These days I do not care a hoot about big / clumsy / expensive development boards that do not even have the circuitry on them that I want.
I do like the trend to small universal breadboard compatible modules such as the Blue & Black pills, Arduino nano, Wemos D1 Mini. Such modules are easy to get started with because the’re small & cheap. The breadboard lets you easily add your custom circuitry, and at the same time provides a good interface to add logic analyzer or scope probes.
And because those boards are so cheap and easy to work with big pitch, they are also Ideal for simple one-off projects on a piece of matrix board.
Education needs are different than development needs. 10+ years ago I was speaking with my friend who is working at technical university. He said that he is using some of our DSM-51’s since 5 years and never had any problem with any one of them. But for other controllers they buy development boards and they have to replace 50% of them each year. They are simply not ‘student-proof’. And it is technical university - what about technical schools. He postulated that we should do something similar with other processors, but we didn’t have time for that.
I think I had the wrong hat (or head?) on when I wrote my previous comments.
Part of education is breaking things, but some students seem to break things just for the fun of it, or because they don’t care.
Such small breadboard friendly modules are also cheap enough to have the students buy the parts, or you give them one at the beginning of the course, and they have to buy another if they break it.
I also do not understand why students are not teased to be a part of the educational system itself. For example, the design of a multiplexed 7-segment module or a button matrix are easy design projects to do as add-on to various development boards, and over time it will build op a library of cheap and easy to replace parts. It also gives the students lots of opportunity to mix and match modules for further projects.
The students have to find a project, design it, make it work, make documentation for the website, and over the years it has become a collection of lots of fun projects.
I also do not know much about the educational market.
I may over estimate what beginning students cando with microcontrollers.
I started myself with programming a microcontroller via a few wires hanging of an LPT port.
Getting the first microcontroller to blink a led was quite an achievement.
There are also limits in amount of hours that students can work on such projects, and such complete PCB’s as you have may be a necessity to get students going in the limited available time.
Nice collection of projects. I wonder what the licensing of those projects is. On the couple that I looked at I didn’t see any copyright (or copyleft) notices in case someone else wanted to use their work as a jumping off point for their own project/product.
I just use a standard heatgun. Place the PCB in a panavise (the kind with the long metal board-holders) and heat the underside until you see the solder turn shinny and the components shifting around a little as the solder pulls them into their pads, remove the heat and you’re done. Works like a charm and miraculously does not damage the PCB, as long as you’re using quality boards from Osh Park, etc.
Those time (1994) teachers even in electronic school knew very little about microcontrollers (at least here in Poland). They asked us to allow for HEX edition a program (without PC). We said: Yes, but not HEX editor but assembler editor and we did it just for schools having no computers.
Teachers asked for help how they should teach about microcontrollers so we have written a book which then in 1996 got the title “book of the year” from the best electronic magazine those time here.
We also didn’t had a big experience. I had got first microcontroller in my hands in 1987 I think.