On Sun, 3 Feb 2019 11:57:55 +0000, Paul Welsh
wrote:

On 03/02/2019 09:58, Tim+ wrote:

Having watched too many Big Clive videos I decided to have a go at a simple
digital clock kit from eBay.

The result was fairly decent and I enjoyed all the soldering so I’m keen to
have a go at a few more cheap kits for soldering practice.

Of course these kits aren’t actually teaching me anything (other than
soldering skills) and I’d like to progress to understanding a bit more
about the design and function of components/circuits.

So, any recommendations for basic and more advanced kits that won’t break
the bank? At the moment looking at a cheap Tesla coil kit on eBay.

Tim


It depends what pleases you.

For actual understanding, as opposed to soldering practice, I would go
with a Software PCB Designer. There are free ones. I've not used one for
a decade or more so I'm not sure which ones are best now, but they used
to be really cool and I can't imagine they have got worse.

Design a circuit, put it together virtually, virtually measure values at
points on the circuit with sophisticated virtual tools, see what happens
when you switch it on.

Obviously if you really like the physical aspect this is not for you,
but it worked for me.

EWB or Electronic Workbench.

It was pretty good, I still have it sitting on one of my HDD's.

I seem to recollect that one of the upgrades they did was pretty badly
flawed though, so we never really used it much after that.

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/202311

It appears to have been bought out by National Semiconductor, the link
to a "free" trial is above.

I have not tried this version so good luck!

AB