Best Electronics Kits For Adults? 376
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."
heathkit (Score:5, Informative)
Nerd (Score:5, Informative)
Heathkit isn't right it is a different company... (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, in one.... Guessing is your friend.
http://www.electronickits.com/ [electronickits.com]
make (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Forrest Mims kits from Radio Shack (Score:5, Informative)
Electronics Learning Lab [radioshack.com] Designed by Forrest Mims and sold by radio shack.
You could also do with picking up his Getting Started in Electronics [amazon.com] book. It is like a field journal for electrical theory, very fun read.
Hope that points you in the right direction.
-Scott
AdaFruit (Score:5, Informative)
I've been having fun buying and building the various kits available from http://www.adafruit.com/ [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).
Ladyada (Score:1, Informative)
She has some fun projects, like the TVBgone. Useful too!
http://www.adafruit.com/ [adafruit.com]
Re:old heathkits, like oscilliscopes (Score:5, Informative)
Nerdkits.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:forget kits (Score:4, Informative)
Make Magazine Kits Rock! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Maybe a book? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kits (Score:2, Informative)
There's a URL for everything
Re:Forrest Mims kits from Radio Shack (Score:4, Informative)
The Mims books and kits are very good.
And Ratshack also has an excellent microcontroller kit/book/CD called "What's a microcontroller".
Everything you need for learning and experiments (except the 9V battery). I've got one on my desk right now.
Re:Kits (Score:1, Informative)
If you want electronics theory behind a project then you are unlikely to find Kits. Your best bet would be to find an electronics handbook for projects. Start with simple schematic projects that you can understand and work your way up from there. This is basically how they train you in Electrical Engineering anyhow. Go buy a breadboard project kit and seperate manuals for your biggest variety.
You will begin to understand the basic principles involved. Understanding how to turn a schematic into a reality by laying it out. Understanding what the electricity is doing. And then understanding what the circuit is doing.
Also, you'll find yourself in two forms. You'll have analog circuits (Ohms Law) and then youll have Digital Circuits (Logic, more IC's and more cost usually).
A couple of sites... (Score:3, Informative)
If you are into (or want to be) audio
http://tangentsoft.net/audio/ [tangentsoft.net]
Else
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ [allaboutcircuits.com]
Re:Nerd (Score:1, Informative)
You might try starting with a microcontroller board like the ones from parallax.com. Or if your into linux something like the Linuxstamp (http://opencircuits.com/Linuxstamp). These boards won't teach you the fundamentals like V=IR, but you can use it to create your own projects.
Re:Forrest Mims kits from Radio Shack (Score:1, Informative)
Parallax makes the kit and several others for their basic stamp and Javalin stamps. Radioshack adds quite a hefty mark-up. http://www.parallax.com/
Re:forget kits (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I agree. I did the same when starting out and that's half the fun. A basic kit you buy will almost always contain a bread board, a power supply, some wire, and some basic elements like LEDs. All of these can be found in one trip to radio shack with little effort.
For instance here could be a basic kit:
- Bread board
- 6V-12V power supply. I prefer the ones that allow you to choose amperage
- pack of LEDS. Blue LEDS are purdy
- Wire. Radio shack and others sell wire "kits"of different lengths or a spool.
- Basic multimeter. Great for when things don't work
- pack of components. Transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc. And of course the whole reason I do this - some nice 8 bit chips.
Again, all of this stuff can be bought in a quick trip to radio shack. Once you get the basics you can dig into the real online "part bins" like DigiKey.com or Mouser.com.
Try NEETS book series online (Score:5, Informative)
The entire US Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series (NEETS) is online in PDF book format here:
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm [davidson.edu]
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.)
Re:Overload (Score:5, Informative)
Going back 40 years, HeathKit [heathkit.com] 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 [imsai.net] For that matter, you can still build an Altair 8800 using NOS (new old stock) www.altairkit.com [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 [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.
Re:heathkit (Score:4, Informative)
Try Ramsey Electronics. You can download their manuals and see what the kits are about. I recently built their FM30B FM radio transmitter kit to broadcast my mp3s around my house and yard. Besides getting to build something, you can also get something really useful out of the deal.
The FM30 is digitally tuned and digitally controlled and the circuit description and how it all works is very good. Kit difficulty is good for first timers if they are careful and follow the directions.
The final product sounds great too. I have my Linux box serving up the music and have my transmitter Y'ed into the line out with the speakers.
The FM30B is $200, but they also have other transmitters for around $140, and $60 if you want a less complicated and less expensive setup.
Make your own (Score:4, Informative)
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/ [ibiblio.org] 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.
Virtual breadboard (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Learning Resources for Electronics (Score:1, Informative)
Here's a list of sites that have helped me over the years. Also, I agree with an earlier poster that kits won't really teach you much about electronics (though you'll get good soldering experience from them).
http://openbookproject.net/electricCircuits/ - This site has a series of excellent (and free) electronics books that start with the basics and move on from there.
http://www.parallax.com/ - While these kits are a bit costly, they have some of the best learning materials for working with micro-controllers (outside of audio, micro-controllers dominate the electronics industry these days). I highly recommend, "What's a Microcontroller" as a starting kit (it has everything you need). Also, the Propeller chip is just cool.
http://www.arduino.cc/ - Next to Parallax, the Arduino community offers a much cheaper, and comparable, alternative. Everything here is open source (from the hardware to the software). You might consider downloading the freely available books from Parallax, and translate the code to Arduino as a learning exercise.
http://www.xgamestation.com/ - Andre has some great (and fun) kits for game development and electronics. I sometimes find Andre's writing difficult to read, but ymmv. I have his CPLD kit, and it's great.
http://www.makezine.com/ - Lots of electronics here.
And finally, a short selection of tutorials, blogs and project pages:
http://www.electronics-lab.com/index.html
http://www.embedds.com/
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/hdr.php?p=tutorials
http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
There's a ton more that I've come across over the years (remember google is your friend). Just do a search for "learning basic electronics", and you'll have a lifetime of reading (a good percentage will suck, but it's there =).
Enjoy.
Plug-in Power Supply for BreadBoard Kit (Score:2, Informative)
The Velleman kits mentioned above are good because they usually come with circuit and component explanations.
Re:old heathkits, like oscilliscopes (Score:5, Informative)
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 [quasarelectronics.com]
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 [craigslist.org]
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.
Re:forget kits (Score:3, Informative)
Again, all of this stuff can be bought in a quick trip to radio shack.
Unfortunately, few Radio Shack stores (at least in the Seattle area) still carry electronic components. Of all of them around here, there are two (the one in the University District and to a lesser extent the one in lower Queen Anne) that stock any (I went to all of them last year looking for a particular part).
What they do stock is very limited compared to an online store (particularly with regards to ICs), and their prices are generally much higher. They also don't have staff who know anything about components, so expect to have trouble finding anything even if it is in stock.
Frys has the same problems (although at least they still stock etchant, unlike Radio Shack). I buy all of my parts online now.
I am trying to doing the same thing. (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [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/ [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./ [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/ [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.
Re:You're an adult now, you don't need a kit. (Score:3, Informative)
I agree completely with parent. A few additional thoughts:
Although I second the suggestion to get a book, I'd also suggest the following website: All About Circuits [allaboutcircuits.com]. It's basically a short textbook, online. It has some nice intuitive explanations.
As for books... My top choice would be Hambley's Electronics [amazon.com]. It's a complete, correct, and accessible introduction to the subject. It's a great book. The Art of Electronics [amazon.com] is also very good.
I also completely agree with the suggestion to get a solderless breadboard. That's the way to have fun with this stuff. You can always build a soldered, "final" circuit later (which is fun in its own way), but I have to admit that that's more of an exercise in fabrication than it is a good way to explore electronics.
For me, the crucial central component of a lab bench is an oscilloscope, and that will be the hardest thing to get inexpensively. Digital scopes are wonderful! I haven't investigated this thoroughly, but you might go with a USB "oscilloscope" that uses a laptop/PC for its interface, as these tend to be cheaper.
Finally, there's the question of "what circuits should I build?" Personally, I always found op-amp circuits to be a lot of fun, and I think audio circuits are often a good choice as they are interesting and practical, give a good way to experiment with filters and many other analog signal processing circuits, and yet are low-enough frequency that the parasitics are negligible (i.e., the schematic is an accurate representation of what you've built).
As a side note, although the 741 is an armored tank and as cheap as dirt, my personal favorite op-amp is the LM6132. They're more expensive, but man are they beautiful! :-) (Seriously though, just buy 741s unless you're running off batteries or really need something faster.)
Oh! And while we're on the subject of buying things: The place to look is Digikey [digikey.com]. You need to lump together orders to save on shipping, but it is almost always the best choice for buying chips.
Spot-on (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Learn to solder first! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You're an adult now, you don't need a kit. (Score:3, Informative)
Better would be an oscilloscope, but that's a much bigger outlay.
If you aren't working with high frequencies, second-hand analogue oscilloscopes are cheap. I got a 20MHz, 8-input Tektronix rackmount oscilloscope for about $40 on eBay. Since I'm mostly interested in working with audio frequencies, I don't need 100+ MHz.
Of course, the two probes I bought were also about $40 each, but I can use those on other Tektronix oscilloscopes I might buy in the future.
An alternative is something like a PicoScope [picotech.com], but even their cheapest model is more expensive than a secondhand analogue oscilloscope and a couple of probes.
Learning Electronics as an adult (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Arduino (Score:2, Informative)
I highly recommend getting an Arduino board [arduino.cc], 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 [sparkfun.com] 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 [hackaday.com]
Electronics Lab [electronics-lab.com]
Cheers!
And a copy of Horowitz and Hill (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Overload (Score:3, Informative)
Books and Kits (Score:3, Informative)
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 labs (Score:3, Informative)
Try a Programmable Controller (Arduino) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Kits (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe, but my experience has been the exact opposite. As a teenager, I had plenty of experience building kits, but at the time I had little idea what how it all worked, in spite of reading all the guides, etc. I could follow instructions to build something, but I didn't have a hope in hell of calculating the exact response a circuit would have - let alone being able to design circuits from scratch. In order to do that, I had to put in hard work learning the theory at University.
Electronics is hard - don't expect to be able to understand fully it just by following simple tech guides or kit manuals. It involves some complex physics and mathematics. Without this physics and mathematics, you won't be able to really get a deep understanding of what's going on, much less be able to design electronic circuits. You may get a feel for what an EM wave does by echoing a signal down a cable - but unless you know your divs, grads, curls, your Maxwell's equations, your complex analysis, your linear algebra, you won't know how to calculate your cable's impedance from first principles, nor work out its frequency response, nor how to modulate signals to send down through it, etc, etc.
Circuit Cellar (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nerd (Score:3, Informative)
Going the micro-controller route, I'd consider the Picaxe -- Pic based, with a built-in Basic interpreter and a great support forum. Plus they are way cheaper than the basic stamps.
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICAXE
http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/picaxe.html
Re:comic book monthly science kit? (Score:1, Informative)
Arduino is where it's at! (Score:5, Informative)
But a much, much better option is to buy this starter kit [adafruit.com] and learn the hot new Arduino [ladyada.net] instead of the aging Basic Stamp. You'll need to start a junk drawer of components, including resistor assortment like [vakits.com] these [vakits.com] four [vakits.com] kits [vakits.com]. Local Amateur Radio HamFests and eBay are both good places to fill out your junk box.
Some good resources:
o The Arduino Home Page [arduino.cc]
o Peter Anderson's Arduino page [phanderson.com] (the whole site is great, and most can be adapted to the Arduino)
o Sparkfun Tutorials [sparkfun.com] (and don't miss out on their store [sparkfun.com] that has all the good stuff)
o The Electronic Goldmine [goldmine-elec.com] is a great resource for odd surplus electronics.
Re:Overload (Score:5, Informative)
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 [freeuk.com] 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 [sparkfun.com] loads of useful parts and kits to get you started on nearly any project. I order 99% of my parts from Digikey [digikey.com] 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 [mouser.com] 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
Re:Ham Radio, Transistor Clock (Score:3, Informative)
Circuit Cellar (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.circuitcellar.com/ [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.
Re:Virtual / Emulated Breadboards? (Score:3, Informative)
spice / pspice is the defacto electronics simulator.
Re:Maybe a book? (Score:3, Informative)
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 [arrl.org]. 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 [atmel.com] and Microchip's PIC [microchip.com], to name only two of the most popular 8-bit microcontrollers available.
Jameco [jameco.com] 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 [octopart.com] and FindChips.com [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?)
Re:heathkit (Score:1, Informative)
I think that it is important to know what kind of projects are you interested in.
(more analog oriented, audio oriented, digital oriented ?)
I have read many times (not linearly) Practical Electronics for inventors, is great, every chapter starts with some theory and then goes the practice,
My other book is "Intermediate Robot Building", not because I'm interested in robotics yet, but it very very easy to understand, and gives ideas on simple modules and techniques. there is even an 'Begginer Robot Building' with even more noob material.
I know that Forrest Mims books are very good too.
Then (in paralell better) get your hads dirty, I started with simple projects (switches, leds, transistors, resistors, caps) then some simple IC (regulatos, voltage comparator), then cmos and logic, then I get a kit for a very good audio amplifier from 41hz.com, and then i start programing pics, first in assembler, but i really like JAL for pics. rigth now I'm using arduino and playing with temp.sensor (lm35) and accelerometers and rf comm (wireless communication).
Re:Try NEETS book series online (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Overload (Score:5, Informative)
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 [ramseyelectronics.com], including the venerable FM10 stereo FM transmitter. They have a lot of interesting stuff there. Also Information Unlimited [amazing1.com] is a classic for fun stuff like high-voltage, etc.
Re:Learning Electronics as an adult (Score:1, Informative)
Good suggestions, but I would advise you get an analogue multimeter rather than digital (or, ideally, a cheap analogue and good quality digital). When mucking around with RC / LC circuits an analogue meter gives a good visual feel for decay rates. And if you can justify a few hundred dollars, a real oscilloscope from ebay sitting on your workbench will give you street cred with your friends. Best of luck.
Summary (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Summary 2 (Score:2, Informative)
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