OK, I know it’s not the best possible photo of a circuit, but it’s my photo of my board, alright!!

You may just be able to make out the components - the 16F627 itslef, a miniature jack socket, 6 LEDs, eight resistors, 4 AA batteries, that’s all (except the serial PC lead not shown). You can probably also make out some pairs of drilled holes with nothing connected. Each pair of these would have a 2 pin header sockets to be used as inputs.

You get two of these from the small size photo boards. The total cost of components, including the battery holder and batteries, and a download cable, is about Ł6.50 each.

My more able year 10 students have these up and running in a double lesson. Some need the single lesson as well. I had some year 8 students that attended our summer school make these, and they didn’t take much longer than the year 10 did.

Most of the students comment that it was ‘wicked’ or similar to make something like this from scratch.