Electronic kits for beginners

Thread Starter

SwaggedUpInventor

Joined Mar 22, 2017
1
Greeting ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to be a part of these forums, it's recently that I discovered my interest in technology and electrical engineering and decided to follow it, see where it takes me.

I am currently reading the AAC textbook and other sources as well, through my research I have come across what are known as electronic kits, I'm interested in getting one of these kits but wanted advice and opinions.

So like which kit exactly would be most suitable for beginners? Are they a worthy investment?? What was your experience with them?? Enlighten me please and tell me everything I need to know.

Thanks!! :)
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,976
There are different kinds of "electronic kits", so you need to be more specific. Offhand you have:
1) Kits that are intended to build one item -- a kit to build a simple robot, or a multimeter, or a radio, for instance.
2) Kits that are a collection of parts to use as a resource for building whatever you want -- nothing specific.
3) Kits that are intended to let you build many different things and reuse the items so that you can build something else.

The first kind are good for building basic items (or not so basic) that you want to use again and again. This used to be a great way to build up test equipment -- don't know that that's still the case.

The second kind are useful to have once you are building projects that are of your own design. You will probably want to build up a collection of resistors, potentiometers, capacitors, diodes, and perhaps some basic digital ICs, opamps, and voltage regulators pretty soon into your journey. But it is best to wait until you start getting a feel for what would be nice to have on hand.

If you are just beginning to dabble with electronics, then the third kind has a lot going for it. You usually get dozens (or even hundreds) of different things you can build and each project generally has schematics, wiring diagrams, theory of operation, and perhaps some kind of narrative about the history of the circuit or the kinds of things it is used for. Once you have finished one project you can tear it down and build another one.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,839
Welcome to AAC!
So like which kit exactly would be most suitable for beginners? Are they a worthy investment??
If you're referring to assemble yourself kits, it depends on your interests.

If you're referring to assortments of parts, I'd get an assortment of resistors and skip the rest (capacitors, diodes, IC's, LEDs, transistors, etc); buying parts you use in qty 10-100 and gradually building up a stock of parts that you're likely to use.
 
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