So it's been a while since I wrote anything.  I guess work and life have been keeping me too distracted for any fun stuff like blogging.  Anyhow, there are a few new items of hobby interest from the past few weeks.

Jake has gotten interested in building robots.  We can't really afford Mindstorms, but some years ago I had started to get into BEAM robotics.  Essentially, that's building simple "biological" robots out of salvaged electronics.  The 'bots are all pretty insect-like, and generally aren't programmable (you build them to seek/avoid light, etc.) and often run off of solar power, but they make cool toys.

So I dug out my Weller soldering iron and an old "Cybug" kit I had never finished.  I also got my Solarbotics "Photopopper" out to repair him.  (Since he's solar powered, he had a tendency to jump off of shelves and stuff, and had broken his leg, so to speak.)

I managed to score some electric motors for free from the local Walgreens (they had some broken battery powered fans) and an old tape cassette deck, and it turns out I still had a number of transisters and other components from back in my analog synth building days.

I'm afraid that I'm going to enjoy this more than Jake is, but hey, it's got to be more fun for him than my miniatures, which he doesn't care about at all.  He's still way too young to work the soldering iron safely, but he's helping me find "junk" and I'm going to have him help make some robot "skins" to put over the raw electronics.