It's official: Jeff Highsmith is the coolest geeky dad on the internet.
Make's Highsmith just posted a video making an insanely elaborate and brilliant 'mission control' center for his son, in order to teach him about science.
"My older son recently started school and needed his own desk for doing homework. I wanted to make something nicer than a simple tabletop with legs," Highsmith said.
Well quite, The mission control is far, far more complex than that.
Hidden inside a regular flip-up homework table, it includes dozens of switches and dials connected to Raspberry Pi and Arduino computers, so that rather than just dumb buttons they really affect the lights and read-outs on the console.
It's based on real Nasa equipment at the Kennedy Space Center, and even has a magnetic map to track the "current position" of the craft.
It's an incredible project. Check out the full, complex details at Make.