#“Hexapod Monster great - apart from the soldering”
One of the pressies that Santy gave to our 11 y/o son was a Hexapod Monster robot. It's a self-assembly kit that should result in a robot that can walk around and avoid obstacles. The youngfella has had plenty of experience building ever more complex Lego so this looked like a good next step before perhaps considering Lego Mindstorms.
Once we looked at the kit, we realised he couldn't do it on his own and I'd have to help. Specifically, what sounded like a couple of quick solder joints on the box was actually a full circuit board that had to be put together.
We made a good team with him taking care of the mechanical assembly and me doing the soldering. It took 3-4 hours before we had it in a decent state. We checked the basic mechanics by applying battery power directly to the leg motors and a few tweaks were needed. Then we did the final electrical assembly and IT LIVES. Except it only did so for a few seconds and then stopped.
It has sat there for the past few weeks with me going at it to no avail. Sometimes it moves, sometimes it moves on one side and goes around in circles but most of the time it sits there sullen and immobile like a teenager.
It's obvious that my crappy soldering is to blame and therein lies the problem. I have a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering. My soldering iron is nearly 30 years old because that's when I started soldering for the first time (ZX Spectrum add-ons) but even I struggled to get all of those components on correctly without either shorting connections or melting the components.
Soldering is not a skill anyone really needs or wants unless they are totally hardcore into hardware. The only thing it teaches smaller kids is that it burns when you accidentally touch your finger.
The Hexapod is a cool project that could be interesting to a much wider range of children. My 7 y/o daughter sat and watched us doing the assembly for the entire time. So they just need to junk the soldering and replace it with some sort of component push-in system. A custom breadboard thingy I guess. As it stands I can't recommend it to anyone except those who are very familiar with the inside of Maplin.