Heathkit to reenter the kit building business!

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An Erector set of old (I forget the British equivalent) is a big box full of totally loose screws, nuts, beams, etc. and you create from those atoms.

Mechano? I got one of those sets from my dad. It was rather neat. I'm not sure it's functionally that much different from Lego Technic. With either set you can choose to follow the instructions and build whatever is shown or to be creative and colour outside the lines a bit.

It is now possible to design a complete multi band ham radio transceiver that requires zero alignment by the end user after assembly.

There are already several SDR packages for the Raspberry PI and some high powered Arduino compatibles. Most are receive only at this point.

Software Defined Radio is pretty amazing. Attach a giga-sample ADC to your antenna and extract the signal in software running on a PC. Need to support a different modulation type or frequency range? Just update the software.

Tom
 
Attach a giga-sample ADC to your antenna and extract the signal in software running on a PC.

There are several SDR receivers out there that do exactly that. There is however one big flaw in that thinking that has crippled those devices.

An ADC has a dynamic range limit. The current technology in affordable ADC's limits you to about 12 bits for a 1 gigasample ADC. The SDR that I looked at used a 16 bit converter sampling at about 100 MHz for a 2 to 30 MHz receiver. The theoretical limit for a 16 bit converter is 96 db of dynamic range, but you can't use all 96 db and still have some bits left to decode anything.

In reality the signal you are trying to receive needs to be quite a bit stronger that the sum total of all the other RF energy that hits your converter. This means that some RF selectivity needs to be in place in front of your ADC in order to reduce the levels of the unwanted signals before applying them to the converter. Radio and TV broadcasting transmitters can be quite powerful, with TV in the USA operating at up to 1 MEGAWATT of Effective Radiated Power.

I did not well understand this as a kid trying to make a radio (basically an amplified crystal set) while growing up with a 10 KW AM radio station 4 blocks away.

A simple SDR like a SoftRock with minimal bandpass filters ahead of the converter will work well if there are no powerful transmitters nearby. A good SDR capable of working anywhere will be a rather complex superhet design with converters at the end of the IF strip.
 
Anyway, I never actually had the chance to see or build any of the Heathkits, but if they make a comeback I would probably give one a shot!
Regarding Heathkits, my plan was to work up to building one of their stereo receivers and possibly even to a TV. But then I went off to college and by the time I had enough money and a proper work area, Heathkit no longer sold such kits. :(

BTW they also sold speaker kits - IIRC the very special AS-1348 was their top of the line for awhile (I forget the name for the special enclosure its 15" woofer was operating in).
 
Lego these days is not the simple stuff of the old days...

I remembered the comments about Lego when I found this by accident on Youtube. The recording is quite compromised by the mic placement (too much motor noise) but you get the idea of what kids have to work with today if there is a fertile imagination and plenty of parental money supply.......Lego isn't cheap!

An Erector set of old

That's what I had as a kid (about 1960). With an erector set and some rubber bands you can make a pretty formidable weapon that shoots wooden pencils or bent paper clips.

When the Lego kid grows up he makes things like this.....note some Lego parts in use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
 
I remembered the comments about Lego when I found this by accident on Youtube. The recording is quite compromised by the mic placement (too much motor noise) but you get the idea of what kids have to work with today if there is a fertile imagination and plenty of parental money supply.......Lego isn't cheap!



That's what I had as a kid (about 1960). With an erector set and some rubber bands you can make a pretty formidable weapon that shoots wooden pencils or bent paper clips.

When the Lego kid grows up he makes things like this.....note some Lego parts in use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

I'd seen that video (or more likely, cut-down versions of it) before, but now I more clearly see what all he's doing. He's (among other things) actually fingering the bass fretboard while the marbles hit the strings. I didn't know you were referring to this video, and your comment of the motor noise compromising the recording lowered my expectations - I think of the "motor noise" as part of the instrument and I don't find it too distracting.

This is reminiscent of, and likely inspired by, the Animusic animated videos that have been around for many years. Intel made a processor-controlled mechanical thing based on one of the Animusic songs, and the videos I've seen of it really suck by comparison.

To at least say something on topic, I just looked at the Heathkit site and they have another new product, a digital desk/alarm clock that might even be useful. It's good to see more than one product, but I would imagine they need many more before being profitable.
 
I didn't know you were referring to this video, and your comment of the motor noise compromising the recording lowered my expectations

Actually, I wasn't. Either I missed with the cut and paste (likely) or some of my post didn't get posted (has happened before). Right after the words "Lego isn't cheap" I pasted a link of a Lego Mindstorm robot playing an acoustic guitar. The noise from the Lego motors drown out the guitar during some of the fast passages in the music. Zoom forward to about the 30 second mark to see what's going on. One more time.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXgB3lIvPHI

The marble machine is an amazing piece of work. I have the utmost respect for Martin Molin and Wintergatan (his band) They have built some of the instruments they use in their concerts, and there are Youtube videos of some construction details. If you watch their concert videos, you can see some examples of extreme musicianship. Not only do they play each other's instruments, there are handoff's in midsong, even on a Theremin without missing a note......try that sometime.
 
At first I thought, any decent fellow would say, "I will never say a bad thing about Lego again". Amazing. Thanks for posting. Amazing.

On the other hand, if you saw an Eiffel Tower replica built out of discarded ice cream pop sticks and chewing gum, would you gift your grandchild a box of discarded ice cream sticks?

Likewise for Heathkits. Are they just "paint by number" time-killers or can they teach basic principles not teachable as well any other way (esp. with when they had vacuum tubes and point to point wiring)?

Ben
 
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Likewise for Heathkits. Are they just "paint by number" time-killers or can they teach basic principles not teachable as well any other way (esp. with when they had vacuum tubes and point to point wiring)?

Ben
Going by historical evidence, the assembly manuals were paint-by-number and no doubt these are the same. If nothing else, it gets you familiar with what different components look like, and the resistor color code (which I suppose will last as long as thru-hole parts). The manuals did come with a schematic and a "Circuit Description" section, which I think is helpful to learn about what was built, if one is motivated enough to read it. I found them helpful learning electronics as a teen, as I said just a short five years ago in post #43.
 
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Hi bentoronto,
Likewise for Heathkits. Are they just "paint by number" time-killers or can they teach basic principles not teachable as well any other way (esp. with when they had vacuum tubes and point to point wiring)?
In addition to what benb said, you end up with something useful and a desire to make your own things up. I still have the first thing I made from Heathkit (VTVM) and used it heavily throughout my teens. The last time I powered it up, it worked just fine. I have a number of Heathkit things around here, and I still use a couple transistor testers. So if that means they are good value too, then add that to the list.

My father found an IT-121 transistor tester still packed as a kit. We bought it, and I had the rare pleasure of building another Heathkit. They are meant to be built and used - to be useful. I can't understand someone who would have a kit and not build it. The biggest trouble with that kit is oxidized switches.

-Chris
 

While waiting for my daughters car to be fixed, I wandered into a hobby shop. There were all sorts of mechanical, electronic, and electromechanical kits and gizmos to entertain and teach technically curious kids. I wish some of this stuff existed when I was a kid.

Someone previously mentioned the Meccano brand. There were several boxes of shiny stuff both metal and plastic on the shelf wearing that name. The boxes were printed in English on one side and French on the other. No real clue where the boxes came from.

Some Googling revealed that The ownership of the Meccano brand name has changed several times in it's 100+ year run. It's been a UK, US, French, and a Japanese company, and sometimes there were two companies using the Meccano brand. Since 2013 it's been a Canadian company. Throughout all the changes, some parts from the original 1901 - 1910 kits still work with the current production parts made in France and China.
 
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