Electric or science toy kits that are decent

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Yep! Minute Oats - microwave in a minute...

The book is "The Boy's First Book of Radio and Electronics" by Alfred P. Morgan.

I had been given several electronics kits, by Heath and various other manufacturers. But the very first piece of homegrown electronics, stick-built from scraps, that worked and worked amazing well was one of Morgan's plans - his one tube regen receiver. Truly an amazing experience for a 12 year old kid to build a thing that's simpler then the commercial items, but works better. All from scrap.

I doubt that kids today would care about, or understand, the concepts involved. They're quite passe.

But yes, get that book and have him build some crystal sets from scratch. Buy hi Z phones off ebay.

Jim

"jim rozen" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@drn.newsguy.com...

Alfred P. Morgan has a lot to answer for. I know of at least two P.Eng's( I'm one of them) that got started by reading that book at least 48 years ago.

Tom Miller

I've seen people use toilet paper rolls!

Needs a lot more turns, of course...

It's also reasonable to build "quads" using just a couple wooden dowels (or popsicle sticks or...) as supports.

--FWIW the Vex kits from Radio Shack have been discontinued. At a guess the cost of the basic system ($300) was waaaay too high a price to join the club, so to speak. But now, if you're lucky you can get the things for around $100 until they're all gone. Got mine yesterday, heh.

Hi Iggy,

I haven't bought from this outfit, but they do have some interesting stuff:

I thought someone else would have mentioned them by now, so maybe it is crappy stuff or something...

electronic measurement for hobby :

The Elenco snap circuits kit that I ended up buying for my nephew, I liked enough to buy for my 4.5 year old son also.

I received it and it is a great toy, well made, with many useful circuits. It helps show how electricity flows, etc. My son could follow directions and build stuff by himself, without me present in the room.

It is highly recommended. We got the junior version, but will buy him a next version for his birthday.

The kit includes a DC motor that launches a little helicopter blade like thing in the air.

i

It's fun, but they don't really explain what's going on. There are a couple of integrated circuits in little blocks, and they tell you how to hook them up to make noises & such. However, there is no info on what's in the blocks, what they do exactly, how they work, etc. It's a fun toy, and hopefully will foster some curiosity, but it has limits in the educational department.

Doug White

Just a comment but Rat Shack has the whole Vex Robotics system for half price or less--they seem to be closing it out. Very nice system at that price.

Also, Lego has announced that the new mindstorm will be available in June or July. While it is expensive, imo [over $200], it is a programmable robot that will teach a great deal to DS-10. We have put one on order. The now phased out version is available, at markdowns, if you don't mind having the older version.

-Aula

Aula, how is that robot controlled, can I control it from a Linux computer?

(Same question applies to Vex robotics)

i

Iggy,

See:

From what I could read it looks like you need either a PC or a Mac. Of course if it will work on the latest Mac OS it is probably closely related to Linux. If these become popular I'll bet the Linux community has some hacks available real quick like...

For the serious programmer there's also NQC (Not Quite C), which is a C-like language that you can download to a Lego Robotics RCX. I don't know if it'll work on the new ones, though -- it compiles to machine code for the processor, which requires a high level of compatibility.

>

Even machine code, though, needs to accessthe OS to send data to/from ports...

i

Geomag is very good. I bought a set for the kids of a friend of mine (five and 14) and they love it. Optimising a construction so that the links are as strong as possible can be quite challenging.

I spent several hours playing with it before I gave it to them, so it must be good!

Leon

Leon

Ordinarily the Vex robot is controlled using one or two (depending on how many channels you need) handheld radio transmitters similar to those used for radio controlled models.

How it responds to the signals from the transmitter depends on the programming--there are several canned programs selectable using jumpers on the control box, and if you need more than that you can write your own code for it--it uses two PIC microcontrollers, one of which normally deals with decoding the signals from the transmitter, encoding the PWM for the servos and other housekeeping, leaving the other completely available for user programming. The normal programming language for Vex is "EasyC" which I haven't had a chance to really play with yet--this is Windows-only for the moment unless you can get it to run under wine. At some point gcc is going to be able to target the PIC but I understand that that is not yet in place. You can also write assembly code for it. For a beginner though EasyC is probably the way to go for now.

Quaker Oats still come in them, also Quaker Grits.