Christmas Gift Ideas part 2 – Analog Kit
Introduction
I noticed another interesting kit from Farnell/Newark which was so nice I purchased two – one as a gift and one for myself. The Arduino kit reviewed earlier is suitable for beginners of any age, but the kit reviewed here is only suitable for older school or college students or older – basically anyone prepared to self-learn and familiar with finding information for themselves from books or datasheets. It is a kit of analog components but is doesn’t come with any documentation and any experimentation has to be from your own initiative and from the individual device datasheets.
This kit would be perfect for a university student or for self-learners.
The advantage of familiarity with analog circuits (even if you don't wish to do much in the analog domain) is that some things are just easier to implement in analog compared to digital electronics. Plus, many sensors are analog, and so some analog processing is needed before it can be interfaced to a microcontroller.
This kit of parts is extremely low cost (at least in the UK; the current Newark price seems higher, but it is still good value); it would be very hard (I think impossible) to individually purchase the items at a lower cost. The main highlights are that the kit provides the ability to use some great analog components, it provides access to many expensive parts and that they are pre-soldered onto adapter boards suitable for a breadboard so that there is no need to deal with surface-mount soldering.
Inside the box
The parts are supplied in a tough plastic case. It looks very basic until you read on the cover what it contains; there are over 20 integrated circuits (including many op amps), a variety of sensors and many discrete components. The kit is created by Digilent and it consists of mainly ICs from Analog Devices. They are the heart of the kit, and provide the most value here. You can see the ICs in the pink foam, and on the green adapter boards.
The remainder parts are lower cost and consist of some fairly standard parts. The breadboard is quite narrow so only just useful.
There is space in the kit box, so if I was giving this as a gift I would add some more components. I would add a couple of PP3 battery clip connectors, a 2xAA battery holder, a 78L05 regulator and maybe an ICM7555. There is room to hold these, and it would make the kit instantly more usable.
Underneath the breadboard were jumper cables and a screwdriver for adjusting the supplied trimmer resistors:
Here is another view; underneath the pink foam were more ICs:
The kit of parts is fairly usable, it is an acceptable selection of components. However the kit is clearly slightly rushed for these reasons:
• No supplied battery clip as mentioned earlier
• No paper instructions whatsoever; even a pinout of the ICs would have been nice as a reference card
• The printing on the adapter boards is poor and it is hard (but not impossible) to read which IC is which, without a strong light or a magnifier.
Still, the kit is such great value for money; it is still worth every penny just for the ICs alone.
As a side note, if one wished to connect up the kit to a microcontroller, e.g. to use the sensors with a microcontroller, it could interface to an Arduino or any other board because this kit contains a voltage-to-frequency converter IC.
Playing with the kit
To find out if the supplied bits were sufficient, I tried to play with a couple of the sensors using only the supplied parts if possible. The first is just some quick playing with the light dependant resistor. All parts were from the kit, except the battery clip and battery:
Then I tried some playing with the magnetic sensor. Note that a magnet is not supplied. I happened to have one stuck in a pencil (don’t ask ;-):
These were both just quick experiments of course. More interesting things are possible.
Summary
At the price of the kit, I think it is clear that if you’re interested in learning analog electronics, this is a great way to get into the subject. It will need to be supplemented with a book or self-learning through the Internet and the device datasheets. Analog Devices have a wealth of information on their website of course.
For an absolute beginner (of any age), the Arduino kit is the more ideal step into electronics. This analog kit would suit an older self-learner.
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