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."
forget kits (Score:2, Interesting)
What about DIY audio ? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 !
Lessons In Electric Circuits (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [ibiblio.org]
Once you have the understanding, you can create printed circuit boards with Eagle (free for non-commercial use)
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ [cadsoftusa.com]
and have Sparkfun order your PCBs via BatchPCB
http://www.batchpcb.com/ [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.
Count Radio shack stores out (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The Era of Electronic Kits is Gone (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [vellemanusa.com] 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.
Go to the source (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [amazon.com]
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.
Ham Radio, Transistor Clock (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [brielcomputers.com] 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 [elecraft.com]. 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 [transistor-clock.com] kit the other day. It looks quite neat.
What area? Lots of choices. (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:You're an adult now, you don't need a kit. (Score:4, Interesting)
Even better: Arduino (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:The Era of Electronic Kits is Gone (Score:3, Interesting)
Electronics kits follow the times: it's a digital age, and just as transistors displaced tubes, IC's stand in place of discrete components. And as microcontrollers go, it's a freakin golden age for hobbyists. You have more choices than ever before. Hell, you can even mock up full-blown CPU's with FPGAs if that turns you on, and you can do that on a hobby budget.
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.
It's been that way since the 70's, gramps, you just replaced Japan with China.
Re:old heathkits, like oscilliscopes (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Overload (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:heathkit (Score:5, Interesting)
If I have less than warm feelings towards Heathkit, it's because almost 30 years ago, while working at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, my boss (a great guy, BTW) decided to save LPI some funds. Rather than buying assembled terminals to use with our new VAX, he instead bought quite a few Heathkit dumb CRT terminal kits and then paid me (per terminal) to assemble them after work hours.
It did save LPI money, and it put some extra money in my pockets -- but as I type this, I can feel again the burns and cuts on my fingertips from hours upon hours of assembling and soldering, not to mention the general frustration at trying to make each terminal work (which I did, eventually). I can't remember how many terminals I built, but I know the VAX was intended to support 30 LPI personnel, so it was a lot.
Mostly, it reinforced my earlier decision back in college to be a CS major, rather than a EE major. :-) ..bruce..
Re:Overload (Score:1, Interesting)
Make Magazine is the best electronics diy "kit"... it's just a mag, but it has lots of ideas and stuff in it. Locally here it's sold at Barnes and Noble, and sits proudly on the shelf right next to 2600 Hacker mag...
Buy a pinball machine. (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously.
If you acquire a 80s or 90s game that needs some love and attention, you will learn more about electronics theory and repair than you might think, as you work through board issues, game wiring, et al.
Very good for people w/good manual dexterity.
- litz
Quick shopping list (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [fastcomponents.co.uk] 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