Radio Shack has gone DIY with Velleman kits

Comments

• Bean Posts: 8,129

  2011-06-23 08:55 edited 2011-06-23 08:55

  It's a step in the right direction.
  
  The real problem with Radio Shack is that the salespeople don't know anything about anything except selling cell-phones.
  
  I doubt they would even know how to wire up a battery clip, resistor, and LED.
  
  Bean
• Leon Posts: 7,620

  2011-06-23 09:18 edited 2011-06-23 09:18

  Many years ago I saw a Tandy computer shop assistant put a 5 1/4" floppy disk into an 8" drive slot whilst demonstrating the system to a customer! Radio Shack was known as Tandy in the UK.
• K2 Posts: 693

  2011-06-23 09:32 edited 2011-06-23 09:32

  It wasn't that many years ago (or maybe it was) that Radio Shack sold their own kits. One of my favorites was an inverter using a miniature audio transformer and two transistors to power a neon bulb. It also made a great cattle prod.
  
  My favorite Velleman kit provided remote control via telephone. We actually used one at work for a few years to allow us to remotely reset equipment from the convenience of our homes. That saved much gas, time, and bother.
• ctwardell Posts: 1,716

  2011-06-23 11:14 edited 2011-06-23 11:14

  I loved those little P-Box kits.
  
  C.W.
• wmosscrop Posts: 409

  2011-06-23 14:43 edited 2011-06-23 14:43

  ctwardell wrote: »

  I loved those little P-Box kits.

  
  I still have one (and it still works) - the "neon light sequencer" (or something like that - 5 neon lights in sequence via only caps & resistors). I had to replace the neon bulbs because one of bulb's wires (very fragile) broke.
  
  Walter
• ctwardell Posts: 1,716

  2011-06-23 14:56 edited 2011-06-23 14:56

  wmosscrop wrote: »

  I still have one (and it still works) - the "neon light sequencer" (or something like that - 5 neon lights in sequence via only caps & resistors). I had to replace the neon bulbs because one of bulb's wires (very fragile) broke.
  
  Walter

  
  I had that one, it is actually what "sparked" my interest in electronics.
  
  I saw it in a flyer back in the early 70's when I was 6 years old. My Dad said it was too complicated for me at the time, but got me some knife switches, a lantern battery, some of those little ceramic flashlight lamp holders with bulbs and wire.
  He taught me about parallel and series circuit with those items.
  
  A few years later I learned to solder and built the "goofy light". You could build it two ways, either random, or sequential, I built the random version.
  
  C.W.
• localroger Posts: 3,452

  2011-06-23 15:45 edited 2011-06-23 15:45

  I remember when RS discontinued the P-Box kits because it was when they still unloaded discount discontinued items and broken returns at local stores, and I bought about 15 of them for $1 apiece. I still have a pile of 100 KHz crystals from the timebase kits. My favorite though was the regenerative shortwave receiver. I added an audio amp to it and a second, smaller capacitor for fine tuning and spent many hours listening to stations from all over the world with a random wire antenna strung above the ceiling moulding in my room.
• $WMc% Posts: 1,884

  2011-06-23 18:18 edited 2011-06-23 18:18

  I would love to see Radio-Shack selling kits again.
  '
  I would really like to see Radio-Shack hire an Engineer to explain how the kit works and give some in-site on electronics. A Forrest M. Mimms III replacement if you will.
  '
  When I was a kid these kits were the best Christmas gifts ever.
  '
  Maybe theirs hope for our kids and grandkids to enjoy some of the stuff we did back in the day.
• Unknown

  2011-06-24 05:14 edited 2011-06-24 05:14

  I found out one other thing. When comparing prices, you can get the Velleman kits cheaper from catalogs than Radio Shack. If you buy more than one kit, you can probably save money despite having to pay for shipping. You get gouged for paying for convenience so get them through the catalog.
• xanatos Posts: 1,120

  2011-06-24 09:22 edited 2011-06-24 09:22

  So I bought one of the Velleman kits from RS today, just for the heck of it. I bought the PIC programmer. Nice looking kit. I got it home and glanced through the description and what do I see? In bold letters: "Not compatible with USB to Serial converters!"
  
  Now since I haven't seen a serial port on any of my computers for years (and since I'm entirely on laptops) I thought that serial ports disappeared with Atari video tennis...
  
  Does anyone know why a serial port on this board would not be compatible with an FTDI style USB to serial adapter?
  
  Dave
• John A. Zoidberg Posts: 514

  2011-06-24 09:38 edited 2011-06-24 09:38

  Those hobby kits are marvellous.
  
  Do they have a smaller ones like Arduino packages or basic hobby kits which only involves logic gates?
• erco Posts: 20,261

  2011-06-24 10:39 edited 2011-06-24 10:39

  @Dave: That is ridiculous. Hope you find a converter that works. It's techno-suicide for Velleman if they can't work with modern computers.
• xanatos Posts: 1,120

  2011-06-24 11:31 edited 2011-06-24 11:31

  Agreed - but I'm not going to make the kit if I can't guarantee myself that I can ever interface it to anything but some old yellowed-with-age heap I might pick up at the local electronics recycle day! :-)
  
  Sounds like a trip back to RS to get a refund... sad, because I would LOVE to see them grow a new generation of electronics enthusiasts by making kits available, and have those kits be successful, but this is certainly an issue... as is the product placement - they're virtually hidden, and theonly people that will find them are likely to be people who already are experienced in electronics to some degree.
  
  The instructions are rather poor for anyone who might be relatively new to electronics as well, and there were NO demo or experiment programs available - I was expecting something more along the lines of Parallax's "What is a Microcontroller" kit, which was my intro to the field and was impeccably written for every skill level. This Velleman kit would leave all but a fairly experienced experimenter out in the cold...
  
  Dave
• GordonMcComb Posts: 3,366

  2011-06-24 13:45 edited 2011-06-24 13:45

  Is this the K8048 or K8076? These are pretty old kits, actually. I'm not sure if Velleman has USB replacements.
  
  I have a rather expensive USB to RS-232 serial port adapter that works with everything. They're not cheap -- mine was >$80 when I got it several years ago. Most people have a low-cost USB to serial converter that doesn't 100% emulate a standard serial port. Since yours is a kit, it might be better to return it and just get a PicKit, like what everyone else has.
  
  The entry-level Velleman kits are pretty good at teaching soldering and other tasks. My grandson and I have built several of their "blinky light" kits. They're fine for what they do, but they lack any kind of theory of operation or anything else that would make them suited for self-study education, like WAM.
• GordonMcComb Posts: 3,366

  2011-06-24 14:01 edited 2011-06-24 14:01

  Somebody in another forum mentioned RS might bring back the speaker components. That would be great, because then they might bring back my "Building Speaker Systems" book, which they used to publish (and I used to enjoy nice monthly royalty checks!). They sold hundreds of thousands of those books, so they must have had success selling the speaker components, too. If only half of the readers bought just one $20 tweeter, that's some $3.5 million in component sales.
  
  It's easier to sell prepackaged consumer products than to deal with electronics hobbyists. The Shack has always had this thing about trimming what they called the "bottom 2000" -- out of about 2,500 products, the top 500 provided the biggest return. Resistors and wire were in the bottom 2000. These low-end products didn't amount to a lot of revenue, but IMO were the drivers for the loyal, repeat customers. Over the years they phased out large portions of the bottom 2000 in an attempt to streamline their inventory.
  
  I bet Forrest is happy with the news. He sold a lot of resistors and capacitors for RS.
  
  -- Gordon
• Mike Green Posts: 23,101

  2011-06-24 14:05 edited 2011-06-24 14:05

  The K8076 looks like it ought to work with any USB to serial adapter that implements all of the handshake lines. It needs 3 (TxD), 4 (DTR), 5 (Gnd), 7 (RTS), and 8 (CTS). Many USB to serial adapters don't implement all of these.
• GordonMcComb Posts: 3,366

  2011-06-24 14:05 edited 2011-06-24 14:05

  $WMc% wrote: »

  I would really like to see Radio-Shack hire an Engineer to explain how the kit works and give some in-site on electronics. A Forrest M. Mimms III replacement if you will.

  
  AFAIK Forrest is still alive and kicking. No need to replace him quite yet!
  
  -- Gordon
• bsnut Posts: 521

  2011-06-24 20:36 edited 2011-06-24 20:36

  RS bringing in these kits is not a bad idea, but they need some more. I was just at RS site and found the PIC programmer and its priced right.
  
  I was also able to find Parallax products like the ping sensor at RS and some of the Parallax products were being discontinue and sold at discount in area, here in Maryland.
• RDL2004 Posts: 2,554

  2011-06-25 08:06 edited 2011-06-25 08:06

  Why would a person buy the Velleman programmer when they could have a PICKit2 instead?
• davidsaunders Posts: 1,559

  2011-06-25 09:28 edited 2011-06-25 09:28

  Now we see why a Laptop is not a good development system. Buy a PCI RS232 card and plop it in your desktop computer, then you will have a modern computer with a brand new (about $7.00 USD) RS232 adapter (most have two ports). The whole concept of the Personal computer is that you are never limited, hence use your laptop for traveling and your Desktop for real work.