I am the very definition of a novice hardware hacker. I’ve been programming computers since I was a child, but I have _not_ been working on hardware for anywhere near as long. I’ve got maybe one year of screwing around with small electronics (3.3v to 5v), mostly small kits, gadgets, and keyboards. I’ve also been working on some of my own prototypes with mixed sets of success.
In my (quite limited) experience, there’s a pattern that rapidly emerges with these kits:
- Kit in the shopping cart: “It’ll be nice to know that all of the parts will be there, and there’ll probably be instructions”
- Kit shows up: “Crap; it’s missing a bunch of parts”
- Assembling kit after having acquired missing parts: “These instructions are shit! It’ll take me forever to assemble this while testing everything and making sure things are going together well”
- After assembly, troubleshooting: “This kit is never gonna work. It was probably a dud the whole time.”
- After it works: “Holy crap, this kit was so much fun.”
- Reflecting on the kit afterward: “The difficulties probably made it more fun!”
- When you’re about to buy the next kit: “I really hope this kit has all of the parts and decent instructions”
If you’re wondering which kit I’m building, it’s a kit based on this repository here: https://github.com/duckyb/eternal-keypad?tab=readme-ov-file
The kit is available for purchase here: https://shop.beekeeb.com/product/eternal-keypad-kit/ and I believe that if you buy the kit that it financially benefits the original author.
(None of the links above financially benefit me)