DuinoKit Helps Teach Students About Electronics (Video)

This is something Timothy Lord ran across a few months ago at a Maker Faire near Atlanta: The DuinoKit. Think of it as a fancier (and pricier) version of the venerable Radio Shack Electronic Learning Labs and you won't be far off. Plus, as the name DuinoKit implies, it's based on an Arduino, which means that right off the bat it packs a lot more learning punch than the Radio Shack kit. DuinoKit was financed by a KickStarter campaign that asked for $19,500 and raised $57,478 from 250 backers. And for those of you who worry about being called nerds because you're carrying a DuinoKit around, you can relax. It comes in a 'Secret Agent Carrying Case.' Really. Read their What is the DuinoKit? Web page carefully and you'll see. (Alternate Video Link)

Comments

No...

[buckfeta2014]

It doesn't teach you electronics. It teaches you the arduino IDE platform and pinouts. Stop calling it electronics. If you really want to learn electronics, you would fab your own board and solder the microprocessor to it yourself.

Re:No...

[nospam007]

You're both wrong, real electronics is rubbing a cat against a glass rod.

Re:No...

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to dream about having a cat.... we had to make do with a wadded-up dustball. But it were a cat to us.

Re:No...

[halivar]

A dustball? Luxury! We had to scrape our skin with Brillo pads for a week to collect enough dust for a whole ball.

Re:No...

[rgriff59]

Of course it doesn't teach you electronics. An entire TV set as a bag of parts and a soldering iron won't teach you either. However, both can be beneficial resources to have while you learn electronics.

The arduino boards don't do much of anything useful until you start connecting them to other things. Those other things are electronic components. I'm not convinced the duinokit is an improvement over a solderless breadboard and some loose components, but the whole arduino ecosystem is a very positive development.

The age of discrete electronics is gone. Electronics has become little digital chips with magic inside, with only the bare minimum of connections to discrete parts outside to make it all work. Hmmmm, sounds a lot like an arduino, except you can control the magic inside the chip.

The arduino kits are the best thinker's toy I've found in a Radio Shack in more than a decade.

Slashdotted..

[Archwyrm]

Good job, guys. You broke it. At least I was able to load one page before the DB rolled over and died.

Google Cache

Re:Slashdotted..

[halivar]

That's what you get for self-hosting on a DuinoKit.

Speaking of Radio Shack

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously wonder why RS hasn't embraced the maker culture. It seems to me that they can only last another year trying to compete in consumer products and batteries.

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[BitZtream]

... I buy arduino stuff from RadioShack all the time, they stock a variety of shields and arduino units. Generally handy when I burn up a board and don't want to wait for a mail order replacement.

A far amount of generic basic components as well. Of course they never have the power FETs or triacs I want, but not that many people are trying to build custom ECUs or high powered light controllers either

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[PvtVoid]

This article sums it up pretty well.

Everybody likes to blame the decline of bricks-and-mortar retail on the internet, and that may have some truth to it, but I think that a pretty substantial part of the problem is the influence of douchebag MBAs who have turned companies like Radio Shack, Sears, Office Depot, Best Buy, etc. etc. into dystopian hellholes of despair and horror. Try shopping at Sears in the last few years? The fear and desperation are palpable. I can understand in the current economy why the employees might not quit en masse, but why on earth would any customer voluntarily subject themselves to that?

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[Darinbob]

Because it stopped being an electronics store a very long time ago. Now it sells phones, batteries, and consumer goods. Though a few rare die hard stores will still sell a few components.

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[smellsofbikes]

I seriously wonder why RS hasn't embraced the maker culture. It seems to me that they can only last another year trying to compete in consumer products and batteries.

Do you remember TechAmerica, RadioShack's last attempt to embrace the maker culture, in 1996? They opened five stores in major metro areas.
They were wonderful. I could go in and decide which 10-bit A/D I preferred. The guy behind the counter knew what a 74141 was.
They lasted five years. Over the three year lifetime of the Denver store, the electronics section got smaller, the toys and gadget section got larger, and they still didn't manage to make their rent.

After that, is it any surprise that their current maker section consists of half a dozen arduino boards and shields and a shelf of TH resistors in the back? How do you compete with Digikey, if you have to pay rent?

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[DigitAl56K]

"You've got questions. We've got phone plans."

FTFY

Re:Speaking of Radio Shack

[tlhIngan]

It's because, turns out, the real estate the company bought is a more stable stream of income than the retail company itself. The company ebbs and flows at a rate related to the human attention span, but the world is not going to be getting bigger any time soon...

Actually that was sort of the plan of the Best Buy co-founder wanted to embrace before the current Best Buy board denied his purchase offer for the company.

He wanted to embrace showrooming - it already happens now, so why not actually support it, encourage it, and turn best buy from a store selling stuff into a showroom selling stuff.

And it makes a lot of sense - people still want to touch and feel products, but other than Apple, Microsoft and Samsung, most manufacturers are not able to maintain a network of stores to sell stuff through. Enter Best Buy who will lease you out a space for your product so people can come by and touch, feel, play and if you can keep them in stock, buy off the shelf. If not, Best Buy will gladly help you order it online.

Of course there has to be a sundry list of items they regularly stock, but that is minor - the goal is to be a showroom where you may be able to buy stuff, but more so you can come and see and feel the product. In other words, the customer is not the guy walking in the door, it's the manufacturers of the products inside, and I'm sure with partnerships with Amazon and other fulfilment companies, they can get special offers like ship it to the store for free and the like.

It already is like that for the big players - when you see the PS4 and Xbone aisles - know Sony and Microsoft actually pay Best Buy for the entire aisle. Those product displays? Yes, purchased space. Notice how the Apple area has different (often nicer) carpeting? Yes, Apple paid for that area, AND the renovations to get it to be like that.

Basically, the goal is to fill the niche that online shopping cannot fill - the ability to see the product.

Hey

[Kohath]

DuinoKit until you try it