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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."
http://www.heathkit.com/ i remember my father made a bunch of things many years ago, like an oscilliscope and such.
mod me funny
It's been a long time since I built a Heathkit, do they still make them? My two favorites were my sixty watt guitar amplifier and my ham radio reciever; this was in the last '60s when I was a teenager.
But you're not really going to learn about electronics by building stuff from kits. Read books; when you have the theory then you can get the kits and will understand what's going on with them.
The library is your friend. It's often better than Google and Wikipedia combined.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you want to know about digital electronics and microprogramming, try a Nerdkit.
Wow, in one.... Guessing is your friend.
http://www.electronickits.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/explorer/0521370957/2/ref=pd_lpo_ase/104-7876853-6599140? buy generic components
wha'? where am i?
http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKSL1
pretty basic kit, but for the price you get alot of stuff that will help you on your way to doing better stuff. Decent documentation too.
Electronics Learning Lab Designed by Forrest Mims and sold by radio shack.
You could also do with picking up his Getting Started in Electronics book. It is like a field journal for electrical theory, very fun read.
Hope that points you in the right direction.
-Scott
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
I've been having fun buying and building the various kits available from http://www.adafruit.com/ . You need to solder to do them, but that's really really easy.
The Arduino projects are particularly cool (the ethernet and the WAV shields are cheap and fun) so you can do electronics as well as program microprocessors.
Velleman has a bunch of kits too; many are for little kids, but I built an interesting USB breakout kit (USB control of a bunch of output and input lines).
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
If you're looking at electronic kits for "adults", then why not consider building your own amplifier ?
A quick search for DIY audio will reveal a magnitude of kits and projects, many of which are definitely NOT for novices. :)
What you'll get in the end would most likely be an awesome sounding amp, that would possibly be better than something costing 10x that in retail
Oh, and if your hardcore, why not build a tube amp ? Working with over 300V ... definitely not for kiddies !
The old HeathKits, like oscilliscopes and ham radios, were of value as exercises in assembly and part identification. Beyond getting a general sense of what the circuitry was about, I never learned anything about electronics from building such stuff.
Decades ago when I was a kid I subscribed to a "science kit of the month" advertised on the back of comic books. They kind of built on top each other - one month an amplifier, then a telegraph, then a radio, etc. The subscription was like an outrageous $5 a month - about a third of my paper-route profits. My parents then used to complain about me stinking up the basement with the soldering gun. My guess is that someone declared this dangerous and it went off the market pretty much like chemistry kits have also been emasculated. Then I suppose if it was these days I'd be hacking computers then.
Great projects that encompass all types of electronics. My favorite place to find kits! http://www.makershed.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=20 Enjoy! Slewfoot
Most book stores I've been in have a poor selection of such material. Look for Getting Started in Electronics by Forest Mims and then look for Practical Electronics for Inventors. For components, just kit yourself out as needed from online supplies (Mouser, Digikey, Jameco, Newark, etc).
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Here you go, not a kit but plenty to read and learn. This is where I would start and once you understand it, pick a project and build it from scratch.
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/
Once you have the understanding, you can create printed circuit boards with Eagle (free for non-commercial use)
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/
and have Sparkfun order your PCBs via BatchPCB
http://www.batchpcb.com/
This is how I got into building my own robots, not the ones from kits but scratch build by ordering the parts and doing my own designs.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Whew!
Glad I'm not the only one who looked at the title and thougt "W00T! FEMBOTS!"
Of course, the rest of it was kind of a letdown. Ah well. I guess learning electronics and circuit soldering is it's own reward.
Even if there is no sweet sweet robot girl loving involved.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Just an FYI, Radioshack Stores are moving away from being the parts store we all loved. They are now trying to be more competitive in Cell Phones and Satellite dishes. You can thank their CEO for this. It's not very easy to find a Radioshack that still has a lot of parts in stock, let alone kits.
It's best to order it online as most stores won't have what you're looking for. Also another idea is to call up your local colleges who offer courses. They often sell kits or can tell you where their students buy kits. Those places ALWAYS have additional info.
The project lists can range from simple circuits to digital electronics. Learning how to build your own Amplifier for your stereo you quickly realize what massive profit margins these companies have, and you start to wonder why medical equipment that performs simple functions costs tens of thousands of dollars.
In the Good Old Days, we had Heathkit, Eico Kits, and Knight Kits (Allied Radio). The last kit that I built was a Heath AR1500 AM/FM Stereo receiver that I purchased in 1972. It's still running today.
Today, there's not much out there. The local hobby store sells simple kits from Velleman http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/list/?id=523008 but these don't compare to the kits of the 60s & 70s.
I guess that's it's a lot cheaper to buy the product assembled and tested from China than it is to build your own.
The ARRL handbook is a good source of do it yourself electronic projects geared toward Amateur Radio.
Learning electronics is easier with a project that means something to you. I'm into photography, so I learned by building a sound trigger for my camera for high speed photography.
You can get kits containing the components you need here: http://www.hiviz.com/
And use them to make pictures like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernieandjude/2578082432/
The kit comes with instructions and a circuit diagram. All else you need is a book like Starting Electronics by Keith Brindley to help you interpret the diagram.
foo mane padme hum
You are an adult, and can buy your own parts, so have no need for kits.
All you need to get started is this book - it is basically the de-facto standard for learning electronics.
"Getting Started in Electronics" - Forest M Mims III
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-Mims/dp/0945053282/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213973092&sr=8-1
This book is basically the bible for newcomers to electronics. Buy it, you will not be disappointed. He starts off with the simple, progresses to the relatively complex, and explains all the principles along the way. Every project comes with a complete parts listing, and lots of diagrams and illistrations to help along the way. Also there is some great reference pages included that I STILL refer to occasionally.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you are into (or want to be) audio
http://tangentsoft.net/audio/
Else
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
I totally sympathize with you. I'm always looking for stuff to build but there really isn't much complex out there. I would love a little 16 bit computer or something. Something like the replica 1 only more complicated.
Of what I've built, there is one and only one answer. The ultimate kit, the best out there, the Elecraft K2. I've built that, the KPA100 power amplifier, the KAT100 tuner, and a few little modules for it. It took me weeks to build it all. It was amazing.
Kit building is why I got into Ham Radio. The only problem is... I don't seem to care about the rest of ham radio. I haven't operated much. I keep meaning to do more to see if I like it better, but I don't seem to care enough to get around to it. I'm thinking of selling my K2 since it's just sitting around.
Other than that there are a few kits out there. A Nixie tube clock, while not too complicated, looks interesting. I ran across an all transistor clock kit the other day. It looks quite neat.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The entire US Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series (NEETS) is online in PDF book format here:
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm
This explains virtually every part of electronics you could possibly want.
(Bonus: as it was produced by the US government, there is no copyright; download, read, print, copy, etc. as much as you'd like.)
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Going back 40 years, HeathKit and to a lesser degree Radio Shack were the big names in home electronics kits. Projects ranged from simple amplifiers and AM radios to electronic organs and TV's.
Going back about 35 years with the dawn of the microcomputers, IMASI and ALTAIR were branded kits. I was very surprised to see that IMSAI is still around: www.imsai.net For that matter, you can still build an Altair 8800 using NOS (new old stock) www.altairkit.com
Moving into the early 80's, the Timex Sinclair made a 4 chip z80 set. Believe it or not, you can still buy that one too. www.zebrasystems.com
About that time we also tried out an OKI Semiconductor evaluation kit for a digital PCM encoder (think digital answering machines, voice recorders). You can check the various semiconductors manufacturers who publish evaluation kits, sometimes with sample projects for a slightly more advanced challenge.
You didn't say what *kind* of electronics you want to learn about. Ramsey Electronics has some general-interest kits, as do Jameco and JDR. TenTec has simple ham radio kits (with excellent support), so do Vectronics (part of MFJ Enterprises) and Small Wonder Labs. Elecraft has fancier ham radio kits (multiband stuff more in line with the old high-end Heathkits). And PAiA has audio kits. (All of these companies have obvious website URLs.)
If you want a stepping stone to building your own digital stuff, most of the IC companies put out really wonderful evaluation boards to show off their parts. They're not kits themselves but they're very much intended to get your juices flowing (the IC vendors want corporate customers to choose their parts to use in products so easy prototyping is vital) so they're easy to get to the "hello world" stage (or the lights-and-switches equivalent) and there's plenty of provision for adding your own stuff to it and then transplanting the whole thing to a free-standing design once you have your rat's nest prototype debugged. Prices vary wildly but some of them are really good deals.
I'm a huge fan of Microchip PIC CPUs because you don't need to buy *anything*, the programming protocol is simple and well-documented (none of that convoluted JTAG stuff) so you can build your own burner for a few dollars (I use the old "COM84" circuit available on the net, modified to work with the low voltages put out by current COM ports) and free burner software (or you can write your own, it's easy).
To save yourself frustration and headaches later, DON'T START SOLDERLESS! Learn how to solder first! Flow solder down a long wire. Strip parts out of a circuit board and put them back in without damaging them, without burning the board and checking with a magnifying glass that you don't have any solder tips that cross over onto the neighboring point. Get comfortable removing whole chips using both solder wick and a solder-sucker. Learn the components of solder so you're not wondering why you're leaving "tan stuff" (resin) on the board. Cut several parallel 'wires' on a circuit board and then fix it with solder and a single strand of copper wire ... if you learn how to solder first you'll save yourself the frustration of knowing how to fix a problem but lacking the actual skill to do so.
I'd look around for kits aimed at high school students. My senior year of high school I took an electronics course where we had to put together a radio from a kit. The good thing about a radio is that there's a lot of cans that need tweaking and points that need to be seen on an oscilloscope to get everything properly calibrated. In fact, this is the kit I used (note that I'm not endorsing the seller. I just happened across the product is all).
I'd go ahead and pick up an electronics text book geared toward college students as well.
...and start memorizing that v=i*r starting now.
Seriously - make your own kit.
You need:
- Plug in solderless breadboard. Get something reasonably big.
- An assortment of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Many suppliers sell bags of common values for these.
- Some transistors: get some NPN and PNP small signal bipolar transistors. Get some N and P channel small signal MOSFETs.
- A few 555 timer ICs.
- A handful of 74-series logic ICs (typical quad gates, flip flops, shift registers).
And of course a whole heap of LEDs. You need some blinkenlights when learning.
With this you can look at the 'net - for example, while reading 'Lessons in Electric Circuits' http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/ you can devise circuits to expand your knowledge on what you've just read.
You also need at least a reasonable multimeter. As you start getting into stuff that oscillates at more than a few hertz, and if you are enjoying what you're doing, it's worth looking on ebay for a reasonable 2nd hand oscilloscope.
As you get more advanced, you can get microcontrollers, for example, get some Atmel AVR 8 bit microcontrollers - they are supported by GCC and you can make your own parallel programmer with an old printer lead and 4 resistors. Or build a proper computer with external memory - the Z80 microprocessor is still made, and is cheap, and is great for tinkering because it is a 'static' design and run at sub 1Hz clock frequencies where you can see what's happening by putting LEDs on the data and address bus.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I don't know if this has come up already, but there's a handy online circuit simulator here:
www.falstad.com/circuit
You can create circuits from scratch or load and play with a large library of existing circuits. I used it a lot in grad school when I had to build something electronic for the lab, just to make sure it was going to do what I expected.
All stated opinions are subject to further review
I have the Make board and like it because it gives my students experience with an ARM processor.
For someone wanting to learn a bit of electronics, I like the Arduino www.arduino.cc better. The web site has great tutorials on how to connect peripherals to the board. The board is designed to be a multimedia controller and it is designed to be used by artists. It is very easy to program but it is also easy to insert a bit of assembly code if you want things to run faster.
Electronics these days is usually a matter of hooking 'stuff' up to a micro-controller. ie. cpu + dsp + lcd + keypad + radio = cell phone I tell my students that if we were to try building a cell phone out of raw transistors, the result would fill up the room. Trying to do electronics the 'old way' is interesting but maybe not that useful.
This starter kit comes with basic circuit building instructions and soldering tips, as well as an explanation of the circuit. You can plug any wall-wart into this and then plug it into a breadboard to get 3.3 or 5V, or anything else with an added pot. Good if you don't want to invest in a bench-top power supply and just need small power.
The Velleman kits mentioned above are good because they usually come with circuit and component explanations.
Heathkits were good for learning physically working with electronics. Soldering irons, pin identification, mechanical assembly, but didn't really teach theory.
The 150 and 200-in-1 radio shack kits actually did a fairly good job of this. They started you out with "connect the numbered terminals, here's a picture", to later replacing the picture of the parts with a schematic. They encouraged you to experiment, and there was accompanying text for each project later on that described what was going on in the circuit so you understood what all the parts were doing.
It didn't teach you electronics theory formally in any kind of structured way, but it was an excellent crash-course in basic electronics. It was also a very quick way to teach you how to read, use, and create schematics. There are still 200-in-1 kits available but not by Archer anymore: http://www.quasarelectronics.com/epl200.htm
There really are 200 different projects in that kit, ranging from very very basic, "press the switch to turn on the light" all the way up to "a divide-by-2 counter" and "build your own one way telephone". It teaches the basics of digital computing at the gate level which is interesting. Also there was a very wide variation in the projects. Something interesting for everyone. Photodetector alarms, simple games, noisemakers, just all sorts of variety to keep a kid interested.
Once you want to really start fiddling, this is something you should have. It doesn't teach you anything in itself, but lets you play more: Heathkit ET-3100 electronic design experimenter: http://providence.craigslist.org/ele/696855286.html
I had one of these and it's very basic, but by this point you should have some spare parts around already, and having adjustable voltages and signals and a breadboard takes you to the next step of design. Actually I think it did come with some projects, it's been awhile. This was a kit, so you had to assemble it properly for it to work. I used to spend my free time at school planning out schematics of things I wanted to tinker with, sometimes preplanning how to lay them out on the breadboard when I got home.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
For the basics, you can earn your Amateur Radio Licenses. They require you learn some basic electronic principles that are beyond most of the kits.
I have played with the kits and they did not help. What I had to know to earn my amateur extra radio license required more knowledge. No morse code anymore, just 3 multiple choice licenses where all the questions are published.
What you learn is also specific to radios. Filters, amplifiers( sound and power), transmitter and receiver circuits. You learn what it means to apply Kirchhoff's laws. Also to put resistors, capacitors and inductors in serial or parallel configurations. The basics of analyzing power through circuits.
The basic books from amazon work well with the kits from radio shack. Make sure what you get has a breadboard. So I do not think that the snap electronics kits are good for adults. At the makers fair, there was the kit from sparkle labs, http://kits.sparklelabs.com/. The initial parts from sparkle labs are great, but the instructions are bad. But this kit, along with purchasing a reasonable digital multimeter and a book from amazon would be a great start. The kits sold by make magazine are excellent, http://www.makershed.com/. Make magazine is also a great resource,http://makezine.com/magazine/.
For the meter, spend the $50 for one that will test your components, resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors also.
If you dive in and buy a soldering iron, do not cheap out. Spend the $40 for the basic Weller red soldering station or $110 for the basic blue station. Buy a pointy tip, $5. The chisel tip that comes with it is not good for soldering boards.
There are plenty of books that cover the topic with sample circuits. Look at the books offered at http://arrl.org./
A book "Hand's On Radio Experiments" is an excellent book. It publishes the first 60 articles written for ARRL's QST magazine. You can also buy a kit with all the parts needed to do the experiments. The book (http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=1255) and the parts kit (http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=1255K) is $100 from the ARRL.
Most of the above covers analog electronics. For digital electronics, there is a lot of support for digital electronics. The basic stamp kits are great for that. They sell very proven kits, http://www.parallax.com/ with very well written manuals that will take more than a weekend to go through. Also through the make magazine site you'll find project sites for other micro processors used by hobbyists.
Also, to have guided lessons, a class with lab at the local community college is also a great way to go if you have the time. After all the long winded crap above, if you really want to learn and want more than to look at a board and know what the parts are, this is probably the best way to go. Either way, depending on the depths of the knowledge you are looking for, it is between months and a couple years of learning.
Hope I see you at a booth selling a kit at the maker faire in a couple of years.
Long ass winded sermon over.
The Heathkit assembly manuals always included a small "How it works" section, but I agree that wasn't enough to get you a through understanding.
Heathkit had projects as large a 27" console color television. The manual had to tell you how to tune and align it as you were building it.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
I actually bought and built one of those Sinclair ZX-81 kits back in the day! I was just a young pup at the time and I was hella enthusiastic about starting right away when the package (assembly instructions, PCB, chips, various little baggies of resistors and caps, etc. etc.) arrived one bright and sunny day.
My Dad told me "wait until the weekend when your brother can help you ... this is a complicated kit," but I wasn't having any of that and I got started soldering right away. All in all and considering my tender age, I think I did a pretty good job except for one fatal flaw: I soldered a 9-pin resistor pack onto the board backwards. Then, in attempting to fix the problem (using nothing but my unbridled enthusiasm and a roll of desoldering braid purchased from Radio Shack) I managed to pull the traces up off a portion of the PCB. At that point, the mess was officially beyond my (or my brother's) skill to fix.
The solution involved mailing the entire kit away to a repair depot and waiting for many, many, many weeks until they returned the machine (in working condition) along with a substantial bill for the repair work.
The fact I can remember so many details about this episode - right down to the number of pins on the ill-fated resistor pack or the exact spot on the living room carpet where I laid down newspapers in order to do my work - is testament to just how valuable these little experiences are for a young mind.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Long, long ago, I pulled an all-nighter and built up an H-19 terminal all in one shot. My friends were amazed. So was I, it fired right up and worked perfectly the first time. I owned it for years and actually got a decent price when I sold it. I still have no idea how it worked.
Without some understanding of theory you get guys like my friend in Navy BE/E school who thought he was going to find a way to power the world by feeding a signal into a series of more powerful amplifier circuits - nice guy, but not the brightest bulb in the class.
I learned electronics as an adult. Beginning electronics books found in the library is an excellent place to start. Check many library branches and suburban nearby districts. Often you can get a library card for the suburban district libraries with a central city card at no charge.
Some other suggestions:
>Get a cheap digital voltmeter for about $20. Invaluable.
>Download several of the sound-card oscilloscope programs floating around on the web. Many of them have poor quality user-interfaces and documentation, but nearly all of them work on low-frequency AC signals like audio.
> Get an inexpensive soldering iron and salvage/recycle parts from junk electronics, especially old electronics that used through-hole components. A spring-loaded plastic tube solder-sucker used to remove solder from joints on recycled/used circuit boards is quite useful. A solder-less 'breadboard' where components can be connected to make temporary test circuits is handy. Sometimes community college students in software have to take electronics classes to graduate. They have to buy component kits for labs. After finishing the class, they show their contempt for these electronics classes by selling their supplies for super-cheap or by giving them away.
> Ask 'stupid' questions on 'beginner's' web sites. Ignore all the smart-ass 'stupid noobie' responses.
> Post a message on the local CraigsList for free surplus hobbyist electronic components. You might meet local people who can direct you to local inexpensive parts-sources and assistance.
> Be open to exploring microcontrollers. There's a real learning curve, but they are now very cheap and flexible. I recommend exploring the Atmel AVR family. I strongly discourage using the Microchip PIC, because they are a pain in the neck to program, and are not very cheap. The AVR chips can be programmed directly through the PC parallel port.
> Most electronic manufacturers will give free samples of their parts if you ask them. It is standard practice in the electronics industry to get free samples to build a prototype of a new product, and then buy thousands of the chips when the product goes into production. You can use your work e-mail address to convince the electronics manufacturers that this is your plan with the samples.
> Eagle makes a great free software package for creating schematic drawings of your circuits and, as you advance, for designing a printed circuit board. Google for more info and download site.
> Several companies now make small numbers of small-sized professional quality circuit boards for $35-50. These 'board-houses' are invaluable for use with tiny surface-mount components and integrated circuits that the electronics industry is standardizing on.
I hope that all this helps. I suggest focusing on a specific area that you find interesting. For several years I studied electric guitar effects pedals like fuzz/distortion, flangers, and echo/delays. The schematic circuits (and documentation on how the circuits work) for the older 1970s and 1980s effects are available on the web. Also you can get cheap knock-off clones of expensive effects on eBay for $15-$25 each. With a DIY signal generator (like a simple 555 timer), you can feed signals into these cheap effects clone boxes and use the free PC sound card oscilloscope programs to see how the circuitry is changing the signal through each stage of the effect.
Best of luck.
Whew!
Glad I'm not the only one who looked at the title and thougt "W00T! FEMBOTS!"
Of course, the rest of it was kind of a letdown. Ah well. I guess learning electronics and circuit soldering is it's own reward. Even if there is no sweet sweet robot girl loving involved.
My friend, it sounds like you have the makings of the best DIY kit ever!I highly recommend getting an Arduino board, either an USB or Bluetooth one. They're easily programmable, have 14 digital and 6 analog pins and are quite cheap.
A more advanced board would be this one which is available from Sparkfun (who happen to have all sorts of electronic parts). Comes with an LCD, included SD card reader, 3 axis accelerometer. Wonder if TinyOS runs on it, anyone?
There are lots of cool things that can be done with these boards, google for "arduino projects".
Some nice sites for the electronic geek:
Hackaday
Electronics Lab
Cheers!
Horowitz and Hill is the best book on electronics that I know of. It does have some handy circuit examples that you can build, but don't think of it as an instruction book for a kit. If you read Horowitz and Hill, you will be ready to go out and design your own circuits.
This is slippery slope. I started to want principles in the 6th grade, majored in solid state physics and still can't explain how bypolar transistor works. One has to explain quantum mechanics first!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I am an electronic engineer that also builds stuff at home. Get yourself the book "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill, and the Radio Shack electronics kit with the breadboard. It has a power supply, blinkinlights and a half decent selection of parts. www.digikey.com is your friend. Get the additional parts there. I use this setup for prototyping. If it's something I wat to keep, THEN I solder it. Don't worry about soldering now, it's just a skill that is easy to learn (like welding but not as difficult).
Elenco made all the old lab kits for Radio Shack. They still sell the spring-terminal ones. Here's a page where they describe them: http://www.elenco.com/prolabs.htm They are VERY nice, and the upper-end ones have the schematics only (no numbered diagrams) in later experiments to encourage you to learn how to wire the circuits based upon schematics.
I have learned a lot of electronics by using a small programmable controller like the Arduino -- they call it "physical computing" where you have several A/D and D/A ports to control. A starting kit is less than $40 ...
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage
See the free digital I/O tutorials ...
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage-0007
This type of learning tool has the advantage of a PC/MAC interface via Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet while at the same time using an oscilloscope to look ant both analog and digital waveforms. Enjoy.
I noticed a lot of the replies focused on digital kits. But are there any good analog kits? Seems to me that's where the lost art is: downloading code to flash to fix a big is a world away from computing quiescent points by hand.
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Try Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar magazine and try to dig up any old Byte magazines with his column in it.
But a much, much better option is to buy this starter kit and learn the hot new Arduino instead of the aging Basic Stamp. You'll need to start a junk drawer of components, including resistor assortment like these four kits. Local Amateur Radio HamFests and eBay are both good places to fill out your junk box.
Some good resources:
o The Arduino Home Page
o Peter Anderson's Arduino page (the whole site is great, and most can be adapted to the Arduino)
o Sparkfun Tutorials (and don't miss out on their store that has all the good stuff)
o The Electronic Goldmine is a great resource for odd surplus electronics.
I for one welcome our new machine-gun-breast toting overlords... :P
Oh damn, I burnt my finger on the soldering the nipple
I've ordered a number of "Velleman" kits http://www.vellemanusa.com/ for various projects. They're quite similar to heathkits and others mentioned. The problem with kits like those is that they don't really teach you about electronics so much as they're just good soldering practice. A bit more professional and adult in execution than the wire+spring kits sold by rat-shack but just as empty in the theory it teaches.
.22mm silver bearing solder, a de-soldering iron, a nice set of helping hands, a nice set of miniature pliers, a nice set of cutters/strippers/crimps, and some 22ga stranded hookup wire. You'll spend about $50 and have pretty much everything you need to tackle any DIY electronics project. You should also consider spending a bit of cash on a good multimeter, which isn't necessary but HIGHLY recommended for troubleshooting or reverse engineering.
:)
If you're really interested in leaning about electronics the first thing you need to do is pick a project, pick something that someone else has already done and posted the schematics and other information about. Then head over to to this website Its the home page for a highschool electronics club but IMO it's some of the best info on the web on the basic theory about how electronics work as well as how to read diagrams, understand components and solder them together, everything you need to get started.
now you've got a project and some basic knowledge head over to a site like SparkFun loads of useful parts and kits to get you started on nearly any project. I order 99% of my parts from Digikey if they don't have it there you'd be hard pressed to find it elsewhere, it's not very beginner friendly though... Mouser Electronics is much more suited for beginners but their pricing is also a little higher and their selection not as good.
I didn't get into electronics until I was in college and I didn't study electronics in college at all. I basically just picked a project and then just did as much research and self teaching as I needed to get it done, then picked a harder project then a harder project until I am where I am today. I've actually had a couple of my custom electronics projects published in magazines and I only started learning this stuff about 6 or so years ago, not even knowing how to solder or what a resistor is. The resources above were invaluable though
Having good equipment is important too. Go to the rat-shack and buy their 15Watt iron, a spring stand with a sponge, some
Good Luck and have fun
Collector's Edition
http://www.circuitcellar.com/ - Check out the archives for tons of interesting projects. These are not kits, but most articles are well written and provide the necessary information to build the project.
spice / pspice is the defacto electronics simulator.
Getting Started in Electronics is starting to show its age, in so far as some of the parts used (UJTs) in the projects are not so easy to find, and neglects the large growth area of microcontrollers which can be cheaper than discontinued ICs.
Practical Electronics for Inventors suffers from a large number of errors, mostly typographical, but as a self-taught learning aid, this is frustrating.
My personal favorite beginning book for electronics suitable for adults is Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics by Randy Slone (ISBN 0071360573). Not without its own flaws, but contains a nice balance of theory and hands-on practical learning exercises that I feel comfortable recommending it. Another which I do not have a copy of myself, is Understanding Basic Electronics by ARRL. It may be somewhat geared towards RF topics, because it is published by the national USA amateur radio organization, but because they have most of the amateur radio topics covered in another textbook, it should be suitable for general electronics.
The next part is usage of discrete digital logic is now minimal being replaced by programming logic devices like PALs, FPGAs, or microcontrollers like Atmel's AVR and Microchip's PIC, to name only two of the most popular 8-bit microcontrollers available.
Jameco is maybe the most beginner friendly mail-order storefront. Their dead tree catalog is small enough you can find what you are looking for, even if you don't know everything about it. Their prices are reasonable, far cheaper than buying everything from Radio Shack, and you can easier expand to use Digikey, Mouser, Newark, and the hundreds of various surplus (typically new overstock / old stock, but not always) electronics websites. Octopart.com and FindChips.com help finding parts. There is another meta-search but I don't find as useful to amateurs.
Looking at hobbyist robotic, and amateur radio websites, as they have sub-interests within them that are oriented towards electronics. You may even find a local club in your area.
Magazines like Nuts'n'Volts, Servo, and CircuitCellar, Make magazine are good sources for hobbyist friendly resources.
No one kit, and no one book is enough to satisfy most people's self-taught education in electronics. Just as no one book will teach you everything to know about computers (TAOCP?)
Google for the name of the equipment, if it's a frequent/known problem you'll find repair instructions. BTW almost half of the salvaged stuff was repaired by replacing leaky/bulgy capacitors.
Yeah, there's a ton of variety out there. Good toy stores (like the one in my sig) have everything from those little block kits to the 500 in 1 electronic springboard kits (remember those). I think you might be looking for something a little more advanced.
I remember putting together a few kits from Ramsey Electronics, including the venerable FM10 stereo FM transmitter. They have a lot of interesting stuff there. Also Information Unlimited is a classic for fun stuff like high-voltage, etc.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
There was similar thread few weeks ago realted to books about electronics. I have tried to complie all links for future reference
Electronics threads
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/06/2333256
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/20/1327207
Paper books websites
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-Scherz/dp/0070580782 +++
http://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Unconventional-Electronics/dp/0750675438/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210145164&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Robot-Builders-Bonanza-Tab-Electronics/dp/0071362967
http://pragprog.com/titles/ctelec/a-peek-at-computer-electronics
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-Mims/dp/0945053282
Online books websites
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-002Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/
http://www.hiviz.com/
http://openbookproject.net/electricCircuits/
Hardware kits websites
http://www.smileymicros.com/
http://www.arduino.cc/
http://ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
http://openbookproject.net/electricCircuits/
http://www.adafruit.com/
http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=68
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/Products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2735
http://www.nerdkits.com/
http://www.electronickits.com/
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php
http://www.quasarelectronics.com/epl200.htm
http://www.elenco.com/prolabs.htm
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICAXE
http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/picaxe.html
http://www.makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL
http://www.parallax.com
http://www.xgamestation.com/
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/
Software websites
http://www.avrfreaks.net/?module=FreaksTools&func=viewItem&item_id=145
http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/index.jsp
How to websites
http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides/How_To_Solder
http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides/Surface_Mount_Soldering/101
http://tangentsoft.net/audio/
http://www.electronics-lab.com/index.html
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/hdr.php?p=tutorials
http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
http://www.embedds.com/
Electronic parts websites
http://digikey.com/
http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/engine.php
http://www.bgmicro.com/
Online Forums websites
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LTspice/?v=1&t=directory&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=dir&slk=1
Various websites
http://www.arrl.org/
http://www.makezine.com/
http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/index.htm
The Forrest Mims books are a great starter -- grab yourself a copy of "Getting Started in Electronics" to start with. RadioShack should have that one.
I'm also somewhat surprised that nobody's mentioned The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill. It's pretty much the standard reference work, and a lot of electronics design courses use it as the primary course textbook. It covers damn close to everything you need to know. Bit on the expensive side though, unless you can get a used copy.
Look for the Babani Publishing books too, they usually sell for a few quid on Amazon. Worth every penny - they're basically little pocket books that cover one subject (e.g. oscillators, filter circuits, etc) and cover it in some depth but without the mathematical baggage of Horowitz and Hill.
Start by learning Ohm's Law! V=IR, P=IV and the reciprocals. They're tremendously useful and state the relationship between voltage, current, resistance and power (Watts).
OK, now we move onto tools... Get yourself a decent multimeter - don't go overboard and spend $300 on a top-end Fluke, you don't need it. A $20 corner-shop digital multimeter will do fine. Just keep the battery charged up, they tend to drift when the battery starts to drain. Needless to say, the better ones don't do that :)
You'll also want a solderless breadboard and a half decent 5V power supply. The little switch-mode "universal" supplies are usually pretty good, Maplin have one that does 5V (among other voltages) on sale for £9 at the moment.
Components-wise, get yourself a selection of resistors, capacitors and transistors. FastComponents are worth a look if you're in the UK, they've got capacitor kits, crystals, some ICs, stripboard... Resistor packs can be had for not much money, you want a basic E12 kit, preferably consisting of 0.25W metal-film resistors, and 100 of each value. Expect to pay about £40 (there's a company called Dannell Electronics -- again UK based -- that sell these on eBay for a bit less). Bear in mind that it's sometimes cheaper -- especially with Farnell -- to buy the individual resistors than the overpriced "E12 Resistor Kit".
Suppliers... Well, there's FastComponents, Dannell, Bowood Electronics and the like in the 'small guys' category. These places tend not to have a very wide range of parts, but are often ridiculously cheap. They're usually run by people who actually know a bit about electronics, so they might be able to offer suggestions as to what you need.
Next you have the big guys -- CPC, Farnell, Maplin and RS. CPC and Farnell are basically the same company -- CPC have historically been a spares supplier and don't really do raw parts, whereas Farnell stray more to the raw components side of the line. Prices are reasonable, but not great. Rapid Electronics are worth a look - cheaper than Farnell, but I've never ordered from them. YMMV.
If you're in the USA? DigiKey rock (I've ordered from them a few times), and there's also Mouser and one other company whose name escapes me at the moment... Also search for BG Micro, they're a surplus supplier and often have some pretty good deals on odd parts.
Surplus suppliers are the 'odds and end shops' of the electronics hobby community. There used to be Greenweld, Mainline and a few others on this side of the pond; Greenweld has gone "Innovations Catalogue" and no longer sell components, and Mainline's warehouse burned down. The latter have risen from the ashes and now sell primarily on eBay UK.
Surplus kit is what it is -- sometimes you see fantastic bargains on things like graphics LCDs that normally sell new for £50-£100, but usually hit the surplus market for far less. YMMV though, some stuff is new-old-stock and generally quite nice, other things are pulled from broken equipment. Yet more stuff is cheap because it's weird