500-in-1 Electronics Kits?

Oneamp asks: "I'm interested in a '500-in-one' type electronics kit. Amazon lists a few, but I've seen some user reviews that maybe they are not all they're cracked up to be. Most of the complaints seem to be of the 'Manual sucks' variety. Nevertheless, I'm sold on the idea. Can any of you, who have had actual experience with any of these kits, recommend a good one?"

well

[mastershake_phd]

If its 500 in 1 that manual would have to be huse to, um, not suck. # 152 [page] starter course manual! # 78 page advanced course manual! # 140 page programming course manual! ------------ 370 / 500 = .74 pages per project.

Most of their manuals do suck.

[Kadin2048]

To be honest, I think your best bet is to get the kit and the "manual" separately.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to tutor an absolutely prodigal young kid, who happened to be 'into' electricity that season. I couldn't find any electricial kits that seemed up to snuff in both the hardware and manuals departments, so instead I ended up taking one of the bigger Radioshack kits, and then using some of the Forrest M. Mims III [amazon.com] books as project guides. Why they don't have that guy do the manuals for the kits I have no idea, because he's really quite good.

For the few projects we wanted to do where the board didn't have the right parts, I just hacked them on, either in place of parts that I thought were trivial (resistors, etc.), or just by drilling a new hole in the board surface and adding it in.

Re:give it a try

[neonleonb]

I had one as a kid, and I was wildly disappointed. I followed the directions in the manual, and made circuits that did things, but I had no idea how anything worked. All the circuits used op-amps and similar crap; even after taking a college electronics class for physics students, I still don't understand how an op-amp works. I know more or less what it's supposed to do, but its guts are a mystery to me.

They look a little sparse

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess nowadays you are supposed to do everything with ICs. When I was a kid the kit I had had a couple of basic ICs (NAND and NOR gates IIRC) and it came with about a hundred other discrete parts, resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and LEDs to speakers, meters, and photocells. These kits look like they have a handful of ICs and almost nothing else. The LCD is a nice touch though, a lot better than the 8 segment LED I had.

One thing I remember is that, when you're 8, an IC might as well be a device of magic. The discrete components are a little easier to understand. Change a capacitor or a resistor and the pitch of the sound or the reading on the meter changes. Change a connection on the IC and everything just stops working or does something baffling. If you just want to build the circuits without understanding what they do then the ICs can do more but you won't learn anything.

If you want to learn about ICs that is great too but you can do that better with a breadboard, and when you're 12-14 and better able to understand them.

Re:give it a try

[Mikkeles]

'... but I had no idea how anything worked....'

That's sort of like complaining that Tinker Toys or Lego don't come with detailed descriptions of strength of material and molecular dynamics.

Re:give it a try

[MindKata]

"I had one as a kid, and I was wildly disappointed. I followed the directions in the manual, and made circuits that did things, but I had no idea how anything worked"

I had a few of the earlier kits like this back when I was still at school. (Thinking back it must have been around about 24 years ago!) ... I think they are a great way to get into learning about electronics. They also allow building circuits faster than with a soldering iron so again good for learning. They are also a starting point to find new ways to adapt the circuits they provide with the kits.

The problem isn't the kits. The problem is with your approach to the subject. You imply you want a ready made package of all you need to know to understand electronics. That will not happen. The field of electronics is potentially a life time of studying. You can go as deep into the subject as you wish. No one book or one kit can every show it all. Anyone truly enthusiastic about a subject seeks out information wherever they can. The great thing about learning these days is the internet now provides a vast extra resource to help study just about any subject.

Re:They look a little sparse

[Grishnakh]

Um, no. The point of ICs is they have many advantages over purely discrete designs, but if you're trying to learn the fundamentals of electrical theory, they won't help very much. To learn the fundamentals of something, you can't start with the state-of-the-art in that area.

Worse, most ICs require some external discrete components to operate. If you don't understand the fundamentals of capacitors and inductors and such, how will you understand how to select the proper components to use with a special-purpose IC? You could just follow the data sheet's suggested circuits, or a circuit in an application note, but you're not going to learn much that way.