Best Electronics Kits For Adults?

An anonymous reader writes "I'm an adult looking to learn how electronics work and have some fun building projects. But all the kits I've found online are for kids 8-10 years old, and they don't really explain the principles — they just color-code where to place components on boards. Are there any kits aimed at adults? I know if anyone has got the answer, it's this community."

Comments

You're an adult now, you don't need a kit.

[serviscope_minor]

Seriously. The kits have nice big, brightly coloured bits which are physically large and easy to handle. They are also relatively hard to break. You don't really need those featues. Instead, get a good beginners book, for instance by Forest M. Mimms III, a solderless breadbroad, and then buy the components mentioned in the book. You can then start assembling them on the breadboard.

For what it's worth, I'd duggest the following:

Several reels of 100 metal film resistors, 100OHm, 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M.

A bag of brestripped, tinned and finished wires of various lengths for breadboard prototyping.

A reel of single core wire (for when the premade ones won't quite stretch).

Several bags of capacitors (100p 1n 10n 100n ceramic, polyester, mica or mylar and 1u 100u and 1000u in electrolytic). You want maybe 20 of the smaller ones and 10 of the larger ones.

A nice big bag of cheap transistors. These are a little trickier, but all of the low priced ones will be similar. You probably want something like 20 small ones like BC108 (NPN, low power) a corresponding PNP one and 5 medium power ones like BFY51.

10 cheap LEDs

1 Buzzer

1 loudspeaker

A good powersupply. You won't need more than 1Amp, but you probably want 0--15V variable, and 2 outputs if you can manage it. This is the mist expensive part, but you could just get a 9V wall wart if this is a problem. Batteries get annoying quite fast.

This will set you up way better than a kit.

You can also add to it later. You can buy a rail of 741 op amps (indestructible, and still popular even though they're 20 years obsoloete) and 555 oscillator chips. Later still you can get some logic ICs.

Plase, slashdotters weigh in, because I've missed something here.