500-in-1 Electronics Kits?

Oneamp asks: "I'm interested in a '500-in-one' type electronics kit. Amazon lists a few, but I've seen some user reviews that maybe they are not all they're cracked up to be. Most of the complaints seem to be of the 'Manual sucks' variety. Nevertheless, I'm sold on the idea. Can any of you, who have had actual experience with any of these kits, recommend a good one?"

Comments

Most of their manuals do suck.

[Kadin2048]

To be honest, I think your best bet is to get the kit and the "manual" separately.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to tutor an absolutely prodigal young kid, who happened to be 'into' electricity that season. I couldn't find any electricial kits that seemed up to snuff in both the hardware and manuals departments, so instead I ended up taking one of the bigger Radioshack kits, and then using some of the Forrest M. Mims III books as project guides. Why they don't have that guy do the manuals for the kits I have no idea, because he's really quite good.

For the few projects we wanted to do where the board didn't have the right parts, I just hacked them on, either in place of parts that I thought were trivial (resistors, etc.), or just by drilling a new hole in the board surface and adding it in.

Re:give it a try

[neonleonb]

I had one as a kid, and I was wildly disappointed. I followed the directions in the manual, and made circuits that did things, but I had no idea how anything worked. All the circuits used op-amps and similar crap; even after taking a college electronics class for physics students, I still don't understand how an op-amp works. I know more or less what it's supposed to do, but its guts are a mystery to me.

Re:give it a try

[Mikkeles]

'... but I had no idea how anything worked....'

That's sort of like complaining that Tinker Toys or Lego don't come with detailed descriptions of strength of material and molecular dynamics.