Maker UNO: Simplifying Arduino for {Education}

Maker UNO was 1825% funded on Kickstarter on Apr 17, 2018.  

Maker UNO is an Arduino Compatible board specially designed to simplify building your projects:

• Coding & Electronics made easy with built-in:{ 12x LEDs; 1x buzzer; 1x button; }
• Troubleshooting made easy with LED indicators.

Students/Makers can skip the hassle of constructing the basic electronic circuit which is boring and time-consuming. Although it is equally important to learn about basic electronics, it can always come later after they have experienced how easy it is to create an awesome project. Start with fun and excitement. Start coding right away and see your board lights up and plays the melody with the press of a button.

For experienced makers, this is also useful to quickly test your code without having to connect any other devices.

With the conventional Arduino boards, makers also face another common problem - difficulty in troubleshooting their circuit. This is because when it doesn't work, we do not know whether the problem is due to wire connection or coding.

With Maker UNO, the problem is solved! Not only do the onboard LEDs work as outputs, they can also act as indicators, clearly showing what's happening on that pin. When the pin is used as input, you can clearly see whether the signal is received by just looking at changes on the LEDs. 

Additional Features

One of the brilliant features of the official Arduino Uno is the label printed on its pin headers. It saves us a lot of time when we want to connect the I/O pins to the external circuit. So, we include a set of these label stickers for pin headers in each of the Maker UNO! (Please note that you need to peel off the stickers and stick them on your Maker UNO by yourself)

Students always get their boards mixed up. With Maker UNO, you can write your name on the board. Problem solved!

Maker UNO uses the common Micro USB cable which is basically everywhere.

Don't throw your box away! There is a small opening on the box for you to plug the USB cable so that you can keep your Maker UNO safely in the original box, no additional casing required.

Specification

Maker UNO is fully compatible with Arduino. You can share the same library and code. We put in 12x LEDs, 1x piezo buzzer and 1x programmable button on the Maker UNO. We have removed the DC jack power input socket as most of the boards used in classes are powered using USB. We have also replaced the ATmega16u2 with CH340 to bring down the cost.

Every piece of Maker UNO is fully tested with this test jig before it is being packed and ship to user:)

Feature Projects

Here we introduce some simple but fun projects that can be easily built using only Maker UNO. We share the source codes so that you can try them at home.

For educators, you can consider purchasing the Maker UNO Edu Kit which comes with most of the basic components and accessories to make projects such as light-controlled DC fan and speed controlled running lights.

Documents:

• Maker UNO User's Manual
• Maker UNO Edu Kit Getting Started Module
• Maker-UNO Schematic
• Maker-UNO Fritzing File
• Maker-UNO 3D file(IGS and STEP files)
• CH34X driver (Please ensure the Maker UNO is plug into computer USB port during driver installation)
  • Windows (V3.5 Mar2019)
  • Mac OS (V1.5 Mar2019)
  • Linux (V1.5 Mar2019) (Normally is readily installed)
  • CH34X Driver - Get the latest driver from the factory

Tutorials:

• Getting Started with Maker UNO (video)
• Maker UNO Projects

Resources for Teachers in Reka Bentuk Teknologi (RBT):

• DKSP KSSM REKA BENTUK DAN TEKNOLOGI TINGKATAN 2
• Teacher's Guide (credits to Arus & all the educators involved in making this 3 modules a success)
• Student's Class Module
• Answer Sheet for Class Module
• Modul Arduino(Arduino Module in Bahasa Malaysia) by Arus (credits to Arus for the awesome module)
• Panduan Guru (Teacher's Guide in Bahasa Malaysia) (credits to Arus & all the educators involved in making this 3 modules a success)
• Modul Murid (Student's Class Module in Bahasa Malaysia)
• Skema Jawapan untuk Modul Murid (Answer Sheet for Class Module in Bahasa Malaysia)

Related links:

• Maker UNO's Default Program
• Arduino IDE Download
• How To Program Arduino (Maker UNO) Using Atmel Studio
  • Introduction Atmel Studio 7 is the integrated development platform (IDP) for developing and debugging all AVR® and SAM microcontroller applications. The Atmel Studio 7 IDP gives you a seamless and easy-to-use environment to write, build and debug your applications written in C/C++ or assembly code.
• Program Maker UNO using Chromebook