Advice please--electronic kit for middle-schooler

[Charles McKinley]

I will look up the kit I have at home and post it for you.

[John Stevens]

I want to thank all of you who took the time and effort to reply. I appreciate that you'd share the benefit of your experience, and I'm grateful to have some good info to begin to make decisions.

Just to answer one question--no, my son's school doesn't have a robotics club or any club of that nature. But we might be able to find a robotics day camp this summer, and maybe that'll be a doorway to similar opportunities during the school year. So thanks for asking that question.

--John

[Gordon Eyre]

As a youth, I learned on Heathkit and went on to work in the White House and then to AT&T where I became a General Manager. The value of kits to peak and hold a youths interest can not be underestimated. When just 13 years of age I built my first crystal set out of scavenged parts and it brought in stations from over a thousand miles away. I would listen to it late at night with my earphones. Keep finding ways to to feed his interest, who knows where it may lead.

[Larry Frank]

I like the idea of a breadboard and a book to start making simple circuits.

My son started on electronics in Junior high by interfacing a robot car to the old Apple IIe computer. This started him on an amazing path where before he graduated high school he was designing his own circuit boards, making the boards and into programming in C++. He won a lot of honors with this through the science fair including 4 trips to the International Science Fair.

I would spend all the time and help that you can to encourage him even though you may not know much about electronics. I found that I had to learn a lot and eventually just gave up and supported his projects which included a remote a controlled surveying vehicle that he build and programmed.

Good Luck

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

What helped me get into electronics was having a project in mind and working backwards from there to accomplish it; in my case it was guitar stuff. I started building pedals, amps and such, and that got me interested in electronics, and got me to expand my knowledge. It worked better for me than doing little projects and then trying to apply it, and was similar to the approach I took with woodworking.