OT: learner kits (was: Re: using new technology on old machines)

[Brent Hilpert]

An acquaintance just the other day showed me an Arduino experimenters kit that came with breadboard, LEDs, jumpers, etc, all in a compartmentalised plastic box for 28$CDN. Haven't used it myself, just saw it briefly. Maybe you want to start him out at a lower level of logic than that though, or alternatively maybe he can move from that to incorporating & interfacing lower levels of logic.

Something like this, but this is twice the price:
	http://www.adafruit.com/products/170

An annoyance of the Rpi for this stuff is the GPIO pins are 3.3V, they need V clamps on input from TTL at least. Not sure where the Arduino fits in that regard.


On 2015-Jun-19, at 7:19 PM, Tapley, Mark wrote:
> All,
> 	My 14-year-old son has mentioned that he’d like a breadboard and some parts to fool with, and the pointer below really helps. I have an old Archerkit VOM already, and I’m thinking about turning him loose in August with the discrete components part kit, the VOM, a box of logic parts, and a copy of Horowitz and Hill. 
> 	Is there a reason to prefer 7400 series over CD4000 series logic? 
> 
> http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/catalogs/c151/P30.pdf
> 
> 	makes the CD4000 series look cheaper. 
> 
> 	I also have a pair of old Tek 922 O-scopes, one of which has all of its knobs and switches intact and produces a trace. I’ll guess that they both need rebuilding; I have the instruction manuals, though, so maybe that is lesson 1? Is the TekScopes group the best place to find probes for one or both?
> 
> 	I also have one of the 200-in-1 spring-termial projects; he played with that a bit, but there wasn’t enough logic there to do much computing :-) so he lost some interest.
> 
> 	He has a Raspberry Pi, which he pretty much contempts in favor of his laptop, which will play the modern version of MineCraft :-P, but presumably hooking those together might be fun. 
> 
> 	Should I add anything else to his pile? Is there a series of logic that’ll make things easier if he does end up hooking in the RPi?
> 	
> 	Thanks for any help! My own knowledge is pretty spotty in this field, so please feel free to start near ground-zero with helpful advice.
> 												- Mark