Internet down... 'Say What?, Say my teenage daughters"

Ella working on a LED Flower with cotton balls

Recently I changed my modem as Comcast changed their support for certain generation devices.  Ever since the changeover, my internet has been pretty slow.  Turns out, Comcast has been having trouble in my area since around the time I activated my new modem.  However, today - no internet.  My teenage daughters were in rare form.  All of a sudden, they had homework that required the internet.

So, to make the time pass with my younger one, I broke out the Arduino.  She was reluctant at first, but then jumped right in.  We made multiple lights blink in different patterns, added alligator clips and more lights to the circuit to make lights on a stick (with glowing cotton balls) and we hooked up a TMP 36 temp sensor and measured who's breath was hotter.  We also rigged up a photoresistor and and made an attempt at a battery operated night light.  It was pretty fun and finally my daughter got a better idea what was in the piles of Arduino gear on the family dining room table.

Arduino Gear on dining room table

Maybe I didn't create too many complicated sensors, but I did enjoy the break and a chance to talk about the code with my daughter.  She got a kick out of changing the code and adding new code for new lights.  Sometimes there is good reinforcement in the basics.

Now back to my failing Xbee project....