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Technology

Electronics Kits for Kids (and Adults)? 28

Posted by Cliff from the the-fun-toys-from-yesteryear...today dept.
blkros asks: "Christmas is coming up, and , I've been thinking about stuff for the kids. I want to get them intersted in technology (other than gameboy and pokemon), and was thinking about the old Heathkit company, and how I used to drool over their catalog as a kid. (Yes, I'm that old <grin!>)Of course they don't sell kits anymore, so I did a web search,and found a bunch of companys that sell kits, eg Ramsey Electronics. My questions are does anyone have experience with any of the companies? Who sells the best? Who's the least expensive?"
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Electronics Kits for Kids (and Adults)? More

Electronics Kits for Kids (and Adults)?

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  • Dick Smith in NZ [dse.co.nz] and Dick Smith in Oz [dse.com.au] sell "Funway" kits and manuals. From what I've seen, they're fairly lame, but might be OK for a beginner. You can make doorbells, audio amplifiers, electronic dice etc.

  • Gateway Electronics has some decently cool kits.
    As well as nearly any electronic part you might need.

    I believe they also have online ordering.
    http://www.gatewayelex.com/
  • Hey, if you want to infect a kid with the geek bug, software is more contagious than hardware. More immediate and complex feedback from your tinkering.

    And what combines software and hardware tinkering better than Lego Mindstorms? The ultimate never-grew-up toy!

  • Solar Bug kits from Andy Pang.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by slashkitty ( 21637 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:54PM (#2500574) Homepage
    I just got this kit in the mail today. B.E.A.M Solar Robot Kits [home.ust.hk]. Interesting things to do with transistors, motors, solar cells and a few other parts. This guy put together a few kits from surplus parts. They all around $10.

    Other sites have put together other BEAM kits that are more expensive. SolarBotics [solarbotics.com] seems to have a lot of stuff listed.

    Now I gotta go do some sodering!

  • Kit sources (Score:2, Informative)

    by rsargent ( 533171 )
    Jameco electronics (www.jameco.com [jameco.com]) and Robot Store (www.robotstore.com [robotstore.com]) are both sources of some fun kits.

    Radio kits just aren't as compelling as they were 30 years ago when I was that age. Today I think robotic kits are particularly compelling, and some even provide a jumping-off point for learning to program.

    On a related note, I was also bitten by the LEGO bug as a youngster, and probably spent an order of magnitude more time building with LEGO than I spent building electronics kits. Something to consider...

  • Ten-Tec, Ramsey, Nuts & Volts and Ratshack (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ratbert42 ( 452340 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @09:23PM (#2500690)

    Ten-Tec [tentec.com] has some decent radio kits. For $24 you can get the 1054 [tentec.com] which is a stripped-down regen shortwave receiver. For $69 you can get the 1253 [tentec.com] which is a complete regen receiver. Either will provide decent listening to both ham and shortwave broadcast stations.

    Ramsey kits are ok, but you need to read carefully. For example, they advertise kits like the SR2 [ramseyelectronics.com] with a photo of it in a case. The case is a $14.95 option and you still don't get a speaker.

    As for building ease, I can't really comment. The only recent kit I've built is the Ramsey SR2. It was easy but time-consuming and a bit boring, as I've soldered thousands of components in my time.

    Nuts & Volts magazine [nutsvolts.com] is a good source of ads for kits [nutsvolts.com].

    I'm not sure how much you can learn from one of these kits. They tend to not have much in the way of experimentation. You build the kit, play with it for an hour or two, then stash it on a shelf. If you're going to go the kit route, I would start with a simple blinking LED kit or something to learn soldering, then maybe a decent radio kit that you'll actually be able to use.

    If you want to get the kids interested, I would go to Radio Shack and dig around in the back. There you will find some dusty books from the Engineer's Mini-Notebook [radioshack.com] line ($1.99). They have easy explanations, circuit diagrams, and lots of experiments to try. They don't make it trivial to find the parts and you'll be spending quite a bit of time prowling Radio Shack parts racks, but it's worth it. The kids will get to do some of the design work themselves.

  • Ramsey (Score:2)

    by V. ( 1057 )
    I ordered a small FM transmitter from Ramsey a
    while back. It was good for some weekend playtime
    and I still use it for broadcasting my MP3/OGG
    connection around the yard. The instructions were
    very paint-by-the-numbers though. The instruction
    booklet had some decent information about RF basics
    and FCC rules, but not much as far as basic
    electronics. Can't say I really learned much from
    the whole experience.

    I remember one project that my father and I did
    back when I was about 10. Crystal radio. I can't
    say how your kids would react, but I was
    amazed that you could pick up radio stations
    without having to plug the bugger in. Crystal
    radio has decent 'wow-factor'.

    I would recommend starting with a crystal radio
    kit and some basic electronics and RF and work
    your way up to something a little more practical
    like the Ramsey kits.

    JMTC.

    • Better than a kit, you can make a crystal radio with only bits of wire, a pin, and some magnets. There is real wow factor from winding a coil (not easy) around a magnet, anouther around an old toilet paper roll, connecting them along with some rusty razor blade, pin, ground and hundred foot antenna, and getting radio. Sure you only get the strong station in your area, but no batteries, not plug in, no electronics, yet it works.

      Look for "The boy electrition" in your library. Published about 1958 or some such. cool book, and even though dated (where are you going to find a "b" battery now a days, and your lcoal drug store doesn't sell vacuume tubes anymore. Still most projects will work with what you cn find today and the book is an excellent read.

    • I agree -- crystal radios have to be about the coolest 'something-for-nothing' gadgets out there...

  • 300 in 1 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Usquebaugh ( 230216 )
    Without doubt the best electronics kit I ever got was the 300 in 1 kit. No soldering just easy to connect components.

    I made all the circuits in the book and then started changing components to see what happened, oh look a change in capacitance causes the light to blink faster etc etc

    This was 20 years ago and I can still remember blowing all the leds, I wanted to make them brighter. So then I learnt how to solder and then I learnt what a diode did :-)

    Check this [hobbytron.net] out, all I need is $170
  • At the risk of my precious karma, the 150, 200, 300 etc.-in-one kits from Radio Shack are probably the best thing for kids. I had the 200-in-one kit when I was a kid, and I learned a good deal about analogue electronics from this kit. Even learned to read a schematic from the manual that comes with it. It is reletively simple even for someone that doesn't want to learn the technical stuff to build one of the cool projects. For adults, however, these kits are a little basic. I've built one or two of the kits from Ramsey Electronics and they are pretty easy for someone with a passing interest that is handy with a soldering iron to build. Actually learned a good deal about soldering from their speaker phone kit. :-)
  • These are kits available through Jameco (http://www.jameco.com/) and other places (http://www.audioxpress.com/). I also agree with the above poster that the Radio Shack n-in-one "kits" are good for beginners. They require no soldering, and it's easy to assemble/tear down projects. That, and they're cheap. The manuals are notoriously short on explanation though, so they're best teamed with some real instruction.
  • In my oppinion many of the kits out there have about as much educational value as assembling a plastic model. If it's a one-shot kit don't bother. The kids aren't going to learn much by following instructions, even if the booklet explains the science.

    Children learn by playing with things, and with a model-kit they can only play with the finished product.

    When I was in elementary school I came across a 200-in-1 electronic kit at a fleamarket. I loved it. It had dozens of parts mounted on a board. They could be wired up in almost endless circuts. After exactly following the instructions for a couple of projects I was able to experiment and try out my own ideas. I could play with the parts. That's real learning, and there is a tremendous reward when you create something on your own (NOT in the manual) and it works!

    This type of 200-in-1 kit isn't going to interest every child of course. If they like it they will learn alot. If they don't like it then I doubt they'd learn anything from a model kit either.

    Kits where the parts are reused in a variety of ways are good. Beware of kits with specialized "one-trick-pony" parts. Any component that can only be used for a single project is a waste of space and demonstrates bad design.
    • I just followed the Ramsey Electronics [ramseyelectronics.com] link in the main article, and they are all 1-shot-kits that I was recommending against.

      I was about to post a link to a radioshack kit when I saw the AMAZING 500-in-1 Electronics Lab [hobbytron.net] in a post on here from Usquebaugh. It's not cheap - $169.65 US - but if your kids take to it, it can easily be more valuable than a semester of math/science/computer courses in college.

      If $170 is too steep the same site also has a page here [hobbytron.com] starting at 50-in-1 for $20, 75-in-1 for $24, 200-in-1 for $50, and 300-in-1 for $70. (Note: based strictly on the pictures the 200-in-1 looks better than the 300-in-1?? The 300-in-1 seems to blow alot of space on the switches/dials/speaker, and what is the large white non-descript area in the middle?)

      • See this [jameco.com], You use it to plug in electronic componates without having to solder or wirewrap them. The holes are electricaly connected in 5-hole patterns [howstuffworks.com] under the plastic face.
        • The holes are electricaly connected in 5-hole patterns under the plastic face.

          That what I thought it looked like, but I assumed I must have been missing something because that is just more dead space. The 300 kit looks like it has a LOT less than the 200 kit. Can anyone explain this?
          • The 200 uses only springs to connect things(you bend the spring over and shove a (or more) wires in between the coils). This means that all the componets must be layed out on the board. And stay thare.

            The 300 makes use of a breadboard, this means that for each project you can lay out the componets as closly as you want. What you don't see in the pic of the 300 is the bag of resistors, caps, leds, wires, IC's diods, etc. that comes with it. The ironic thing is the 200 wastes space because you have to deal with the parts that your current project doesn't need. OTOH I have a habbit of chewing on a wire or LED when I'm podnering something. (I always get my daily recomended value of GaN+SiC :) +5 CoolPoints if you know what color that is!)

            Bottom line:
            int age=n
            int product=0
            if {age=
            then product=200;
            eles product=300;
            }
            return happy customer;

            I do own the 200, it nice but I would prefer the 300. It has a breadboard and thoes are ALWAYS useful for messing around with all kind of circuts that you don't find in the manual.

            • What you don't see in the pic...

              Ahhhhhh! Okey. That's why I included my disclaimer "based strictly on the picture".

              GaN+SiC :) +5 CoolPoints if you know what color that is!

              Ouch! You've got tough standards for cool points! How many cool points do I get for knowing that is Gallium / Nitrogen and Silicon / Carbon, and then being able to immediately discover the correct answer is BLUE just by entering one address [google.com] in my browser and finding "GaN+SiC BLUE" on the first line? Correction/clarifaction Nitrogen->Nitride and Carbon->Carbide

              Can I regain lost cool points by optimizing your code?

              int age=n
              int product=300 /* if gets a default value anyway, may as well make a good guess! */
              if age&lt 4;
              then product=200;
              return happy customer;

              or the cooler (but possibly less portable):
              product=300+100*(age&lt 4) /* false = zero, true normally = -1 */

              And you'd recommened the 300 for age 4 and up? Or typo? Damn, I thought *I* gave low age estimates for children's toys :) (I was a precocious child)
  • As a child I built many different electronic gadgets with kits. While I enjoyed doing so, I can't say I learned a lot from the experience. The instructions were usually very basic. They told you how to assemble the device, but contained little or no explantion of how it worked. While I don't expect a kit suitable for a child to contain an in depth primer on electro-magnetic theory, it would be nice if it at least provided an intuitive description of how the circuits and components functioned.

    That said, does anyone know of a company that makes kits with documentation that could actually be considered educational (beyond a trivial level)?

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