XK42 - Physical Computing Student's Kit

The XinaBox Student's Kit (XK42) gives you everything you need to deliver the innovative Introduction to Physical Computing course (which you can find here). This series of lessons, experiments and extension activities, aimed at middle and high school students, uses a variety of different digital instruments built from the kit.

The course is tried and tested in classrooms and is perfect for parents to work through with children: a great way to learn together during the long hours of quarantine.  Parents should not be concerned about having specific pre-knowledge: our training materials and the lessons themselves contain all the information you need.

The course includes:

• 10 lessons over 2 modules.
• Each lesson includes up to 10 extension activities for advanced students and home study.
• 5 cross-curriculum experiments that can be conducted using the hardware.
• First learn how to build then use digital instruments then later how to code them.
• Learn the basics of data science and how to undertake environmental monitoring.
• Basics of coding are covered from the perspective of software development and the course is designed to ensure students with little interest or aptitude for coding are not alienated.

In educational settings the cost of ownership is exceptionally low, when a number of factors are taken into account:

• One kit can be shared by up to 5 learners at once. Collaborative exercises and projects run throughout the course so sharing does not dilute the experience.
• The ease with which kit can be assembled / disassembled means that kit can be shared between classes.
• Our hardware is robust: XinaBox kit is resident on the ISS and in Antarctica (when this was written, March 2020). You can expect it to last for years.
• Several of the xChips in the kit, including sensors, are the same ones that are on the ISS and in Antarctica.
• The kit has value beyond the course: it is flexible and extensible.
• There are no consumables or hidden / additional costs.
• You can easily extend your kit: there are over 80 components ('xChips') in our range and more are being released all the time.
• By sharing the enabling hardware kits amongst students within a lesson and between classrooms the cost of ownership in year 1 can be around 10USD per student, and the kit will last for many years.

In the box you will find five xChips and some connectors. The xChips include a 64x128 OLED display and two environmental sensors. With the sensors you can measure temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, lux, colour and proximity. And gesture sensing too, for user input.

The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor has an onboard microSD card slot for gathering big data and is programmed and powered via the USB interface.

Kit contents
1 x CS11 - Core with SD Card Interface (ATSAMD21G18)
1 x IP03 - SWD/JTAG/SPI/USB Interface (AP2114)
1 x OD01 - OLED Display 128x64 (SSD1306)
1 x SL06 - Light, Colour, Proximity and Gesture Sensor (APDS-9960)
1 x SW01 - Advanced Weather Sensor (BME280)
1 x XC05 - a pack of 5 xBUS XinaBox Connectors
1 x XS02 - 2 pack of xPDI XinaBox Connectors

Note: microSD card and USB cable not included