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Comment by 0x0203 | Hacker News Reader

Do you have some suggestions on what sort of sortiments you like? It seems like many of the common component assortment kits readily available, while having several hundred pieces, only have a handful of any particular value component, which tends to run out rather quickly after only a project or two.

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Just get one of those where you have ~10 to 20 of each and get replacements for the ones you suspect to burn through fast (e.g. 1k, 4k7, 10k, 100k and similar common ones). But them in a drawer and refill when you need it.

I had one from a German reseller that doesn't exist anymore. For the university I made my own sortiment buy buying resistors and sorting them into boxes myself. It took 4 days to sort it, which is probably what you pay for when you get a sortiment.

My general approach is to start with a small-to-moderate assortment kit, and after each project restock the bins that are running low/empty with individual-value orders of 100 components or so-- Those are the values you're using a lot of, and so it makes sense to stock them more heavily.

I'd also recommend getting a kit of fixed-length jumper wires; it's much easier to analyze what you've built and turn it back into a circuit diagram when the wire connections are short enough to follow at a glance instead of chasing wires through a ratsnest.

Breadboard specific cut and formed wires such as these: https://www.amazon.com/AUSTOR-Lengths-Assorted-Preformed-Bre... [1] will make both wiring, and verifying, bread-boarded circuits much easier. Plus the actual circuit will be much neater with these wires interconnecting everything.

[1] just the first example I found from a quick search

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