The best Christmas gifts for children and adults techies

Gifts for the New Year baby to exactly like it was a real benefit? And what about the fellow pros? These comrades seem to live in their world. Understand their tastes impossible. We killed two birds with one stone. There is such an original category of gifts that will make happy geeks of all ages, as the very young and bearded geek.

The best Christmas gifts for present and future technicians - are small computers available constructors, which are often referred to as one word Arduino.

What is Arduino? This is a small board with a processor, memory and a plurality of contacts, which allow you to program itself as anywhere and connect to his dozens of different components, each of which adds a new computer capabilities.

For the little ones

Whether a child can master circuitry, and at what age? Could, with anyone. The fact that variations in computers, designers are very, very much. Especially interesting in this regard presets, targeting a certain age group. The kit contains instructions, such children's books as well as the details by which the child himself will collect his first computer and program it yourself.

Here is a good example of a simple and extremely affordable designer "Micronika"Which nevertheless introduces fine with the basics of electronics and will help to identify the talent and passion for technology.

for schoolchildren

If the kids are just going or have gone to school, you should look away Tetra set. This is a real digital laboratory for students. It is produced in Russia, which is good in terms of quality materials and is fully compatible with the components of the Arduino.

It should be no more expensive than any other good toy, but this thing is not just to entertain the child and teach him the basics of circuitry and programming. For greater clarity, we offer you to watch a short video overview of Tetra.

For newbies

If there is a reason to be jealous of the younger generation, then this is it. In our childhood toys such widely available it was not, and I want to play now, right? In acute wish to indulge themselves or bestow familiar, indifferent to the glands, it makes sense to look aside sets type "Matryoshka".

«Matryoshka Z"- this is more serious, but equally easy to use kit that focuses on adolescents and adults without any special knowledge and training.

Included several tens of components and training brochure, which sets out basic language understandable concepts and principles of circuit design, and provides instructions for building and programming their first devices.

To test pilots

If you've always dreamed to master Linux, but are afraid to put it as the main system and experiment with it on your computer because of the risk that a screw up, here's a solution - a set of "raspberry Z"Based on the Raspberry Pi.

Highly available computer-ground, ready to use the operating system is already installed on the bundled SD-card. You can experiment at will. Everything finally podvisli? Overwrite the image on the map and have fun on.

Here is a list of devices that can be assembled and programmed to "Raspberry":

• The central brain for smart home.
• The multimedia console to the TV with support for torrents.
• Gateway for anonymous access to the Internet through Tor, and I2P-network.
• Processor computer vision to your robot.
• Media Server to manage videos and music in a shop or café.
• Game console for classic video games Dendy, Sega and others close to the heart consoles.
• Hub for POS-point commercial equipment.

Universe designers computers actually infinite. Plunged into this world, you will discover the most interesting and rewarding hobby. Try to think of a more versatile and budget gift for indifferent to human engineering. We bet you will not have other options.

Show the Arduino to your children. Circuit design and programming develop many aspects of thinking, and several orders of magnitude more useful than mobile games. Who knows, maybe you will grow a good programmer? But this is, for a moment, promising career of the near future.

Purchase components and complete sets of computers, designers can be Internet-shop "Amperka".