Programming & Fun Projects
Video games we made
Making video games is great way to learn programming and build up the problems solving skills. And it is tremendously fun. We learned simple programs like Scratch on very early age. Later on, using the more complex programs like Construct 2 and then Unity, we made some fun games. Here are couple of examples.
Super BenJo
Baby Lala’s Dream Adventure
Augmented Reality (AR)
Unity is a powerful engine. Not only we use it to make fun video games, we also made an interesting AR animation. See the astronaut jump out of the paper and come alive.
Arduino
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform. Arduino boards are able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message - and turn it into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. One can program the board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board through coding.
Creative fun projects from the past
3D Printing
It is fascinating to see our designs come to life in 3D. We got our own 3D printer in 2020. In a few months, not only we designed and printed many interesting engineering project parts and fun objects, we also learned to clean up the machine, clear the blocked extruders, and even changing the broken SD card reader.
LEGO Creations
LEGO really offers endless combinations and possibilities. Adding on EV3 or a power function and motor, there can be quite some amusing creations.
Stop Motion Movies
We made quite a few LEGO stop motion movies. As an example, this is a light-hearted one we made at the beginning of Coronavirus to cheer people up.
Tour at Canadian Space Agency
As part of our preparation for First LEGO League 2018-2019 Into the Orbit competition, we had a tour at Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert, Quebec. It was a captivating afternoon listening through the exciting presentations of several space experts on challenges and new advancement in Mars exploration, and to try our hands on the famous Canadarm simulator that trains real astronauts.
Transparent Fish Specimens
We contacted a professor of Ichthyology at University of Washington from an interesting article we read online. From the protocol he kindly provided, we embarked on a scientific experiment to turn fish specimens transparent. There were lots of calculations of the right quantity and concentration of various chemicals. No creatures were harmed here. All fish specimens were fish died of natural cause in our own aquarium.
Igloo
Science is all around us. How can a house made of snow could possibly shield human from frigid temperature? Why the dome shape structure is the most resilient? How to build a dome top? We constructed a huge igloo.