Creation Crate April 2016 Subscription Box Review + Coupon

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Creation Crate May 2016 box

Creation Crate is a monthly subscription box to help you learn about electronics. Surprisingly, this box isn’t just for kids – it’s suitable for anyone age 12+ who wants to learn or enhance their electronics and coding skills! The subscription costs $29.99 per month, and you’ll get to learn how to build simple electronics project without any experience required. It’s fun and definitely educational!

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Creation Crate is helping to build the makers of tomorrow, as what their box says. This subscription is ideal for those who love puzzles, building things, and of course, if you want to know more about building electronics!

Creation Crate May 2016 review

The project this month is a Mood Lamp.

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The information booklet contains all the details about the project of the month. It includes a list of all the materials needed to make the Mood Lamp.

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Everything you’ll need to make a Mood Lamp!

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There are two parts in creating the project. First is building the hardware. The instructions are shown on the pages of the booklet above.

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If you needed a clearer view of the diagram, you can just visit the Creation Crate website. Indeed, I found the instructions to be much more clear – and this is the place that I find room for improvement in this subscription (the clarity of the printing).  It’s worth noting that once you sign up on Cratejoy for this subscription you’ll get access via the booklet to the monthly instructions, and everything is slick and well-done. Even the driver for the UNO board for my mac was in there!

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Don’t mock my resistor. I had a little trouble orienting the wire in the board, but got it in there. Make sure your child has the motor skills necessary to complete the assembly.

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Thank you for properly using the GNU GPL Creation Crate! The code and extension questions for the box followed – the instructions detail exactly what you have to do to get your Mood Lamp running. I downloaded Arduino and the driver for my mac, typed in the code, and uploaded it to the board.

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Nailed it, first try!  There was lots of advice in the booklet about properly lining up your rows and columns, but I found the assembly easy and fun – and my middle child was crazy interested and even figured out that the power from the computer was running the lights. I foresee lots of electronics projects in our future! Although my kids are too young for the coding activity, We discussed how the colors changed (my daughter got that one!) and I altered the code to make the LEDs brighter and the colors rotate more quickly. I thought the extension questions were challenging for anyone without coding experience but easy enough to figure out.

Amusingly, I thought I was going to have to re-code where I stuck my pins so the lamp would work properly, because I just followed the pattern and not where they matched in the code, but I randomly inserted them into the right holes. This would be a good troubleshooting tip for the box to include.

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We took this short video so you can see how the mood lamp changes color! This was a fantastic box and perfect for anyone who wants to tinker with Arduino builds but isn’t sure where to start. I do wish the instructions had been a bit clearer (and larger – I really did have a hard time seeing them) but I think they’ll probably update their directions soon based on feedback. This subscription does have room to grow, but it’s mostly in the instructions and extras – the most important thing about this box is that it works and having a successful project is the most important part!

A few additional things I want to point out – the price goes down by a good chunk each month with a longer term subscription, and shipping is free worldwide! Also EVERY BOX comes with an Uno R3, which is a $25 board. EVERY BOX. Obviously they’re able to obtain them at a magical discount, which is really awesome for subscribers! This also means that you don’t have to disassemble your project. We could build this puppy into a box and hook it into the computer for rad mood lighting all the time (or USB charger cable).

Our family had fun with this project and it was really fun to tinker with the kids watching but not necessarily involved, just absorbing parental interest in electronics!

What did you think of Creation Crate? Save 10% on your first box with coupon code  HELLO10.

Visit Creation Crate to subscribe or find out more!

The Subscription: Creation Crate
The Description: Creation Crate is tech education-in-a-box delivered to you monthly! Learn how to build electronics with no experience required. Free shipping worldwide!
The Price: $29.99 per month

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