nocomment's Journal: Electronics kits

My son turns 10 today and he wants an electronics kit for his b-day. Anyone have any good recomendations? I had one when I was little but none of the diagrams worked. I was particlarly dissapointed with the 'lie detector' schematic that pretty much assumed you had just run a mile is liquid copper to work properly.

What are some good kits that are out there now?

kit + 3rd party book

[davidwr]

I think I saw this very question on /. or another techno-blog recently.

The best answer I saw was buy a kit with lots of discrete parts then buy a third-party book.

You know better than anyone if your kid is looking for old-school analog stuff, strictly digital, or a mix. You know better than anyone else if he's into robots, lights and bells, etc. or if he wants to build a radio. Buy parts and books accordingly.

Some kids have PC-add-on circuits so he can program it using a PC. If he's into that, then look

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[nocomment]

Ya he's far ahead for his age. I taught him binary AND hex one afternoon. We also had an old-world beige G3 sitting around that he installed gentoo on. Gentoo isn't for mere mortals anyway, but if you've ever tried installing linux on an old-world apple, and then couple that with gentoo, it'll give you an idea of how sharp this kid is.

I think he's sort of into the bells and lights kind of thing.

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[Talinom]

With him being that sharp let's all breath a sigh of relief that he isn't into robots.

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[nocomment]

soon enough I think. We had a remote control car that was driven off a curb and the rear axle broke. His first thought was that the motors and electronics still work, so why not hook up the blades from his helicopter to them? that way he can use the left/right control on the remote to control the rear rotor, and the up down control to speed up the forward rotor.

Scary really.

He's too much like his old man. ;) He's going to be the death of us all. I think they talk about him in revelations don't they?

Radioshack...

[FroMan]

Since it is for a 10yo, I'd suggest a kit. I don't recall what I had as a kid for sure, but it was basically one of those 200 in 1 kits. Some of the setups were cool, other's not so much, so don't let your view that the because one project didn't work totally skip it.

If he were a little older or more self starting you could opt to just get a project book from walden and a $50 gift certificate to radio shack. Get setup with a 1.5v battery, bread board, wire kit, and pack of random resistors to start. The

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[nocomment]

For about 6 or 7 months he's been tinkering with some things. I gave him my old breadboard that I used in highschool, and went to radio shack and bought some LED's, some bulbs etc....

I gave the the crash course on series vs. paralell circuits, and he's been going crazy with it ever since.

He's actually made some pretty complex designs using combinations of series and paralell depending on his needs of the diodes.

I actually have 3 soldering irons, one of them is that 'cold heat' thing. It's the worst solder

not an electronics kit

[stoolpigeon]

but lego mindstorm is awesome. a bit pricey - but so frigging cool.

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[nocomment]

I actually thought of that. But's that's more of a hobby. One that I'm not going to fund. ;)