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Guidance For Schools

The #Shrimp provides an incredibly cheap substitute for the Arduino microcontroller board, giving teachers and their classes access to a world of experimentation already documented within the Maker community.

We hope the ShrimpingIt resources will enable students to build and take home their own Arduino-compatible microcontroller, transforming their relationship to electronics, programming, interaction design and STEM subjects in general.

Below we record some extra considerations from working with the #Shrimp instead of a stock Arduino board.

For Teachers

The design of the #Shrimp Arduino-compatible circuit was undertaken specifically with classrooms in mind, following experiences at Hackademy. In particular, the design…

  • Can be constructed from raw components on solderless breadboard within a few minutes, introducing the fundamentals of circuit layout and wiring
  • Permits direct transfer to (cheap) copper stripboard without any change in layout (also allowing the use of small and cheap mini breadboards instead of larger more expensive models)
  • Is incredibly cheap, so that each student can take an Arduino-compatible home. Currently we estimate costs for each pupil to keep a soldered #Shrimp (without USB or breadboard) at £2.43 each, incl VAT.
  • Is flexible for different approaches and budget limitations. The £0.60 breadboards and £1.65 USB adapters which can be used to prototype and program a #Shrimp are reusable when a project circuit is finally soldered on stripboard and running on battery. You can choose to give these supporting components to students or keep them as class resources.

The prices shown are assuming you’re sourcing your own wholesale components at volumes of 100-plus, but for smaller volumes and to get kits bagged and prepared, you can buy from us at retail.

We aim to curate this resource as a repository of knowledge for educators, detailing how to build #Shrimps, do experiments and make projects using them as a foundation. We have specific documentation to support your adoption of the #Shrimp in the classroom. We’re actively engaged with collaborators within the UK education system. If you’d like to be involved, then get in touch.
In the meantime, depending on the experiments you’d like to run, it’s worth looking at Oomlout’s ARDX guide for inspiration. The material in the Experimenter’s Guide is permitted to be printed out and reused by anyone. To find out more, visit their Instructable which talks through a series of workshop experiments. Using a #Shrimp with the ARDX guide means you can save the cost of buying a full-fledged Arduino. However, the remaining parts you will need to purchase yourself. We will be recording the cheapest known suppliers as we go along. Share your knowledge with us if you find cheap, reliable suppliers.

For Technicians

School network administrators should note, the #Shrimp uses a CP2102 which may need one of the drivers available here . On Linux, no installation is required. On Mac, Windows XP, Windows 7, a driver needs to be installed. We recommend the Silabs driver for Windows. It should be a point and click install, and after completing the install replugging the device should make the device appear. It may be worth looking at this discussion on Polulu if you have trouble.

The Arduino IDE software should be installed to permit programming the boards. You don’t need a #Shrimp constructed or attached to test the driver installation. If the installation of CP2102 drivers is successful, the Arduino software should reveal a plugged-in CP2102 device under Tools>Serial Ports. Please verify driver recognition is possible for students by plugging in a previously unused CP2102 module to one of your terminals when logged in without privileges.

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