
Show HN: Learn how to build electronics with monthly kits - adammunich
https://thimble.io
======
beshrkayali
I like the idea of an electronics kit with instructions.

But (and I'm sorry if this sounds negative but I'm just FED UP) I'm so SICK of
freaking subscription services. Can't you guys just rely on interested
customers coming back if they want to? The way I see it, there's absolutely no
relation between the message you have on the site to teach people electronics
and make a few bucks while you're at it, and the need for customers to have
accounts, registration, subscription and all of that crap. Just let me buy the
kit I'm interested in and be done with it! With so many subscription services
around, I'm following a policy of immediately disregarding anything following
the same model, specially if there's really no need for it. Make a one-time
purchase option, with no registration or crappy spammy emails and I'd be
interested (yes i know you won't share my details with 3rd party but you'll
hammer me with emails on every freaking occasion I know.)

~~~
pc86
Ability to buy multiple kits on demand = requirement for inventory = higher
overhead = higher prices. Theoretically. You can tweak the inventory need but
that still increases overhead (less) while simultaneously cutting into your
margins.

Any time you see "$400 value for $10/mo!" it's marketing garbage, but you
really can get for $20/mo what would probably cost you $25 or a little more if
you bought it on-demand.

~~~
beshrkayali
I'm okay with that extra 5 bucks for their inventory cost if they allow me to
opt out of permanently saving my details on their servers. No matter how many
times I unsubscribe from their emails, they always start a new list and I'm
strangely on it again.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
My issue with learning electronics is that there's a steep gap between "plug
this into that" and "plug this into that _because x_ ". I want to learn how to
reason about the latter. Most resources I've seen like this don't give you
that, they just have a bunch of prefab projects and lead you through them with
the former strategy. Fortunately I've been able to learn some of the latter on
my own but it would be great to see a good resource for the former.

I know how to program. I don't want to program a microcontroller to do all of
the work. I don't want to build a "WiFi robot", I want to build a simple
circuit with a few LEDs and understand completely how it works and why it was
designed that way. I want to know how to choose the right batteries and
resistors, or what components I need for arbitrary projects.

~~~
blackguardx
I recommend The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill.

I'm an electrical engineer and in my experience most EE courses are very math
heavy. This is because the theory behind electronics is very math heavy. Many
people don't enjoy doing math problems in their spare time, though. The thing
is that after you get past the theory and into the practice, the math mostly
drops away as you learn abstractions and little tricks to aid in designing
circuits. I like The Art of Electronics because it has the math there if you
need it, but assumes you didn't get past Algebra. It mostly leads with the
abstractions and little tricks that you would use to design circuits with a
just a pen and paper.

Some people find it tedious, though. My advice is not to read it cover to
cover. Read the parts that interest you and use the rest as a reference.

~~~
vvanders
I'll second the recommendation, it does a great job of not only covering
things but explaining why you'd use certain components and the engineering
trade-offs required(the section on transistors is fantastic). It's old but
still very relevant today.

If I remember correctly they even go from transistor up to building an entire
8-bit micro in addition to the excellent analog reference.

As someone who isn't an EE I found it still very straightforward to follow if
a bit dense(in a good way) in some sections.

~~~
manyxcxi
I started in EE in college and ended up switching to CpE (Computer
Engineering, which basically was 60/40 CS/EE) because I found I liked the
programming slightly more than the EE side of things.

I still find the book a tad dense at times but it's absolutely a must have for
anyone that cares more about the why than the how. As said above, this is a
fantastic reference book, you will likely never read this cover to cover
unless you're following it as instruction material for a class.

Anymore these days, with all the breakouts and instructables a person could
very likely get by with know whether something needs 5v or 3.3v (if that).

I feel like these monthly subscriptions are good for a while for someone who
wants to get into the hobby and has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where to start. You get
the inspiration, materials, and help specifically for the task at hand without
all the other noise.

I have a feeling that after a few months if the person is still keenly
interested they wouldn't need the subscription anymore and I'd be surprised if
most subscribers stayed on past 6-9 months because of this (or the opposite).

------
coupdejarnac
Step 1: Buy Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims, or any other
book by him. Step 2: Build all the projects in his books. You'll only need a
proto board and a few other cheap components.

You'll build up an intuition in electronics by doing all these projects. If
you want to throw a microcontroller in the mix, get the cheap TI MSP430
Launchpad- it's about $5, and you can use C or Arduino.

~~~
nkozyra
> Step 1: Buy Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims

This is the defacto book for beginners but I've never really been able to
parse the format. I've gone through a lot of books and none seem to match the
approach (gently, less formal) with some formatting that is easy to ingest.

I do love the Launchpads, and they were a ton of fun to use (the IDE is a
beast, though). I'd say starting with Arduino or a Pi before a microcontroller
is a natural step for beginners, though.

~~~
tlrobinson
Arduinos are microcontrollers... but I get what you're saying, a more
beginner-friendly microcontroller stack.

------
htoooh
An alternative which I subscribe to is Hackerboxes[0]. It's a bit cheaper at
$44/month and each month's box comes with all of the required hardware. You
can check out the instructions for past boxes here[1].

I've followed both thimble.io and Hackerboxes prior to launch and thimble.io
definitely has more thorough instructions and a nice learning platform[2]
which may be less intimidating for beginners.

I ended up going with Hackerboxes because the kits include all the parts, use
of open source hardware, the lower price, and they've already shipped a year's
worth of kits.

[0] [http://www.hackerboxes.com/](http://www.hackerboxes.com/)

[1]
[http://www.instructables.com/member/HackerBoxes/instructable...](http://www.instructables.com/member/HackerBoxes/instructables/)

[2] [https://learning.thimble.io/](https://learning.thimble.io/)

~~~
antjanus
Is there a subscription box that sends you just the parts for a project that
uses an Arduino? Basically, I want to save cost by not having to get the
(usually) most expensive part of the kit. I don't mind dismantling each
month's project to reuse the core components.

~~~
StavrosK
From what I can see, Hackerboxes use an ESP8266 01 or an Arduino Nano, both of
which cost around $2. You will definitely not be paying lots for the MCU, and
it's good to have lots of them (I have around 20 of various types at any time)
because they're dirt cheap and you can use them anywhere.

------
impostervt
The price is a bit steep. I could probably justify it if I saw more project
examples with a parts list. I can get an arduino uno knockoff from Amazon for
about $5, so I'd want to know what is included to justify the price. Of course
a major part of the price is coming up with kit, sourcing all the parts, etc.

~~~
BoorishBears
Arduino kits have never been a good value proposition from a parts list
perspective, you tend to hope it's the ease of access and guided learning that
make it worthwhile.

Starter kits with pennies worth of a few passive components and a few
"interesting" sensors on breakouts sell for 50$+. Taken at their parts list
you could get a thousand assorted pieces of most of the passive components for
a few bucks on eBay, and you could get the breakouts on AliExpress for a few
bucks too.

But the time it'd take to wait for a packet from China, or even from the US
for a small premium, can disrupt someone who's just learning. If you forget a
part, that can be a week of waiting. The kit promises everything you'll need.

And the guided nature helps beginners not get caught up in the minutiae of
designing things. Google "turn on LED with Arduino" and you'll get answers
ranging from "just stick it in series with an IO pin(not a great idea imo)",
to "use a NPN transistor (which leads down its own train of learning as to how
it works and why it's needed)" and a bunch of stuff in between".

I know _some_ basic electronics (I think), and felt I was better off
"splurging" on AliExpress and eBay once and filling a drawer with an
assortment of passive components and breakouts to sensors I thought might be
interesting and just building stuff as it came to mind.

A handful of ESP8266s and some assorted sensors can make for some pretty
interesting projects by themselves

~~~
blackguardx
FWIW, Atmel AVR (the Arduino microcontroller) I/Os are typically beefy enough
to drive the 20 mA that LEDs usually like to get nice and bright. It was one
of their early differentiators.

Depending on the LED, I would have no problem driving it directly with just a
current limiting resisitor.

------
echelon
This is _exactly_ what I need. I got an undergraduate education in CS and
biochem, and now that I'm employed it felt impossible to devote time or energy
to studying electronics. The subject is simply too deep. I was worried the
only way I'd ever be able to learn would be to go back to university. This
looks like a solution to my problem!

The only thing I worry about is a lack of mathematical rigor, but I suppose as
long as I can get hands on experience that amounts to much more than I'd
accomplish on my own.

In any event, this is beyond awesome and I'm subscribing as soon as I get
home.

~~~
akiselev
Analytical solutions in circuit analysis are impossible for the vast majority
of nontrivial circuit designs and few subfields of electrical engineering
require computer simulations so you wont see much mathematical rigor in
practice. Electrical engineering is all about rules of thumb, experience, and
intuition unless you're designing something like a high efficiency power
circuit, a complex high speed digital or mixed mode design, or an antenna.
Most of the time, my circuit designs are based off of reference designs
provided by the part manufacturer, who also provide routing and design
guidelines. As long as I'm not pushing the limits with fabrication (bigger
board, more layers to route, few overlapping power domains, large vias and no
microvias, etc) the first prototype usually just works, with a few minor
mistakes and oversights, without having to do any math or simulations.

By the time intuition and documentation fails an experienced electrical
engineer, they're probably designing something that costs tens of thousands of
dollars to prototype and hundreds of thousands worth of testing equipment.
It'll be a long while before you get to that point so I wouldn't worry about
the math, although I still recommend studying it because it might help develop
that intuition.

------
vortico
All I have is a breadboard, some wire, a variety of passive components and ICs
from HK ($20 total for tens of thousands of parts), a USB oscilloscope (eBay
$60-$200), and maybe an AVR or STM32 development board. I'm overwhelmed by the
number of analog and digital projects I can do, and I've been messing around
with my kit for a couple years. I mostly do hobby filter design and audio
synthesis.

~~~
quineoa
Do you have a link to the "passsive components"? What sort of thigns were you
able to get in that pack?

~~~
vortico
I won't link any, but it's probably cheaper to buy variety packs of individual
types of components. Search on eBay for "resistor assortment", "transistor
assortment", "electrolytic capacitor assortment", "diode assortment", "LED
assortment", "ceramic capacitor assortment", etc. Each of these packs of a few
thousand mixed components are $0.50 to $4 shipped worldwide from China. Then
pick up the most common ICs like the ne555p, lm741, lm393, pc817, etc. The
game here is quantity over quality, so you never need a part that you don't
have. Once you prototype your idea, then use Mouser to pick out your parts
made with better quality control, although they're 10x more expensive. But
this isn't a problem, as you should know exactly what you need after a
prototype.

~~~
Steeeve
This is a great plan. I'm always astounded at the cost of individual
components when you are looking for something specific, and the general lack
of availability of things at places like Fry's or Radio Shack which were
always well stocked with cheap options when I was young.

------
SexyCyborg
No pictures is just silly.

I'm not at all technical by nature. I learned from the ARDX kit (but I still
don't know much). It's what I recommend to other women. Work on it like a
jigsaw puzzle in front of the TV at night for as many nights as it takes to
finish.

One project per kit is a problem because you can't just move on to the next
project. You get stuck and frustrated. I find dealing with that frustration is
a big part of technical learning for beginners that lack confidence. with a
kit that gives you a lot of projects you don't go to bed feeling dumb like you
can't do this. This matters. At least to me.

------
gravypod
50 bucks is pretty steep for a student like me. If something in the $20 range
(that included no arduinos, just really shitty and cheap stuff off the
"Shenzhen market" as Dave would say). No brand name stuff and I'd be fine with
crappier instructions.

The cutoff for college student involvement is pretty much $20 and that's where
the bread and butter market for something like this is. EE/CE/CS student's who
want to be able to "do" electronics. Intersplice it will lesses on simple
formulas we need in class and you've got a winner, you could even recylce kits
every semester.

~~~
coupdejarnac
Presumably you have access to EE labs and don't need a kit at all? You're
probably paying a lot more than $50 for access to EE labs.

~~~
gravypod
Sadly no. You need to take an EE course AND buy an EE kit. Also don't get me
started on the machine shop.

~~~
coupdejarnac
I'm willing to bet they have some old dev kits not being used by classes
anymore that you could check out. Sure, they won't be Arduino, but you're not
going to learn anything making Arduino sketches anyway. Look for a Freescale
6812 or TI DSP kit.

------
Animats
That's so retro. Take a look at the ads in this 1957 issue of Popular
Electronics.[1] "You can train at home for good pay jobs Radio-Television -
Get Practical Experience with Kits N.R.I. sends." (p.99) "You build AC-DC
Superhet Receiver". "You build Vacuum Tube Voltmeter". A competing school
offers a course that gets all the way up to building a TV kit. (p.7) And
there's the DeVry Technical Institute, trying to sign up veterans back then
and still at it today.

Distance learning goes back a long way.

[1] [http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-
Poptronics/50s/5...](http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-
Poptronics/50s/57/Pop-1957-01.pdf)

------
gus_massa
I wanted to find at least one photo of the kit. The video is similar, but I
prefer at least 2 or 3 photos.

About the video: (I didn't watch it f100%) Do all projects require soldering?
Can I filter for non soldering projects? (Actually, I can solder but not
extremely good. I even tried a few home made projects with my daughter so she
can learn to solder, but she has already done many non soldering projects.)

~~~
dbalatero
It won't take too much to feel confident soldering. Watch a few videos, do
some intentional practice, and you'll be good in no time. I just kept building
projects and I'm fine now.

~~~
gus_massa
I can solder. It's just that I have to redo 1/3 of them and most of the times
the solder joint is too cold. (I have a Chemistry specialization in secondary
school. We learned a bit about electric circuits including soldering, but it's
not my specialization.)

Anyway, I suspect that non-soldering projects may have a bigger audience.

~~~
throwanem
Some advice I'd have appreciated early on, because it took me a long while to
figure out on my own:

Use a tiny dab of solder on the iron tip for better heat transfer, and heat
the joint for longer than it feels like you should need to. Melt the solder
wire against the joint, not the iron - the iron will always melt solder, but
that's not what it's there for; it's there to heat the joint until _that_
melts the solder, which is what needs to happen for proper wetting and bonding
to occur.

Also, resist the temptation to use too much solder; you don't want a blob, but
rather a clean, concave flow from wire to pad. That's how you avoid cold
joints.

~~~
jacobolus
> _heat the joint for longer than it feels like you should need to._

You shouldn’t heat the joint for more than about 2 seconds before feeding
solder into it. If you need longer than that, you probably don’t have a
properly tinned tip or a properly cleaned joint, or your tip is too small, or
perhaps your iron has low heat capacity.

I also highly recommend using lead-based flux-core solder, e.g. 63/37 Kester
44. The lead-free stuff is awful to work with.

Anyone trying to learn to solder should watch these videos, especially #1:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837)

~~~
throwanem
I run my iron cool to avoid overheating joints, a nasty habit left over from
years of not knowing what I was doing. It takes six or eight seconds to heat a
joint. Running at a higher temperature would probably obviate the need for the
extra dab of solder on the tip, too; I add a tiny drop and roll it against the
joint, but with a higher setting, I probably wouldn't need to.

~~~
kbaker
There's probably not a huge risk running it cooler, but I would definitely try
to learn the correct way to save time. I have always tried to explain it like
this: the idea is that the iron gets both areas to above the melting point of
the solder, so that when solder is applied it cleanly wicks into both the pin
and the pad.

Try and place the iron so that it heats both the pin and the pad at the same
time. It helps to have a tiny bit of solder on the tip. Then, after around 1
second (unless the pad is on a ground plane, then maybe much longer...), feed
in a bit of solder. It should melt and flow immediately on application. You
don't need a lot to get a good connection, it should make a little 'hill' on
the PCB. Remove the solder, then remove the iron. The joint should cool and
leave a nice shiny connection (depends on the solder.)

Tip for using lead-free solder: when you are done soldering, always leave a
big blob of solder on the tip before turning the iron off. This way, the tip
doesn't oxidize in air while cooling, and you don't have to clean the tip all
the time. Next time you solder, just one wipe of the tip after it heats up and
it will be shiny and ready to go.

------
throwaway4891a
HeathKit partically-reinvented themselves:
[https://shop.heathkit.com/shop](https://shop.heathkit.com/shop)

I remember changing the channel on a color HeathKit TV at my grandparents by
shaking house keys because the ultrasonic remote sensor circuit interpreted it
as channel down. (It had a diagnostic and circuit diagram on a fold-down panel
IIRC.)

Also my father and grandfather both made multiple technology generations of
oscilloscopes from kits. And, my father opened an electrical automotive shop
in Santa Clara, thanks in part to learning from HeathKit and other study-at-
home electronics courses.

------
peter303
I did this in the 1960s with American Basic Science Club. The projects were
incremental- the amplifier tube one month became the core of the radio
receiver next month and hamradio telegraph another month. I got almost
everything to work. It was five dollars a month then, maybe 75 dollar in
current money. [http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-
stories/americ...](http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-
stories/american-basic-science-club-case-history-of-a-successful-small-
business/) I see similar kits are making a comeback.

------
acupofnope
This is great! Are there similar subscription services in the UK/Europe?

~~~
skolor
I have no idea about the quality, but I saw this kit getting posted on Twitter
this afternoon: [http://www.boldport.club/](http://www.boldport.club/). It
looks a little simpler, but may scratch the itch you're looking for.

------
hahamrfunnyguy
Nice looking site and packaging. I am teaching myself analog electronics
design, and something to help me achieve that objective quicker would be nice.
I am doing it as a hobby and don't want to spend a lot either!

I think the price of $50 or $60 for a random kit is a too expensive[1]. A
better model for the product, in my opinion is a magazine + bag of parts and
materials $20-$30 monthly or bi-monthly seems fair. The parts and materials
could be used to build circuits and conduct experiments that help you better
understand the theory.

[1]As a reference point, for probably $20, you could get yourself a TI
launchpad (or similar) and a bunch of parts that would allow you to build a
TON of fun and interesting circuits.

------
Elizzy
So I subscribed, but the site says the next kit ships in November 2016. When
do new subscribers expect to see their kits?

~~~
pokeymc
One of the devs here... looks like that was caused by an A/B testing template
from the people dealing with marketing. It's been fixed.

edit: Just to be clear, the next kit does ship in January 2017.

~~~
ludicast
A/B testing doesn't mean 30% get this bug, 30% this one, yada yada.

J/K your kit seems awesome and I think I'll subscribe myself. Want to up my
electronics game so something like that might keep me on pace.

------
borski
This is kind of like NerdKits, only NerdKits is a one-time purchase with
dozens of different projects you can make.

[http://www.nerdkits.com](http://www.nerdkits.com)

------
larrykubin
Love this idea. Please post some photos of the kits and example projects.

------
curiousmonkey90
I am trying to decide between Adabox from Adafruit and Thimble. Does anyone
has experience with these two subscriptions?

~~~
VLM
I received the adabox second box just before Christmas. Its a ton of stuff, I
feel I got far more than my $60 worth although of course its stuff they
selected not stuff I selected. I did not sign up in time to get the first box,
so I can't comment on the first box. I think the first box was something with
RGB LEDs, looks interesting.

The second box is "make a robot" with a feather which is an adafruit thing
which is a custom arduino with on board bluetooth. It looks extremely easy to
me, but I am not a noob to either electronics or mechanics. Its a nice little
set, everything you need to mess around with a little robot.

Its "make a robot" in the post 1990s sense of a robot is a homemade RC car
with homemade UI. Not make a robot in the pre 1990s sense of its possibly a
stationary arm, or its autonomous, or it does something other than be a
possibly weaponized RC car. So its a rather basic homemade RC car, OK cool.

Needless to say with the holiday obligations I've done nothing with it other
than watch the videos and paw it all over and there's no way I'm going to get
to mess with it due to obligations etc until well after the new year.

Everything seems very well selected and packed and looks fun. It looks quite
expandable. Somewhere on my cluttered workbench I have a nice
IMU/magnetometer/accelerometer I2C board and I think it would be fun to bolt
on. It is not maxed out and cries out to be messed with and expanded. Its open
loop motors, so I'd like to use a simple IMU board to close the loop so a 90
degree turn really is 90 degrees and so on. Also I could use the magnetometer
to discipline the straight line such that its really straight not a curve with
a large unknown radius. That'll probably be my first experiment on my own
after I complete the official published experiments.

My decades of experience with boxes implies that if a company mostly sells
"stuff" and occasionally offers a box or gift basket it'll be a great deal
with overstocked items marked down as much as 50%, maybe more, but if its a
"gift box company" the prices of the components (perhaps a cheese log or a
summer sausage) will be marked UP at least 100% to 500%. So because adafruit
is mostly a "stuff seller" and not a "box seller" the box price to retail
component price ratio is awesome. There must be $120+ of retail price stuff in
the $60 adabox. The thimble being a company focused on selling boxes, I would
assume the price ratio will be more like the "sausage and cheese holiday gift
box" biz where the box is at least 200% of retail component price. I would be
happy to be surprised if thimble is in fact a good value, but observations of
parallel businesses implies that would be quite an achievement if they pull it
off.

------
ruminasean
This kind of thread is exactly the reason I read HN every day. You folks all
rock. You just cost me a lot of money, but it's for all kind of fun stuff I
can probably use at work as an entertainment electrician.

Thanks for the Hacker Box rec too, just subscribed. My crew at work is already
excited.

------
kwhitefoot
Probably better to subscribe to something like Everyday Practical Electronics
(UK) or Elektor (Netherlands) if you want some random projects. Then you get a
chance to reject the ones you aren't interested in.

Anyway USD59 a month is ridiculous, you can by a big Arduino kit for less than
the price of one month, for instance this one: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-
Ultimate-UNO-R3-Starter-Kit-For-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Ultimate-
UNO-R3-Starter-Kit-For-Arduino-1602-LCD-Servo-Motor-Relay-RTC-
LED-/311615042684?hash=item488db4347c:g:mPgAAOSwPCVX~dlT)

After that you can just buy bits and pieces as needed.

There is no shortage of free help to be found online, all you need do is ask.

------
raphaelb
Cool! I was just talking about something very similar - some kind of parent +
kid project kit box, for busy parents who want to work with their kids on
something but don't have the knack / time to figure it all out for themselves.

~~~
travanx
I was looking for similar as well. Have an 8 month old and plopped him down to
watch the intro video and he looked pretty interested. Looks like a bunch of
different learning all at once, why not try to teach algebra at an early age,
or whatever the thimble website is getting at with how early a kid can start
learning to code? I am running a small business and don't have the time I use
to have, mucking around for parts trying to nickel and dime everything. Civil
Engr over here who wants his kid to engage in this kind of stuff instead of
handing a tablet over for him to watch youtube cartoons.

------
jugg1es
This is interesting but I'm not particularly impressed with the seemingly-
outdated website. Says the next kit will ship Nov 2016? Not going to sign up
for a recurring subscription for something that may never come.

------
fillskills
Was just thinking today of how to get started with hardware as a software
engineer. Signing up now. Quick conversion suggestions - show real people on
the landing page, show pictures of the real product.

------
brutus1213
This is mildly off-topic. I just got a robot, motor shield and and Arduino for
my 8 year old niece. In about 10 mins, we put the robot chassis together. The
software was a different story. She had used code.org with its scratch-like
blockly-based programming language. This made her think processing was too
complicated and generally unappealing. Anyone else have ideas on how to deal
with this?

------
dominotw
I am having trouble find an example of the kit that I would be receiving. Can
anyone link me to an example, I am very interested in this .

~~~
rebelshrug
I'm a customer, not a Thimble employee - but here are the instructions for the
1st kit:

[https://learning.thimble.io/modules/wi-fi-bot-
part-1](https://learning.thimble.io/modules/wi-fi-bot-part-1)

Should give you an idea of what's included.

------
kabdib
Wow, that's really expensive.

I've subscribed to HackerBoxes since their start; significantly cheaper
(sometimes thrown together and a little cheap, but never boring).

------
ChuckMcM
So _boom!_ there are at least three of these, thimble.io, hackerboxes, and
Adabox. They are all basically the same idea, every month a new "kit" of parts
etc comes in. You open the box, you use the parts to build something, and then
in another month something else shows up.

The weak spot in all three seems to be the curriculum.

So in general I love that this takes the 'get the stuff' problem out of the
way. Sure you can buy a book on transistor projects or computer projects, but
then you have to source the parts and move from there. The same issue happens
with the "starter kits".

Back in the 80's and 90's a number of people made "<some#>-in-1" electronic
boxes. These usually had the components mounted on a substrate and usually
came in two flavors, in the first flavor everything was mounted on the
substrate and you just stuck wire between springs to make your circuits[1].
Then they added a breadboard and you could wire up the basic circuit on the
breadboard with the knobs and such around it[2]. And then even some compute
stuff built in[3].

So what generally makes these things engaging are either they are easy to
start and get more interesting as you build on your knowledge, or they
culminate into something useful. There was an RCA technician training course
where you built all of the components of a color television and then assembled
them into the final unit[4]. You got a color TV out of it and a lucrative
career in television repair :-).

I'm not trying to be dismissive of this idea, I'm trying to say that these
ideas work best when they have an editorial position, a path, start points and
end points. Imagine a web design "box" type product where each month you got a
box with some aspect of web site design. It would include exercises and text
book type material, quizzes and working problems so that at the end of each
month you had mastered some part of the web service stack. So perhaps your
first month would be about putting up a web server, the second month about
getting keys so that it can be secured with SSL, then the third month CSS that
helps style the pages, and the fourth month maybe PHP or a JS module. Each
month with a digestable bit that assumes you're going to spend perhaps one or
two evenings a week on the material. At the end of the year you have a full
web app deployed on a droplet or something. But every month you get something
that works and something that builds on the overall thing.

Electronics can do that if you pick a specific area of interest, so sensors or
computers or radio or audio.

An editorial spin like that could take the box idea and take it to a whole new
level I think.

[1] [https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/9141qwL5XvL...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/9141qwL5XvL._SL1500_.jpg)

[2]
[http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NT...](http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NTQ=/300in1_lab=Mjg2)

[3]
[http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NT...](http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NTQ=/discontinued_-_500-in-1_electronic_project_lab=Mjg3)

[4]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=wi0DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA39&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=wi0DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=color+television+course+build+a+tv&source=bl&ots=JtG4LsOvCQ&sig=6lyqI7Ixr-
ZoQtxrcPyXoPIJVp4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD_tfz6ZPRAhUY9mMKHX5AAooQ6AEIHjAB#v=onepage&q=color%20television%20course%20build%20a%20tv&f=false)

------
2sk21
Looks promising but it would be useful . One of the problems with hardware
hacking in the US is the demise of local shops like Radio Shack that sold
components. It can be very intimidating to order a few parts from the big
sellers like Mouser and Arrow. There are a few places that sell kits but a
subscription could be a nice present for a kid. Consider advertising in senior
oriented magazines since grandparents might be the main buyers for this.

------
brightball
I've been thinking about trying to build a radio from scratch lately. Any
chance a kit like that's in there?

~~~
hulahoof
I recall WWII PoW stories of 'foxhole' radios[1] made from rusting razors and
paper clips, I always thought replicating that would be quite fun.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio)

~~~
ageofwant
Yea man, crystal radios are great. Many books, vids and material on the
subject. Think I built my fist set in primary school, winding and mounting the
coils are delightfully steampunk-esqueish, building a sweet box for the thing
from aromatic hardwood is a trip in itself.

Hell yes, make you some crystal radio magic, highly recommended.

------
ryan-c
I would be _really_ interested in something like this with surface mount kits.

