I have a little cousin, in 7th grade… he has recently been getting more and more interested in hacking and tinkering his toys, taking them apart and playing with the LEDs and motors inside. When I met him last week, he showed me this car that he made, all by himself. he was like kinda over-excited presenting his creation to the only engineer (engineering student) in the family :)
Rear Wheel Drive, single DC Motor, 3 AA cells, barbecue sticks as wheel axles, bottle caps for wheels, plastic beads to hold the axles and a cardboard for the base/body. Push in the 3rd cell and the car starts going, never to stop unless it hits something.
Am going to give him a couple motors, some jumper wires, LEDs and batteries etc to see what he comes up with, for him, these little tiny electronic things literally are a treasure cause he got all these by breaking/opening his toys and he had very limited jumper wire stock treating it as some rare commodity.
Posted this cause the car made me so proud and took me back in time when I used to do stuff like this with my little brother’s toys (never broke any of mine), maybe after some time, I will show him Arduino…
a couple of VIDEOs of the car in action, the car is all prettified for the video-making..!