I loved these kits. I had several different ones over the years as Christmas presents. The first one was an organ kit which I turned into a burglar alarm for my bedroom door. My dad and I would sit in front of the TV and I would be working on one of the projects. If I got stuck he would just say "figure it out... everything's there in the instructions", and he was right. They gave me so much pleasure and taught me a lot. Todays kids really don't know what they are missing.
You just reminded me of something I rigged up when younger. Didn’t want to get in trouble with turning the lights on in the room after being told to go to bed so I rigged up a few torch bulbs and battery so the power got cut when the door opened! Never got caught!
The trouble with today's kids is they are growing up in an electronic world. We didn't have digital clocks, PlayStations, mp3 players, cordless phones or many of the hundreds of electronic items that are commonplace today. With things being so easily obtainable today there is no incentive for kids to learn about the fundamentals of electronics.
I loved these kits and this one was probably my favorite one! Learned a lot with them and now I have a computer shop, repair some electronics, repair video game consoles, etc. These kits were the beginning of everything for me.
@@RobSmithDevOpposite way around. Tandy started out as a leather company in the US and bought Radio Shack in 1963 after it decided to branch out into other markets.
I had that EXACT SAME kit. I burned out the NPN transistors trying to make a loud buzzer and my father went to radio shack to buy replacement transistors. I ended up being an EE and retired early. Good memories.
I also had this exact same kit as a kid in the 90s. Like most of my other "toys" at the time, it eventually ended up as individual components... I currently own a 130 and 300 in 1 kits, and a Radio Shack "Electronics Learning Lab," that's pretty similar, but is mostly breadboard based. My kid and I will occasionally sit down and build one of the projects from the books. Thanks for showing one of these in action again!
I remember when I was like 10 my grandfather gave me this little Radio Shack crystal am radio kit. You would hook it to a fence and it had a little tuner knob. It didn't have batteries and it actually worked. Blew me away. Now I am Electronic Tech for 30 years. I have had several of these kits and played with them when I was young kid. I now use bread boards when I like to tinker. Everything is computer driven now, networks, computer repair, etc...
I had an older, more basic version of this without the fancy front with all those knobs but I loved it. I still remember the gasp I let out when I wired up the crystal radio project and it actually worked.
That was so cool. I remember salaving magnet wire from an old motor to string up in the bavk yard. Had the whole setup under the bed so that at night when I was supposed to be sleeping I could listen to the baseball game.
I had this exact kit - thanks so much for the trip down memory lane! I loved it even though I had no clue what I was doing (my biggest issue was that the instructions don’t really do a good job of explaining WHY something does what it does, or perhaps I was too young to understand). Ultimately, this kit gave me my first taste of the dangers of electricity when the batteries ran out, and so I decided that in order to complete the radio that I’d been trying to get working, I had to plug it into the mains. I used the external connectors on the front and wired them in where the batteries would normally go. The whole thing died in a blue cloud of smoke and I got 240v through me, and ended up on the other side of the room. Good times.
I got the little brother of this kit, the "150 in 1" electronics kit in the early 80s. It made absolutely no sense to me as a kid, I treated it like a 'paint by numbers' kit without any understanding of what did what, and I supremely regret it to this day as electronic circuits still make very little sense to me despite me working in IT for much of my career. Go figure, eh? My dad and I built a radio out of my beast, and that was the most fun I ever got out of that thing. Great video! Brings me right back in time.
I had a similar kit as a kid, though it wasn't nearly as advanced as this one. So cool to see these still kicking after all these years and still bringing people joy!
I got the Tom Salter Electronics 1 kit for Christmas in 1978 when I was 11. It was the best Christmas present EVER for me and turned into a career in electronics and electrics. I found and bought the kit, unopened on Ebay a few years ago, I took it home, opened it, and played with it. 🙂 I had the same issue with the radio circuits when I tried them. Back in 1978 there wasn't all the RF noise around and there were plenty of strong MW radio stations, I could easily tune into half a dozen stations, but there just isn't that many LW / MW radio stations operating now.
Oh the memories! Got started with the crystal radio kit and eventually got the 65-in-1 and this kit for christmases. Spent hours poking wires into springs and tweaking to learn how changes would impact the circuits.
Back in the mid 1970s I bought the 65-in-1 kit from birthday money. It was loads of fun. I think, eventually, I took it apart and saved some of the more interesting components, like the relay. A few years ago I bought both the 150-in-1 and the 200-in-1 at a local flea market and pull them out every so often to mess around.
I had a 300 in one electronics kit - it had probably 1.5 times the number of parts on your model and included the 555 timer, 4017 decade counter and a quad and gate to name a few. At onepoint I was doing a project that was meant to be an audio amplifier, but it instead became a one shot - as i'd mis wired an electrolytic capacitor, causing it to explode. Of cause boys like explosions so I went ahead and blew up a few more. Eventually I was allowed to have a soldering iron, so the first thing I did after building a few kits, was to replace the capacitors on my 300 in one that I blew up previously so I could hand it down to my cousin. I'm 49 years old now, yet blowing up electrolytics either on purpose or by accident still never gets old!
I loved these as a kid. I had quite a few different versions. One of my favorite things to do was change the values of the resistors and capacitors (or connect more of them) on a completed circuit to make it operate differently. This worked especially well on the ones that made sound. Came to learn many years later that this is known as "circuit bending" in the electronics world.
What a blast from the past this is. This had been lost in memory for years till I saw the Thumbnail and suddenly a wave of memories came flooding back. I spent alot of time doing the various projects from the book and lots of time just tinkering around to see what I could make it do. It was a nice little learning experience.
I still have this kit from all them years ago when i was learning, purchased from Tandy's. (my favorite shop and Maplins). Nice to see you still have all the parts too.
Wow, that brought back some memories. I had the same Radio Shack kit which my parents bought from me from Tandy. Also amazing to hear you eventually stripped it down and use the parts elsewhere, I also did this.
I have a feeling most people probably stripped them down after - it’s not like at that age you had easy access to so many parts. Eventually I’m sure I snapped a leg off a transistor or something over time but was fun
I had the earlier, blue version of this kit - and had many hours of enjoyment with it. It definitely contributed towards my career in IT and my amateur radio hobby :)
I had this kit growing up. I wish I knew what happened to it. Amazing way to learn. I spent most of my time troubleshooting when the projects didn't work due to a loose wire or me just wiring it wrong. Really it taught me patience and how to troubleshoot, skills that are absolutely fundamental in life, not just electronics. I think I learned way more when things didn't work as expected and it helped develop an attitude that failure, though frustrating is not a bad thing, but an excellent opportunity to discover something unexpected.
I had that same kit (still have my 60 in 1 kit). That 200 in1 is when I first learned about not hooking up a 9v directly to an LED. LED #1 on the the front got really bright, then really dead. 🙂
Hahaha yeah I think I probably ended up doing that with an earlier kit - still it’s one way to learn. I think I also made a super heated transistor (frysistor!?) until the magic smoke came out 😂 learning was fun
Had the 150 in one kit. Got it for Xmas in 1977. Just found one on ebay that was never opened!! Still has the plastic wrap. Date code on back says it's made in Sept 1976. One of the first ones ever made! I'm afraid to remove the plastic wrap on it .....paid 90 bucks for it.
This is where it all started for me, folks bought one from Tandy to stop me taking toys apart 😂. It worked and 30 years later my workshop is full of equipment. Such a fun way to learn and introduce kids to schematics.
Even as an adult, I loved the 500 in 1 kit that I bought, very similar looking to the one in this video. The most precious was the project booklet. That would be one of the things to take with you into an apocalypse bunker, to rebuild civilization with afterwards. I wish they had more radio related projects, such as walkie-talkies, but due to the nature of the setup, things have to fit within the confines of the work area. Not a big fan of spring terminals, and would rather assemble things on standard breadboards. The negative is that they embed parts in the structure, such as the LED's. Someone who's just starting out is going to make errors, blow lights, wire electrolytic caps backwards etc, and they don't always make their project box easy to service or provide any spares. It's a small nitpick. I love electronics as a hobby. Making tech out of nothing - it's magic. The best source of information is the internet, and technically you don't need any kits, but they're good value, considering that they supply all of the components. They cut down the amount of effort needed to get things going and eliminate the need to solder.
The internet is great - obviously didn’t exist when I got this kit back in the day so it was books and trips to the library. Whilst you can learn by just reading online, *nothing* makes up for actual hands on experience - I find learning like that sinks in better. Radio circuits would have been cool. There was a low power transmitter in this kit. But I suspect these days there would instantly be a mod on some random page showing you how to increase the power making it illegal! Oh the fun!
I had one of these, it was my dads old kit, he gave it to me when I was younger, and to this day it still sits in my room at his house, he just comes down to visit me now, so I haven’t seen it in years
I had several of these kits back in the 90s including the one in this video. my favorite was the 60 in one kit because you could make this "Electronic listener" device which let you listen to electricity in the walls, flourescent lights and you could put a phone receiver up to it and hear the dial tone through it
I had both the 150 in 1 and the 200 in 1. In my humble opinion, the 150 in 1 was a better kit, but that is my childhood memory. This was a nostalgic video to watch. Thanks for your efforts.
As a kid all of my electronic project boxes were Christmas or Birthday presents. Each one had more and more experiments. That led me to branch out to their mini kits, home brew projects, Ham Radio, computers. The paper rout, mowing lawns, and collecting pop bottles paid for many of those other projects. Today kids have so much more to look forward to. The raspberry pi, Arduino, 3D printing, Laser engraving and cutting, Robotics. And each one of those activities can be tied together. Like 3D print a case for your ham radio project or use your Raspberry pi to control your ham radio. That box with all those springs and wires taught me much more than electronics and tied me up for hours trying to find the wrong or missing connection in that rats nest.
Small world - how did we not ever talk about this at uni 😆I had a 200 in 1 - still have it in the loft I think but re-purposed most of the wires for other projects 😅Still have the A600 up there too - probably needs a re-cap. Good to see you're still into this stuff 😀
Back in the day as a kid I was more patient and had more time as I didnt have all the "obligations" I now have as an adult. Work. Shopping. Repairing things. Cleaning the house. Paying bills. etc.
I've still got mine...it's the same shown in the video, i have probably had it since atlest the late 90's. Had hours of building the projects and this was basically my introduction into electronics before the internet became wide spread and i began to download schematics and build projects on breadboard and also got into microcontrollers such as the ardiuno and esp32, but don't really have the time anymore to be so invested as i was before...wish i could go back to the 90's again😂
Ah man these kits are so awesome. I would have loved one as a kid. Would have stopped me from taking apart (and sometimes reassembling) just about every single thing electrical in my parents house. Nice video, thanks!
Had a kit growing up an made all sorts, wasn't this kit but one similar, remember in summer sitting outside, wiring up the radio and tuning into Radio 1 the thrill of it. That took me on to repairing black and white the colour tv's These for me were the glory days of electronics 55 years later still in the electronics industry but I miss the glory days
I used to have the exact same kit and it was also eventually sacrificed for its parts to make my own custom projects! I still have the manual kicking around. Didn't have Maplin in my town, but had Tandy instead which used to be stocked full of electronic components, often beyond the reach of my pocket money though. Thanks for the video, a great trip down memory lane.
We had a Tandy too but I was more familiar with Maplin. Also walking into Tandy was exciting but you were watched so closely by the staff I found it very uncomfortable
My journey started 20 years earlier in 1970 with the Philips Electronic Engineer kit. Far more primitive than this but still amazing for a 10 year old kid.
My first one was the 150 in 1, then the 200 in 1. Then the Microcomputer kit (that one disappointed me). Had hours of fun and a career in electronics followed!! Thanks for the Tandy battery club!!!! The wires used to break & got shorter & shorter! Then a friend who's relative had an alarm company gave me some off cuts so I could make new ones :)
Hi Rob, great video. I had one of those kits. Dad also gave me an older kit. The kit was a proto board, a component set & a booklet. The book was Adventures in Electronics by Tom Duncan. Copyrighting the book is 1978. For each project you got the parts list, which numbered holes to put the components in. It then told you how it worked & suggested modification. No ICs in the kit all discreet components. I found these a great help in my early electronics days. The kits are long gone but I still keep the books for reference.
I had a 100 in 1 in the 1970s, endless fun until my first computer, in 1979 at the age of 10 I used a Commodore Pet my Dad bought home from work and learnt BASIC, then in 1980 I owned a The Sinclair ZX80 and it all went from there.
I also had 2 of those kits as a kid. Both from my uncle that lives in the USA. First one was a 160 projects kit (wooden box) when I was 6. And then the exact same one as in the video when I was 15. Did't really used the 2nd one a whole lot. By that time I was already quite experienced at soldering.
I had the older version of that. Later on I had the 300-in-one kit and that taught me how to read schematics as the kit was breadboard based. Radio Shack used to sell all kinds of handbooks as well. I did find an electronics project kit similar to the 60-in-one and gave it to my nephews a few years ago. They are now at the age where they can work on the projects by themselves. My sister used to do the projects with them when they first got it. It's a shame Radio Shack of the 80 and 90s no longer exists. I used to love going there and also looking through their catalog as a kid.
@@fistsbs That must have been the one I had. Unfortunately while building my first project, smoke started coming from the battery compartment so my dad had to quickly open it and get the batteries out. He took it back to Tandys and gave them a hard time over it, and I never got another one. I was distraught at the time but was given electronics project books where I built things with veroboard.
wow this goes back a bit. started off with a 30 in one kit, then had a 60 in one kit then moved up to the 200 in one kit. by the time I had the 200 in one kit, I was making my own RF amplifer circuit for the AM radio and built it using the Class B amplifier project (from the manual). this worked a lot better than the original AM radio project as the RF amplifier circuit didnt load the tuned RF tank circuit.
I had the one right below that one. Loved that kit. That is what got me interested in electronics. Bought breadboards and used to make all kinds of crazy stuff doing wire wrapping.
I remember having one also , My fave project was the alarm where it buzzed when a wire loop was broken so i had fun rigging up many things around the house like doors etc. I remember somehow shorting the battery springs once and the batteries used were ni-cad rechargeables and the spring glowed orange, it was not too shiny after that 😀.
@@RobSmithDev I have no idea but these types of products are seriously lacking in todays market , Ive often speculated on making a version of this project kit with integrated rp3040w board with springs etc for its pins.
Very good! I received the 50 in 1 kit when I was 11 for a whopping $21! A lot of money back then. Come spring time, my mother started finding these kits in garage sales for a dollar or two. She would get them for me. So, of course, I built up some huge projects with them. They did not start my life long career in engineering, but they did increase my exposure to a large number of basic circuits. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Back in the early 80s, I got an Philips EE2003 from my grandmother. I pointed it out in the store half a year before, and she said it was way too expensive for a christmas gift, so I never expected to get it, you can imagine my face lit up like an Actual Christmas tree when I got it. And now that I think about it, 100 euro back in 1980 was probably 400 euros by todays money, or 400 $, and she was even the one who got me the Commodore 64 in 1983. Good times. I can thank her for the fact I actually make a living with technology today, 50+ years later. RIP Grandma, you were always the one to make sure I had a good future.
I had one of the slightly earlier kits when I was a kid, I loved trying different things with it. I'd love to get another one but as you say they don't seem to do anything like this now. It's a shame as I'd love to build some of these projects with the kids.
I had a radioshack electronics project kit similar to this when I was a kid! It was so much fun, and it absolutely fueled my interest in electronics/hardware/software as I grew up.
I had this exact same kit! Wow.... My 9 year old daughter has the John Lewis one, which is good but the booklet only tells the owner how to build the circuits, no explanation on what is happening and what the components do - leaving that to me! We had a Tandy in Lowestoft (which was the UK arm of Radio Shack).
I had the Radio Shack 150-in-One electronics kit as a kid and absolutely loved it. Once I learned about the different projects I started designing circuits that would combine what I learned from the different circuits into larger projects I could build if I could afford to buy all the different components needed. I designed a synthesizer but never built it because it was too expensive for me to be able to get the parts. I'm surprised Korg hasn't made a combo electronics kit and volca modular product because the volca modular very much has the same vibe as these old educational toys.
I still have this set 😀 I also had the 20-in-1 and 130-in-1 sets. The latter I always thought was better, despite having less parts, although it had way more capacitors. The 130-in-1 has an op-amp chip instead of a second logic chip. So many of the projects start 1-29, 2-30 which means "connect the transformer output to the speaker" 😀
I never had one as a child. But I had access to Mr Hughes's TV repair shop at the bottom of the road and I had the Ladybird books of Magnets Bulbs and batteries book. Also in the series there was another book that showed how to make a simple crystal radio then upgrade it to an AC128 based TRF radio that would drive a loudspeaker.
I had two books (still got them somewhere I think) and I think one was the same ladybird book I’m sure! Access to a TV repair shop would have been cool! I had one that showed you how to make an AM radio that would fit in a tic-tac box!
Loved these kits and still have some in the Robthut museum. But you can still buy a kit very much like this one. It is called, Elenco EP-130 130-in-1 Experiments Electronics Playground. Also there are smaller kits like the , Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Exploration Kit, Over 100 Projects, Full Color Project Manual, 28 Parts.
8:30 Also not need a battery, if I remember correctly, Connect that cristal earpiece to the antenna thing using the largest coil. Desolder the speaker from that old transistor-radio, Connect a long piece of wire and loop it around your room. Try to hide it from mom. Now enjoy your wireless earphone. I used my kit a lot in the early eighties and late seventies. Never got my head around how things worked tho. That changed only recently after watching various channels on TH-cam.
I had two almost like this: the first I think was called "57-in-one" and had a very similar layout with all of the colors and spring terminals, but with fewer components and no ICs (but it did have a DC motor!). The second was the "300-in-one" which had some of that spring-terminal stuff around the periphery, but had a big breadboard in the middle where you could build circuits using the trays of resistors, transistors, ICs, etc. which came in the box. Most of which I promptly lost and/or stepped on.
Never had a breadboard at that age, I bet stepping on the components want as bad as treading on a piece of Lego though 😂 I guess a breadboard would have been aimed at a slightly higher age group?
I loved this when I was a kid. Mine wasnt plastic, it was the faux wood. After several hours of messing with this, the springs would rub your fingers raw and you would have to take a break from the pain.
the radioshack solar-power kit (had two solar cells, plus the usual assortment of transistors, resistors, caps, antenna coil, etc), woke up the electronics bug in me. Saved and bought myself the 150-in-1, and then breadboards and soldering irons. Much later in life, I discovered that my never-met biological father was a electrical engineer.
That brings me back. When I was 8 I saw a RC car that was really fast. I was jealous and wanted a fast RC car so I took apart the two I had and was able to make a faster RC car. My parents for that Christmas bought me that same electronics kit. Dad taught me the basics of reading a schematic. I remember using the burglar alarm circuit and had it on my bedroom door.
Say hello to the Amiga 2000 in the back. I used to make advertisements using Professional Page on one of these back in 1992. As for the 200 in 1, managed to get a 300 in 1 around 2009. Still use it with Raspberry Pi Pico.
I found a 75 in 1 kit on a trip to the rubbish tip in the 80s. That led to my parents getting me an earlier version of the 200 in 1 shown here. Great fun building and then modifying the circuits to see what would happen without hopefully blowing anything up.
This looks familiar. Saw it in catalogues and the local Tandy branch here in Australia. Never actually owned it, though. I do, however, still have the 60-in-One from the same family.
I had a 130 in 1 and that same 200 in 1 when I was younger. I remember on both of those, I ended up frying at least one of the transistors and LEDs while experimenting around. I also ended up killing the level meter in the 200 kit.
Wow I’ve had comments about killing LEDs and Transistors but this is the first about the level meter - kinda makes sense though it’s probably just as easy to damage
These kits were fun back in the 80s when we had either this or frustrating Ataris to play with. Obviously these kits would not teach soldering which I learned how to do in high school electronics classes, but they were instrumental in showing what each componant could do.
Awesome! I had the "Radio Shack Science Fair 150 In 1 Electronic Project Kit 28-248". I got an AS in Electronics in 1998 at age 20. Now I'm 46 w/ an MS in EE. I loved those kits!
@@RobSmithDev I did mine at a private trade school in the USA named DeVry (I'm in Southern California, just outside the Los Angeles area). It was an accredited program that placed graduates in good paying jobs. My 1st job was with Qualcomm in San Diego as an Engineering Technician working on new cell phone designs. I worked on the 1st 2G phones back in the day.
I have this one sitting in my closet still. I also had the 160 kit which I liked better for some reason, but it got sold at a garage sale.Had a lot of fun with both of them.
I dreamed of having one of those kits when I was a kid, absolutely drooled over the RadioShack ads. I totally agree about the microcontroller kits that they make these days. They just don't teach enough of the fundamentals and kids just don't learn the basics the way they should. I feel the same way when I see people learning Python for a first language, and just about every kit that uses a Pi will teach Python even though they have full access to the C language tools, and even assembly, which would probably be the best to start with.
I guess learning python is the modern alternative to BASIC that we all had on the computers of that generation. I did get a robot kit recently that was all C but it still didn’t really explain what it was doing so for a beginner might have been too complex. Simpler times I guess
Yeah you’re probably right, which I think would probably miss the fundamentals. For example they’d focus on flashing an LED using the arduino rather than showing how it could be done with a few components.
I started with the 130-in-One kit as well, in the late 80s. I had the 200-in-One many years later, probably early 2000s, so I was a bit older by then. lol The first kit taught me a LOT about both analog and digital stuff, but I always liked the digital side of things more. I remember the phrase from the book: "Flip Flop Multivibrator, with LED Display". haha I also remember the aching / blistered fingers, from bending the springs.
Another VERY good source of info for beginners, were the books by Forrest M. Mimms - "Getting Started In Electronics". With his hand-drawn "notepad" style, and funny sketches, it really helped with the basic concepts.
I was 11years old around 1998 and got one of these or a similar xxx in 1 kit, and I made a circuit out of the book that sounded an alarm gradually as it detected more and more light. So I put it next to the window in my bedroom, and as dawn broke and got brighter it went rrrrrrRRRRRRR!RRRRRRR! and it woke my ass up for another boring day of being incarcerated at school.
What a great video about a great electronic lab ! I have the earlier version of this 200in1 kit with a transparent cover. This kit has all the bells and whistles you need to construct electronic circuits. Did you know that you can actually build a reflex AM radio with amazing reception ? Here in Belgium, I can receive 3 BBC radio stations, some Italian stations and a hungary staion with it, imagine that ! I will make a construction video about this once. Many greetings
I loved these kits. I had several different ones over the years as Christmas presents. The first one was an organ kit which I turned into a burglar alarm for my bedroom door. My dad and I would sit in front of the TV and I would be working on one of the projects. If I got stuck he would just say "figure it out... everything's there in the instructions", and he was right. They gave me so much pleasure and taught me a lot. Todays kids really don't know what they are missing.
You just reminded me of something I rigged up when younger. Didn’t want to get in trouble with turning the lights on in the room after being told to go to bed so I rigged up a few torch bulbs and battery so the power got cut when the door opened! Never got caught!
same! one of my mom's favorite stories to tell her friends was how when i was 7 i wired up the burglar alarm project from this kit to a door!
The trouble with today's kids is they are growing up in an electronic world. We didn't have digital clocks, PlayStations, mp3 players, cordless phones or many of the hundreds of electronic items that are commonplace today. With things being so easily obtainable today there is no incentive for kids to learn about the fundamentals of electronics.
@@ChadDoebelinawesome!
I loved these kits and this one was probably my favorite one! Learned a lot with them and now I have a computer shop, repair some electronics, repair video game consoles, etc. These kits were the beginning of everything for me.
And so many others people too! Somehow they didn’t feel like learning because they were just fun to make - but yeah you learnt loads
These came from Tandy back in the day and had one as a kid also.
It kept me busy hours. Well, that was a nice recap... down memory lane.
I think there was a reference to Tandy in the book. It looks like RadioShack bought them at some point
Tandy was the UK brand for Radio Shack as far as I remember?
LOts of places sold them. In Australia and NZ Dick Smith Electronics sold them too (as well as Tandy)
@@PatrickMyles-bc5ij100% correct.
@@RobSmithDevOpposite way around. Tandy started out as a leather company in the US and bought Radio Shack in 1963 after it decided to branch out into other markets.
I had that EXACT SAME kit. I burned out the NPN transistors trying to make a loud buzzer and my father went to radio shack to buy replacement transistors. I ended up being an EE and retired early. Good memories.
Awesome
I also had this exact same kit as a kid in the 90s. Like most of my other "toys" at the time, it eventually ended up as individual components...
I currently own a 130 and 300 in 1 kits, and a Radio Shack "Electronics Learning Lab," that's pretty similar, but is mostly breadboard based. My kid and I will occasionally sit down and build one of the projects from the books.
Thanks for showing one of these in action again!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, and it’s nice to hear you’re passing the knowledge on
Oh man that's a nice kit. I dreamed of having one like this as a kid.
Where's your videos?! Lol. 6 years is too long..
I remember when I was like 10 my grandfather gave me this little Radio Shack crystal am radio kit. You would hook it to a fence and it had a little tuner knob. It didn't have batteries and it actually worked. Blew me away. Now I am Electronic Tech for 30 years. I have had several of these kits and played with them when I was young kid. I now use bread boards when I like to tinker. Everything is computer driven now, networks, computer repair, etc...
I had an older, more basic version of this without the fancy front with all those knobs but I loved it. I still remember the gasp I let out when I wired up the crystal radio project and it actually worked.
Yeah kinda magical isn’t it :)
That was so cool. I remember salaving magnet wire from an old motor to string up in the bavk yard. Had the whole setup under the bed so that at night when I was supposed to be sleeping I could listen to the baseball game.
Long live AM radio! Damn them if they ever shut it down and deny all 10 year olds the gasp of building a radio that runs on no power!
@@dlarge6502 Most kids today would consider it lame. If the device doesn't have a screen or play games, they're not interested. Sad but true.
There is a full fm radio circuit but seeing the shit ton of connections I never had the balls to try making it, I was 11.
I had this exact kit - thanks so much for the trip down memory lane! I loved it even though I had no clue what I was doing (my biggest issue was that the instructions don’t really do a good job of explaining WHY something does what it does, or perhaps I was too young to understand). Ultimately, this kit gave me my first taste of the dangers of electricity when the batteries ran out, and so I decided that in order to complete the radio that I’d been trying to get working, I had to plug it into the mains. I used the external connectors on the front and wired them in where the batteries would normally go. The whole thing died in a blue cloud of smoke and I got 240v through me, and ended up on the other side of the room. Good times.
Wow, well, I guess that’s one way electricity earns some cautious respect!
I got the little brother of this kit, the "150 in 1" electronics kit in the early 80s. It made absolutely no sense to me as a kid, I treated it like a 'paint by numbers' kit without any understanding of what did what, and I supremely regret it to this day as electronic circuits still make very little sense to me despite me working in IT for much of my career. Go figure, eh? My dad and I built a radio out of my beast, and that was the most fun I ever got out of that thing. Great video! Brings me right back in time.
I had a similar kit as a kid, though it wasn't nearly as advanced as this one. So cool to see these still kicking after all these years and still bringing people joy!
I got the Tom Salter Electronics 1 kit for Christmas in 1978 when I was 11. It was the best Christmas present EVER for me and turned into a career in electronics and electrics.
I found and bought the kit, unopened on Ebay a few years ago, I took it home, opened it, and played with it. 🙂
I had the same issue with the radio circuits when I tried them. Back in 1978 there wasn't all the RF noise around and there were plenty of strong MW radio stations, I could easily tune into half a dozen stations, but there just isn't that many LW / MW radio stations operating now.
It’s a shame, but was magic back then when it worked!
Oh the memories! Got started with the crystal radio kit and eventually got the 65-in-1 and this kit for christmases. Spent hours poking wires into springs and tweaking to learn how changes would impact the circuits.
I still have one, and have recently used it with my granddaughters to introduce them to electronics. They were astounded at what they could achieve.
Back in the mid 1970s I bought the 65-in-1 kit from birthday money. It was loads of fun. I think, eventually, I took it apart and saved some of the more interesting components, like the relay. A few years ago I bought both the 150-in-1 and the 200-in-1 at a local flea market and pull them out every so often to mess around.
I had a similar one from the seventies. Best thing ever!! Could build an AM radio transmitter, radio receiver, oscillators, 102 projects. Awesome.
I had a 300 in one electronics kit - it had probably 1.5 times the number of parts on your model and included the 555 timer, 4017 decade counter and a quad and gate to name a few.
At onepoint I was doing a project that was meant to be an audio amplifier, but it instead became a one shot - as i'd mis wired an electrolytic capacitor, causing it to explode. Of cause boys like explosions so I went ahead and blew up a few more. Eventually I was allowed to have a soldering iron, so the first thing I did after building a few kits, was to replace the capacitors on my 300 in one that I blew up previously so I could hand it down to my cousin.
I'm 49 years old now, yet blowing up electrolytics either on purpose or by accident still never gets old!
I always wondered why the kits I had never contained a 555, on for that matter a basic Op-Amp. Weird. Yeah we all like to blow up capacitors :)
I loved these as a kid. I had quite a few different versions. One of my favorite things to do was change the values of the resistors and capacitors (or connect more of them) on a completed circuit to make it operate differently. This worked especially well on the ones that made sound.
Came to learn many years later that this is known as "circuit bending" in the electronics world.
I loved these kits, I bugged my mum to get me one from Tandys until she ended up getting me one, I've sat for hours building those projects.
What a blast from the past this is. This had been lost in memory for years till I saw the Thumbnail and suddenly a wave of memories came flooding back. I spent alot of time doing the various projects from the book and lots of time just tinkering around to see what I could make it do. It was a nice little learning experience.
Glad it brought back some happy memories for you :)
I still have this kit from all them years ago when i was learning, purchased from Tandy's. (my favorite shop and Maplins). Nice to see you still have all the parts too.
Wow, that brought back some memories. I had the same Radio Shack kit which my parents bought from me from Tandy. Also amazing to hear you eventually stripped it down and use the parts elsewhere, I also did this.
I have a feeling most people probably stripped them down after - it’s not like at that age you had easy access to so many parts. Eventually I’m sure I snapped a leg off a transistor or something over time but was fun
I had the earlier, blue version of this kit - and had many hours of enjoyment with it. It definitely contributed towards my career in IT and my amateur radio hobby :)
I had this kit growing up. I wish I knew what happened to it. Amazing way to learn. I spent most of my time troubleshooting when the projects didn't work due to a loose wire or me just wiring it wrong. Really it taught me patience and how to troubleshoot, skills that are absolutely fundamental in life, not just electronics. I think I learned way more when things didn't work as expected and it helped develop an attitude that failure, though frustrating is not a bad thing, but an excellent opportunity to discover something unexpected.
I think the troubleshooting and patience probably helped me learn to program easier too! That’s a good point
I had this very one one as a kid also. Built every single project and more. Loved it.
I had this exact same kit from radioshack good memories and think I did all the projects hours of fun
I had that same kit (still have my 60 in 1 kit). That 200 in1 is when I first learned about not hooking up a 9v directly to an LED. LED #1 on the the front got really bright, then really dead. 🙂
Hahaha yeah I think I probably ended up doing that with an earlier kit - still it’s one way to learn. I think I also made a super heated transistor (frysistor!?) until the magic smoke came out 😂 learning was fun
I picked up one of these at a yard sale years ago. The first project in the book had over 120 connections!
Had the 150 in one kit. Got it for Xmas in 1977.
Just found one on ebay that was never opened!! Still has the plastic wrap. Date code on back says it's made in Sept 1976. One of the first ones ever made!
I'm afraid to remove the plastic wrap on it .....paid 90 bucks for it.
Wow amazing you find one never opened!
@@RobSmithDev it wasn't even in the Radio Shack catalog until 77
This is where it all started for me, folks bought one from Tandy to stop me taking toys apart 😂. It worked and 30 years later my workshop is full of equipment. Such a fun way to learn and introduce kids to schematics.
Even as an adult, I loved the 500 in 1 kit that I bought, very similar looking to the one in this video. The most precious was the project booklet. That would be one of the things to take with you into an apocalypse bunker, to rebuild civilization with afterwards.
I wish they had more radio related projects, such as walkie-talkies, but due to the nature of the setup, things have to fit within the confines of the work area. Not a big fan of spring terminals, and would rather assemble things on standard breadboards. The negative is that they embed parts in the structure, such as the LED's. Someone who's just starting out is going to make errors, blow lights, wire electrolytic caps backwards etc, and they don't always make their project box easy to service or provide any spares. It's a small nitpick.
I love electronics as a hobby. Making tech out of nothing - it's magic. The best source of information is the internet, and technically you don't need any kits, but they're good value, considering that they supply all of the components. They cut down the amount of effort needed to get things going and eliminate the need to solder.
The internet is great - obviously didn’t exist when I got this kit back in the day so it was books and trips to the library. Whilst you can learn by just reading online, *nothing* makes up for actual hands on experience - I find learning like that sinks in better.
Radio circuits would have been cool. There was a low power transmitter in this kit. But I suspect these days there would instantly be a mod on some random page showing you how to increase the power making it illegal! Oh the fun!
I had one of these, it was my dads old kit, he gave it to me when I was younger, and to this day it still sits in my room at his house, he just comes down to visit me now, so I haven’t seen it in years
I had several of these kits back in the 90s including the one in this video. my favorite was the 60 in one kit because you could make this "Electronic listener" device which let you listen to electricity in the walls, flourescent lights and you could put a phone receiver up to it and hear the dial tone through it
Cool I’m guessing that was some kind of ‘all-band receiver’ circuit :)
Snap circuits is the new generation of these type of electronic kits. Great fun growing up with one of these.
I had both the 150 in 1 and the 200 in 1. In my humble opinion, the 150 in 1 was a better kit, but that is my childhood memory.
This was a nostalgic video to watch. Thanks for your efforts.
Thanks for sharing!
As a kid all of my electronic project boxes were Christmas or Birthday presents. Each one had more and more experiments. That led me to branch out to their mini kits, home brew projects, Ham Radio, computers. The paper rout, mowing lawns, and collecting pop bottles paid for many of those other projects. Today kids have so much more to look forward to. The raspberry pi, Arduino, 3D printing, Laser engraving and cutting, Robotics. And each one of those activities can be tied together. Like 3D print a case for your ham radio project or use your Raspberry pi to control your ham radio. That box with all those springs and wires taught me much more than electronics and tied me up for hours trying to find the wrong or missing connection in that rats nest.
Small world - how did we not ever talk about this at uni 😆I had a 200 in 1 - still have it in the loft I think but re-purposed most of the wires for other projects 😅Still have the A600 up there too - probably needs a re-cap. Good to see you're still into this stuff 😀
Hehe me trying to guess who you are from your username! (Send me a message on discord or via my website)
Back in the day as a kid I was more patient and had more time as I didnt have all the "obligations" I now have as an adult. Work. Shopping. Repairing things. Cleaning the house. Paying bills. etc.
I've still got mine...it's the same shown in the video, i have probably had it since atlest the late 90's. Had hours of building the projects and this was basically my introduction into electronics before the internet became wide spread and i began to download schematics and build projects on breadboard and also got into microcontrollers such as the ardiuno and esp32, but don't really have the time anymore to be so invested as i was before...wish i could go back to the 90's again😂
Know the feeling :)
Ah man these kits are so awesome. I would have loved one as a kid. Would have stopped me from taking apart (and sometimes reassembling) just about every single thing electrical in my parents house.
Nice video, thanks!
You always have to have parts left over when you took stuff apart! Was a bonus if it still worked after..!
An excellent video. I loved my 65 in 1 that I got in 1977. I agree with you that there's still a place for exactly this kind of kit today.
Had a kit growing up an made all sorts, wasn't this kit but one similar, remember in summer sitting outside, wiring up the radio and tuning into Radio 1 the thrill of it.
That took me on to repairing black and white the colour tv's These for me were the glory days of electronics
55 years later still in the electronics industry but I miss the glory days
I used to have the exact same kit and it was also eventually sacrificed for its parts to make my own custom projects! I still have the manual kicking around. Didn't have Maplin in my town, but had Tandy instead which used to be stocked full of electronic components, often beyond the reach of my pocket money though. Thanks for the video, a great trip down memory lane.
We had a Tandy too but I was more familiar with Maplin. Also walking into Tandy was exciting but you were watched so closely by the staff I found it very uncomfortable
My journey started 20 years earlier in 1970 with the Philips Electronic Engineer kit. Far more primitive than this but still amazing for a 10 year old kid.
yea, me too
My first one was the 150 in 1, then the 200 in 1. Then the Microcomputer kit (that one disappointed me). Had hours of fun and a career in electronics followed!! Thanks for the Tandy battery club!!!! The wires used to break & got shorter & shorter! Then a friend who's relative had an alarm company gave me some off cuts so I could make new ones :)
lol yeah they did break - and thumbs and fingers hurt on the springs after a while, but still fun!
Hi Rob, great video. I had one of those kits. Dad also gave me an older kit. The kit was a proto board, a component set & a booklet. The book was Adventures in Electronics by Tom Duncan. Copyrighting the book is 1978. For each project you got the parts list, which numbered holes to put the components in. It then told you how it worked & suggested modification. No ICs in the kit all discreet components. I found these a great help in my early electronics days. The kits are long gone but I still keep the books for reference.
I remember having that exact thing! I wish i would have learned more from it
I Had the phillips electronics engineer kit from the late 1960's, This introduced me Ameteur radio
I wish I had a kit as this one growing up. Awesome video!
❤ this is how I made my first AM radio and strobe light
I had a 100 in 1 in the 1970s, endless fun until my first computer, in 1979 at the age of 10 I used a Commodore Pet my Dad bought home from work and learnt BASIC, then in 1980 I owned a The Sinclair ZX80 and it all went from there.
Amazing! These kits sure did start so many people off!
Still have mine. Same kit. In my downstairs shop. I pull it out of the box once in a while just for a bit of easy electronics fun!
I also had 2 of those kits as a kid. Both from my uncle that lives in the USA. First one was a 160 projects kit (wooden box) when I was 6. And then the exact same one as in the video when I was 15. Did't really used the 2nd one a whole lot. By that time I was already quite experienced at soldering.
I had the older version of that. Later on I had the 300-in-one kit and that taught me how to read schematics as the kit was breadboard based. Radio Shack used to sell all kinds of handbooks as well. I did find an electronics project kit similar to the 60-in-one and gave it to my nephews a few years ago. They are now at the age where they can work on the projects by themselves. My sister used to do the projects with them when they first got it. It's a shame Radio Shack of the 80 and 90s no longer exists. I used to love going there and also looking through their catalog as a kid.
I also started in electronics with earlier version of 200-1 kit and still have it
Was that the one where the batteries were installed from the bottom?
@@paulklasmann1218 yes and with plastic lid
@@fistsbs That must have been the one I had. Unfortunately while building my first project, smoke started coming from the battery compartment so my dad had to quickly open it and get the batteries out. He took it back to Tandys and gave them a hard time over it, and I never got another one. I was distraught at the time but was given electronics project books where I built things with veroboard.
wow this goes back a bit.
started off with a 30 in one kit, then had a 60 in one kit then moved up to the 200 in one kit.
by the time I had the 200 in one kit, I was making my own RF amplifer circuit for the AM radio and built it using the Class B amplifier project (from the manual).
this worked a lot better than the original AM radio project as the RF amplifier circuit didnt load the tuned RF tank circuit.
Very cool!
What I really remember is how much my fingers and thumbs hurt from bending those springs back and forth.
Haha yeah!
I had the one right below that one. Loved that kit. That is what got me interested in electronics. Bought breadboards and used to make all kinds of crazy stuff doing wire wrapping.
I had this as a kid! Although I don't remember ever having the manual... Or of I did I lost it really quickly. Made it hard to use as a learning tool.
I remember having one also , My fave project was the alarm where it buzzed when a wire loop was broken so i had fun rigging up many things around the house like doors etc. I remember somehow shorting the battery springs once and the batteries used were ni-cad rechargeables and the spring glowed orange, it was not too shiny after that 😀.
ooooh, you made a heater :) makes me wonder if its really suitable for that age range
@@RobSmithDev I have no idea but these types of products are seriously lacking in todays market , Ive often speculated on making a version of this project kit with integrated rp3040w board with springs etc for its pins.
I had one from the 1970s, very similar, hours of fun.
Very good! I received the 50 in 1 kit when I was 11 for a whopping $21! A lot of money back then. Come spring time, my mother started finding these kits in garage sales for a dollar or two. She would get them for me. So, of course, I built up some huge projects with them. They did not start my life long career in engineering, but they did increase my exposure to a large number of basic circuits. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Back in the early 80s, I got an Philips EE2003 from my grandmother. I pointed it out in the store half a year before, and she said it was way too expensive for a christmas gift, so I never expected to get it, you can imagine my face lit up like an Actual Christmas tree when I got it. And now that I think about it, 100 euro back in 1980 was probably 400 euros by todays money, or 400 $, and she was even the one who got me the Commodore 64 in 1983. Good times. I can thank her for the fact I actually make a living with technology today, 50+ years later. RIP Grandma, you were always the one to make sure I had a good future.
I had one of the slightly earlier kits when I was a kid, I loved trying different things with it. I'd love to get another one but as you say they don't seem to do anything like this now. It's a shame as I'd love to build some of these projects with the kids.
I built a crystal set radio that had enough to power a small speaker so I added in a volume control lol
Cool!
I had a radioshack electronics project kit similar to this when I was a kid! It was so much fun, and it absolutely fueled my interest in electronics/hardware/software as I grew up.
I had this exact same kit! Wow.... My 9 year old daughter has the John Lewis one, which is good but the booklet only tells the owner how to build the circuits, no explanation on what is happening and what the components do - leaving that to me! We had a Tandy in Lowestoft (which was the UK arm of Radio Shack).
I had the Radio Shack 150-in-One electronics kit as a kid and absolutely loved it. Once I learned about the different projects I started designing circuits that would combine what I learned from the different circuits into larger projects I could build if I could afford to buy all the different components needed. I designed a synthesizer but never built it because it was too expensive for me to be able to get the parts. I'm surprised Korg hasn't made a combo electronics kit and volca modular product because the volca modular very much has the same vibe as these old educational toys.
Synth electronic kits, now there’s an idea
I still have this set 😀 I also had the 20-in-1 and 130-in-1 sets. The latter I always thought was better, despite having less parts, although it had way more capacitors. The 130-in-1 has an op-amp chip instead of a second logic chip. So many of the projects start 1-29, 2-30 which means "connect the transformer output to the speaker" 😀
An op amp would have been a great addition, well, that and maybe a 555 perhapse
I never had one as a child. But I had access to Mr Hughes's TV repair shop at the bottom of the road and I had the Ladybird books of Magnets Bulbs and batteries book. Also in the series there was another book that showed how to make a simple crystal radio then upgrade it to an AC128 based TRF radio that would drive a loudspeaker.
I had two books (still got them somewhere I think) and I think one was the same ladybird book I’m sure! Access to a TV repair shop would have been cool!
I had one that showed you how to make an AM radio that would fit in a tic-tac box!
Very cool. I think he had a garage in Halcyon Crescent in Lowestoft. Decent business, still going strong today.
I owned a lot that looked exactly like this, when I was a kid in the mid-noughts.
No they don't need recapping 🤣 That is exactly where my brain went. Enjoying these videos of your Rob, different and yeah enjoyable.
Thank you :)
I had one of those kits as a kid and I loved it.
Loved these kits and still have some in the Robthut museum. But you can still buy a kit very much like this one. It is called, Elenco EP-130 130-in-1 Experiments Electronics Playground.
Also there are smaller kits like the , Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Exploration Kit, Over 100 Projects, Full Color Project Manual, 28 Parts.
8:30 Also not need a battery, if I remember correctly, Connect that cristal earpiece to the antenna thing using the largest coil. Desolder the speaker from that old transistor-radio, Connect a long piece of wire and loop it around your room. Try to hide it from mom.
Now enjoy your wireless earphone.
I used my kit a lot in the early eighties and late seventies. Never got my head around how things worked tho. That changed only recently after watching various channels on TH-cam.
I had two almost like this: the first I think was called "57-in-one" and had a very similar layout with all of the colors and spring terminals, but with fewer components and no ICs (but it did have a DC motor!). The second was the "300-in-one" which had some of that spring-terminal stuff around the periphery, but had a big breadboard in the middle where you could build circuits using the trays of resistors, transistors, ICs, etc. which came in the box. Most of which I promptly lost and/or stepped on.
I had this one too. I remember not following the colour bands on the resister correctly once and letting the magic smoke out.
Never had a breadboard at that age, I bet stepping on the components want as bad as treading on a piece of Lego though 😂 I guess a breadboard would have been aimed at a slightly higher age group?
I loved this when I was a kid. Mine wasnt plastic, it was the faux wood. After several hours of messing with this, the springs would rub your fingers raw and you would have to take a break from the pain.
Yeah the springs lol - but made of wood, wow!
the radioshack solar-power kit (had two solar cells, plus the usual assortment of transistors, resistors, caps, antenna coil, etc), woke up the electronics bug in me.
Saved and bought myself the 150-in-1, and then breadboards and soldering irons.
Much later in life, I discovered that my never-met biological father was a electrical engineer.
Wow - amazing. My grandpa was into electronics so I think I got my interest from him
I had this exact kit, pure nostalgia
I still have like 6 of these kits. These were amazing
I had one of those kits as well - loved it!
That brings me back. When I was 8 I saw a RC car that was really fast. I was jealous and wanted a fast RC car so I took apart the two I had and was able to make a faster RC car. My parents for that Christmas bought me that same electronics kit. Dad taught me the basics of reading a schematic. I remember using the burglar alarm circuit and had it on my bedroom door.
Say hello to the Amiga 2000 in the back. I used to make advertisements using Professional Page on one of these back in 1992. As for the 200 in 1, managed to get a 300 in 1 around 2009. Still use it with Raspberry Pi Pico.
Awesome using it with a Pico. Check out some of my other videos, the A2000 is featured in quite a few
I found a 75 in 1 kit on a trip to the rubbish tip in the 80s. That led to my parents getting me an earlier version of the 200 in 1 shown here. Great fun building and then modifying the circuits to see what would happen without hopefully blowing anything up.
I had the 200-in-one and the 300-in-one, both mind opening with possibilities!
This looks familiar. Saw it in catalogues and the local Tandy branch here in Australia. Never actually owned it, though. I do, however, still have the 60-in-One from the same family.
Oh man, I loved this kit as a kid. I think I even have it around here somewhere. I must have blown the ICs since those projects never worked for me
I had a 130 in 1 and that same 200 in 1 when I was younger. I remember on both of those, I ended up frying at least one of the transistors and LEDs while experimenting around. I also ended up killing the level meter in the 200 kit.
Wow I’ve had comments about killing LEDs and Transistors but this is the first about the level meter - kinda makes sense though it’s probably just as easy to damage
These kits were fun back in the 80s when we had either this or frustrating Ataris to play with. Obviously these kits would not teach soldering which I learned how to do in high school electronics classes, but they were instrumental in showing what each componant could do.
Awesome! I had the "Radio Shack Science Fair 150 In 1 Electronic Project Kit 28-248".
I got an AS in Electronics in 1998 at age 20. Now I'm 46 w/ an MS in EE. I loved those kits!
:) I did AS electronics too!
@@RobSmithDev I did mine at a private trade school in the USA named DeVry (I'm in Southern California, just outside the Los Angeles area). It was an accredited program that placed graduates in good paying jobs. My 1st job was with Qualcomm in San Diego as an Engineering Technician working on new cell phone designs. I worked on the 1st 2G phones back in the day.
Cool! So I guess the kit probably contributed in some way to your career then
@@RobSmithDev taught me the basics of debugging and troubleshooting.
@hwhack very worthwhile skills too!
I have this one sitting in my closet still. I also had the 160 kit which I liked better for some reason, but it got sold at a garage sale.Had a lot of fun with both of them.
When I was a kid those 100 in one kits were like a parts bin for my projects lol. The relays, speakers, and LEDs were the first things to go!
Yeah I know exactly what you mean :)
I dreamed of having one of those kits when I was a kid, absolutely drooled over the RadioShack ads. I totally agree about the microcontroller kits that they make these days. They just don't teach enough of the fundamentals and kids just don't learn the basics the way they should. I feel the same way when I see people learning Python for a first language, and just about every kit that uses a Pi will teach Python even though they have full access to the C language tools, and even assembly, which would probably be the best to start with.
I guess learning python is the modern alternative to BASIC that we all had on the computers of that generation. I did get a robot kit recently that was all C but it still didn’t really explain what it was doing so for a beginner might have been too complex. Simpler times I guess
Was waiting for months for this kit to come out. One of projects listed was radio station
I still have mine. There are only two other electronic toys from when I was a kid that I wish I had. A Vtech P1000 precomputer and my Tetris watch.
Ooooh a Tetris watch!!!
The modern version of such a kit would be handing out an Arduino with a bunch of parts.
Yeah you’re probably right, which I think would probably miss the fundamentals. For example they’d focus on flashing an LED using the arduino rather than showing how it could be done with a few components.
I had tons of these! Start repairing boards when i was 13
I'm 40 now.😂 kits I had from 5yo up
I started with the 130-in-One kit as well, in the late 80s.
I had the 200-in-One many years later, probably early 2000s, so I was a bit older by then. lol
The first kit taught me a LOT about both analog and digital stuff, but I always liked the digital side of things more.
I remember the phrase from the book: "Flip Flop Multivibrator, with LED Display". haha
I also remember the aching / blistered fingers, from bending the springs.
Another VERY good source of info for beginners, were the books by Forrest M. Mimms - "Getting Started In Electronics".
With his hand-drawn "notepad" style, and funny sketches, it really helped with the basic concepts.
Yeah I’d forgotten about how much it hurts your fingers after a while!
I’ll have to check them out!
I was 11years old around 1998 and got one of these or a similar xxx in 1 kit, and I made a circuit out of the book that sounded an alarm gradually as it detected more and more light. So I put it next to the window in my bedroom, and as dawn broke and got brighter it went rrrrrrRRRRRRR!RRRRRRR!
and it woke my ass up for another boring day of being incarcerated at school.
interesting use of that circuit!
What a great video about a great electronic lab ! I have the earlier version of this 200in1 kit with a transparent cover.
This kit has all the bells and whistles you need to construct electronic circuits.
Did you know that you can actually build a reflex AM radio with amazing reception ?
Here in Belgium, I can receive 3 BBC radio stations, some Italian stations and a hungary staion with it, imagine that !
I will make a construction video about this once.
Many greetings