Sometimes, shit doesn’t work out. For example: Mike’s Hard Lemonade contacted me at the Southside Hackerspace, wanting us to modify a golf cart as part of their “Mike’s Hacks” summer ad campaign. I dumped a lot of time (and just a little money) into the project, but everything went south at the last minute.

But this isn’t about that.

At the same time, Mason Donahue put me in touch with Chicago Girls in Computing. I put together a lesson plan, put together Arduino kits, made a powerpoint, and taught a class. It went awesome.

I had them assemble and program basic nightlights (LEDs turn on when the ambient light drops). They took that idea and ran with it.

The kits:

The total cost per student came out to about $27. I was able to pick up a bunch of plastic containers from the grocery store for $0.10 each, and the kits fit into the containers.

They seemed to like it.

Major props go to Backstop, Stack Overflow, and DigitalOcean. I wrote them at the last minute saying it would sure be neat if I could give out some stickers at the workshop. Backstop gave me pads and pens, Stack Overflow sent stickers and markers, and DigitalOcean sent me a bunch of stickers (and chocolates).