A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a fun project to do with my 8 year old son. By chance, I saw a recent issue of Make Magazine which had a feature about an electronics prototyping platform called Arduino. I thought it sounded pretty cool, and could be a good introduction for my son to some basic electronics as well as some simple programming. The Arduino is designed to be very easy to use. It comes with a set of tools based on the Wiring programming environment and…