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Your Favorite Electronics Kit Answered

Tandy used to produce introductory electronics guides so you could teach yourself and buy Radio Shack parts. Before them, heath kits were king. Today, snap circuits are popular. What's your favorite electronics kit? Why do you like it? What are your favorite projects for learning electronics? What could you make with the best kit ever?


the heathkit stuff looks awesome (looked up in wikipedia, lol) but I can see why it would no longer work in a more modern world

When I was young, I had one of those Radioshack board device things that consisted of a bunch of sensor & input devices around the board, and a breadboard in the center. It then came with a bunch of resistors, caps, a few ICs like NAND's &c.; I don't think I learned anything advanced from it, yet it still imbued me with the taste for electronics.


9 years ago

When I was a kid, my folks bought me a kit made by Olson Electronics, a now-defunct manufacturer / distributer. At one time, they made a lot of cool stuff. I just recently re-discovered the kit; it's 90% whole, and the manual's there, too.

Circuits: amplifiers, radios (receive and transmit), oscillators, etc. Came with a whopping two transistors!

Each component was mounted in plastic holders that fit into a larger plastic "perfboard." Each holder had metal pins; one for each lead. The wires had small clips that slipped over the metal pins, completing the circuit.

Sorry for this trip down memory lane; I really don't know what's available now, especially if Tandy has stopped selling kits.... :P