I’m speed-running a bunch of new hobbies to teach myself how to make a physical game (basically its a ping pong paddle that tracks how often you hit a ball — like a “keepy uppy” game with scorekeeping):
- Arduino dev and circuitry
- 3D printing
- PCB design
- Woodworking
Its all a lot of fun and IMO a lot more approachable than it has been thanks to the assist from LLMs.
Same, I recently got into Arduino so i could build a toy idea I had for my kid (a sort of "keepy-uppy" paddle game). I've always avoided Arduino projects because I don't like to code in my spare time (its my day job) and also learning how to wire things seemed daunting -- LLMs solved both of those problems for me (Claude's wiring tutorials are awesome and the code is simple enough that it can one-shot it).
I also bought a Bambu A1 3D Printer and it is unexpectedly way more fun and useful than I thought it would be. I designed the toy in TinkerCAD and it printed out beautifully (I also have been printing out lots of other toys and yes, useful things for around the house and for other projects).
Next steps are learning Fusion 360 and figuring out PCBs -- That also seemed daunting to me but its nice to see other amateur hobbyists are seemingly picking it up with not much difficulty.
There’s a good recent book series about this by Daniel Suarez called Delta V (in the first book they process regolith from an asteroid; in the second book its on the moon; presumably the unreleased third book is on Mars).
- Arduino dev and circuitry
- 3D printing
- PCB design
- Woodworking
Its all a lot of fun and IMO a lot more approachable than it has been thanks to the assist from LLMs.