Crazy Circuits: An Open Source Electronics Learning System
instructables.com
instructables.com
However, the really cool stuff as far as I'm concerned is the nylon conductive tape. That is super useful for things like making electrically active textiles and putting circuits into odd places. One ohm per foot isn't too shabby. I ordered a bunch of rolls of that (to make shipping reasonable) and I'm really interested to play around with it.
That said, this isn't the first time i've seen this company. They had a few other kits that were interesting and I almost bought them but my kids are a bit too young. I hope they continue to grow and are around in a few years.
Flat breadboard with conductive "lanes". Bricks with electric parts. Flat pieces with conductors. Conductivity in bricks would normally go from top to bottom, so you could easily stack things or connect them from the top side, without adding stuff to breadboard.
Would be great even for "adult" prototyping. No more wire spaghetti or bent pins.
Bonus points for "empty" bricks you could solder your own parts into. You do it once and get a reusable part.
Before Mindstorms there was a 9V system. It was really basic though: batteries, lights, motors, sirens, and wires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block
I think a modern update with microcontroller/digital-microelectronics would be awesome.
I really wonder why this hasn't been mashed with the Maker/rPi crowd, and we don't have Denshi blocks for the kids these days. Seems like a no-brainer ..
When I was a kid I tried to learn electronics by buying these types of kits. They were totally useless, complete waste of money and they only accomplished in making me feel that electronics was way too hard for me. All I could do was assemble the circuits in the diagrams but there was no understanding involved.
The worst part was that they all used some computers chips, like the 555 timer, to do some special effects, etc. When you are starting out any chip is kind of useless in your goal to understanding digital electronics.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Redstone_computers
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Computer-Electronics-Jerald-M...
> 555 timer
Very much an all-analogue part; possibly easier to understand in its non-integrated version: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/6...
I think that if you can teach a young kid programming concepts then you should definitely be able to teach them digital design concepts.
The creators of this should consider something like massdrop.com to see if they can generate sufficient interest to get the prices within a reasonable range. The "Crazy Circuits Makerspace Set"[0] is just about an order of magnitude more costly than I would consider "cheap" for such a kit.
That said, as someone who had a lot of fun with Snapcircuits as a child, I agree that this would have been a great way to transition from something that is essentially a "toy" to full blown bread-board tinkering.
[0] https://www.browndoggadgets.com/collections/new-classroom-se...
For instance, I purchased an Ergodox on Massdrop for less than $300 at a time where sourcing the pieces yourself would have cost well over $1000.
As to where the cost comes from, it's small volume hand assembled.
First off the PCBs are not at all expensive to get in bulk. But then there's the pick and place cost, parts cost, shipping from China (we used to do it in the US, but that got really expensive), and now tariffs. We also can't use the cheapest PCB producers as we have LEGO tolerances to deal with. Keep in mind that buying in bulk also means a large, up front cost as well. Or original kickstarter brought in over $50,000... but we spent over $80,000 doing our first batch of parts and supplies.
The big issue is overhead and resellers. We have employees to pay, rent to cover, and events to go to. Those add up. While we really strive to make our kits as affordable as possible we need money to grow and provide support. Graphic Designer, Curriculum writer, warehouse workers, customer support, PCB designers. A lot of different employees and outside contractors helped launch Crazy Circuits, and most of them are still working on new projects.
We also have to price things accordingly in order to sell through resellers. Teaching and library catalogues, Amazon, STEM supply websites. They all need to take their cut. Again, if we want to scale we need to get our products out there and in front of a lot of eyes. Figure that on average these places need a 40-50% discount off retail pricing. Then we still need to make money somewhere. This makes for some thin margins on a few kits.
We do a very bare minimum mark up on our parts and kits. If you compare our $100 or $200 kits to similarly priced STEM products we tend to give a lot more parts per dollar (Or compare our $1,000 Maker Space Kit to something like Littlebits or Circuit Scribe, and you'll see how fast educational products get expensive). Yes, you could just buy raw parts and throw them on a breadboard for $20, but that ignores what makes our kits fun.
We're trying to be a nice middle ground between a standard breadboard and something like snap circuits or (god forbid) Littlebits. Something that both beginner kids and adults can have fun with as either an electronics kit or a LEGO kit.
I hope I was able to answer a few questions for everyone about how pricing works. It's been a major thorn in our side since we started this business, but we do what we can to keep prices down.
While it seems to be a bit of a dead technology now, something like wirewrap would be a much better way to translate directly from diagram to board.