This may sound familiar for some and for others maybe a stupid question, but how do you guys find the time to practice your hobby.
I'm a father of 3 kids, always loved programming and been very interested in making my own robot. I even started making one a few years ago. But then I met my wife who already had 2 kids, before I knew it a third kid was on its way and now it seems like my life is passing by very quickly. Each time I want to restart my hobby I end up reading alot online, going through forums, etc... But never do I start a real project again. Sometimes I say to myself I'll start a new project and I want my robot to do this and that, but it always ends up just in my head. I also thought of going into a robotics club, but the only club here in Belgium is to far for me.
More than time, motivation is more important. If i’m too tired and i have 4 hours, i’ll sure spend them to sleep. Also i make better progress by giving myself a day like saturday to robots. A 3d printer helps a lot, it may be a good investment as it can make toys pretty well:-)
An easy way would be to show even your littlest progresses to your kids as “little invention of the day”. Depending on their age your children can help you to design the robot, 3d modeling, simple electronics, testing extreme conditions, programming with scratch…
When they go to school give them a small robot to play with friends and tell them also to show it to the teacher. The teacher may talk others to make a robotics club, and class mates may stress their parents to partecipate to this club.
One of the things I wish I had done was to buy robot kits for my kids as gifts and then help them put it together. If you have girls or a boy not interested in robots, make it a simple kit with no soldering, and something that you do together to build a toy to give rides to toy animals or dolls maybe. It might ignite a passion for engineering in any or all of your children.
My kids are 16 so decide when they want to go to bed, but I used to do a lot after my kids went to bed as a way to unwind. I might do a half hour to an hour each day on whatever hobby I am into at the moment (woodworking, robotics, etc.). My wife yelled at me many times I was making too much noise and would wake them up. The idea is to relax and enjoy what you are doing. I find that when I am driving to work (I spend a couple of hours a day in the car), sometimes thinking about some problem, imagining how to solve xyz problem is a way for me to unwind from my day. Then when I do have time to sit down, I already have a solution on how to attach that gripper or wheel to the robot and can’t wait to try out what I came up with!
It sounds like your kids are young, and it doesn’t seem it right now, but they will eventually need you less and less so you will have time to do more on your own as they scamper off to explore the world beyond just you. Then when they are older and building bots on their own (like my son), you will have something to talk about.
