OT- ish learning some electronics for a 9 year old

I have a blue "try square" marking veroboard 0.1" units from A-Z and

1-whatever from Practical Electronics(?), and a DIP chip inserter and
Reply to
Andy Burns
Loading thread data ...

When I was a young lad at about the same age my Dad (in the guise of Father Christmas) bought me a Philips Electronic Engineer E20 set having detected the same kind of interest in me playing with batteries, switches, motors and lamps.

formatting link
that initial kit seed sprang a very interesting career in electronics which now involves me in designing imaging cameras and subsystems for space telescopes/vehicles.

The best way of learning is hands on - personally I would avoid computer simulations of any kind - you need to see, feel and smell your mistakes!

I am sure kits of a similar type must exist today, and would recommend something at a basic analogue transistor level for starters in order to give her a very firm basic understanding to build on.

Phil

Reply to
Phil Jessop

I bought mine when I was 16. It was the best electronics book I had seen at the time, and remains so to this day.

I wouldn't bother with the Students' Manual, though. After buying the AofE main volume, I found nothing else to really touch it at the time.

On the original point, having a big stack of 1970s/80s electronics magazines can be handy from a learning point of view... ignoring all the 'intermittent windscreen wipers for your Morris Minor' stuff, having to make projects out of mostly analogue components is more useful for understanding how it works in a way that 'wire everything up to a CPU and write some code' of modern projects isn't so much.

Though depends if you want to teach electronics or computer science, and hope much you just want to get the job done. These days it's a lot harder to justify something on the basis that you can make it better than the mass produced, because the mass produced version is far more featureful than you could hope to make as a one-off. If you really just want to get the job done, hacking a commercial product (eg some extra I/O attached to a consumer router) seems to be the way to go.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Sounds to me as though you need to get hold of a few simple transistors, diodes, a range of resistors, filament lamps, veroboard, etc., and start off with some bottom level work. Everything is headed towards VLSI nowadays but without the foundations in place it all seems like a black art. You can probably pick up a cheap dual trace oscilloscope for only a very few quid on ebay and it is wonderful to be able to show kids what is happening to a signal when passed through an amplifier etc.

Reply to
cynic

Philips Electronic Engineer, yes I remember that. Christmas present when I was 10.

Reply to
djc

There's also free oscilloscope software that runs under windows, using the soundcard as input. Do use a plug-in card though, its entirely possible to kill things. You can also get signal generators, vectorscope, etc etc etc that all are windows 98 compatible freeware. No idea what exists for linux.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

Another simulator here

formatting link
runs on Java, so most things can run it ok. It's free too! :-)

Reply to
mick

I was confused. Yes, I had the Philips one with the push down springs (the '20').

But I also had another. A plastic platform probably 12 to 15 inches wide, about two inches tall, rising at the back to a sloping 'console' with knobs (switches and potentiometers) and a small 'patch panel'). The patch panel accepted bare single core wire, and served to connect the static components to a breadboard in front.

(you started off by putting the whole thing together as it came as a load of components and a plastic shell)

Anyone remember this?

Reply to
Bob Eager

formatting link
here's a handy project to make
formatting link

Reply to
Owain

Have a look at

formatting link

Reply to
Graham K.

The problem with most of these kits is that they don't explain how the circuits work. You don't really learn anything.

Ladybird "Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries" would be a good starting point if you can find one, or is that just nostalgia kicking in?

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

me too!

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

My fisrt "kit" was bough in the 70s from J. Bull Electrical (they are still in business) and consisted of three 12-way terminal blocks on a piece of paxolin in a plastic case with a very motley assortment of components. Hours of fun but I didn't really learn how things work. That came when I was old enough for a ticket for the adult library and started buying 74 series logic chips.

MBQ

Reply to
Man at B&Q

The funny thing about that truly excellent Ladybird book (I have one, I've bought several others and given them to people for just this purpose) is how much the available "raw materials" have changed. Where do you find a 3V bike lamp battery, or even a zinc carbon cell big enough to dismantle for investigation? Let alone the copper sulphate crystals. You can't even find the glass fishpaste jar to make the lamphouse atop the model lighthouse.

OTOH, home-made electric motors work beautifully these days, thanks to neodymium magnets.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Not got that, I might have had it as a kid I can't now remember, so not sure what's in it. Though we have done quite a bit of stuff around this area. playing with simple circuits, dismantling batteries, making our own batteries, making an electric motor (ok- not a very good one, we needed to get some better magnets), electromagnets etc.

My local pound shops sell C and D zinc carbon cells.

Ebay.

Yep , we needed to get some better magnets :-)

Reply to
chris French

Tried dismantling them though? Modern zinc carbons now have something down the middle that wouldn't make a decent pencil lead. I'm not sure if this is more because of innovation and improvement, buying them from the pound shop (or The Famous =A31.20 Shop, if you're somewhere posh like Tenby) or because Zn-C is now a 3rd-rate technology and not assumed to be expecting a hard life.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

In message , Andy Dingley writes

Well, I'm going to have to try now :-)

Reply to
chris French

Surely the horriblest way to build kits

NT

Reply to
Tabby

I can't see any need for a "kit". Just a goodly selection of discrete components is by far the best way to learn, improvising where necessary (such as joining resistors together to produce a specific value).

Reply to
Frank Erskine

I remember a breadboard, I think it was a veroblock, that you could get corresponding PCBs for making it very easy to practice circuits and make them permanent if desired.

I think I got mine as part of a EE Teach-In where it was supposed to be mounted on a DIY console with meters, speakers, switches etc and batteries inside.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.