So I ordered a nerdkit about a week and a half ago. A nerdkit essentially prepackaged parts for building a microcontroller programming kit that was put together by Mike Robbins and Humberto Evans, 2 guys decidedly smarter than me. From what I have read they are passionate about supporting their product and have built a strong information community around it as well. I found them while searching the interwebz for information on something called a BASIC Stamp which is another microcontroller educational kit from parallax. After doing some research i decided that the lower cost and more hands on approach of nerdkits was the most appealing solution. So i ordered one via amazon.

For more info on nerdkits, visit their website Here

Props to the nerdkit guys for getting it out the door asap. It shipped on a friday (the same day it was ordered) and i got it either monday or tuesday. Unfortunately I didn't have time to work on it so it sat in the box for a few days. I actually took it to work late last week to fiddle with but when I got all the pieces-parts out i realized that i needed to strip all the wires for the breadboard on my own. I had left my wire stripper at home so i was out of gas.

I had a busy weekend so again I didn't get to work on the nerdkit. It was late Sunday night before i had some actual spare time but i was tired and i didn't want to start fiddling with getting it built and installing the software when my brain was not functioning at full capacity. Still, I had ordered a breadboard kit a while back and i had some parts to fiddle with so i decided to give myself a primer lesson and messed around with that for a couple of hours. I was able to put together a simple radio shack suggested project meant to be wired directly in a small project box. I just put it together on a breadboard instead. The circuit was nothing more than a buzzer hooked up to a battery with an interrupt switch and a photocell. The breadboard added very little complexity to it. It was pretty intuitive to work with and I had a functioning product in an hour. This lead me to believe that I would be able to put the nerdkit together without too much difficulty. It also made me want to do a separate project box to make some simple inputs and outputs easily available in a single box prewired for breadboard use. Something for another day i guess.

Ultimately I am enjoying the basic stuff i am learning and look forward to putting the nerdkit together.

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