, really good. I'm jealous of them.
I was an early developer on the TI OMAP1, we had a number of EVK boards that TI lent us to to get the BSP up and running. I recall they were charging $7,000 each for these things and you could only get them if you had a serious inside channel with a TI FAE and promised big orders later.
I thought Pandaboard was a great leap forward (especially for TI). We've taken 2 or 3 more since then.
Unfortunately I personally went through highschool from mid-2000s, apparently a bit too late for a strong electronics curriculum (beyond learning basic soldering and building a small project in the electronics part of the 'tech' subject, with woodwork and metalwork being the other units)
Heh, I had one of those, along with the 200-in-1 version. I got them as Christmas presents as a kid. I think mine were from Radio Shack. Hard to believe it was 20 years ago.
Surprisingly, it appears there's a company still selling them:
This Elenco 200 in one was pretty great. And it kept on giving when using it as a platform for other experiments (you can use the VO meter, speaker, etc)
(However I remember paying around $50 for it in a Radio Shack in NYC, around, oh my, 20 years ago!!)
I bought a nine pin port (Atari joystick), cables, and two photocells from radio shack and soldered them together then mounted it in plywood. It worked just like paddle controllers for input (more light higher number). I doubt I could do that with modern USB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakken_EX-System
It seems like an idea ripe for revolution, at least in the Arduino/maker space. I know there are similar systems - but I think very little competes with Denshi block in terms of form factor and its appropriate use by little fingers.
Come on, hackers! Make a 21st Century Denshi block system! :)