Arduino Camp 2026

This week was all about learning how to build and program circuits. We started off the week by working through the starter projects from the Arduino Starter Kit. The first project was to make a circuit that turned on an LED light and to make the lights on the Arduino UNO brain flash. After getting comfortable with the UNO brain and how bread boards work, campers started to work on projects like "Space Ship Interface" which used buttons and LEDs to mimic jumping into hyperdrive and "LOVE-O-METER" which used a thermometer to see how warm you were.

As the week went on, campers started on more complex projects like "Light Theremin" and "Keyboard Instrument". Both of these projects used a piezo capsule to produce a noise but in very different ways. The "Light Theremin" project controlled the pitch of the piezo capsule by how much light a diode received. The more light, the higher pitched the noise would be. In the "Keyboard Instrument" project, the pitch of the piezo was controlled by different buttons. The campers really enjoyed these two projects because of the creative freedom to make their own music and adjust the tone and pitch to suit their musical tastes.

At the end of the week, campers took projects like "Motorized Pinwheel", "Zoetrope", "Crystal Ball", and "Knock Lock" to build their own projects. The "Motorized Pinwheel" and "Zoetrope" both used a motor to spin a CD to either see a pinwheel spin or a cartoon move. Campers took this and made their own cartoons for the zoetrope or created a launching mechanism for wheels to see how far they could roll a CD. The CD was launched so far, that we ran out of room to try to make it go further! Another camper used the "Crystal Ball" and "Knock Lock" to create a locked snack box. To open the snack box, you would have to ask the box, and depending on the answer the snack box would open or remained shut. Sometimes the snack box would only let you in for a short amount of time!