Whatever happened to Heathkit, the do-it-yourself electronics kits that used to be so popular at the dawn of the computer age?
For decades, Heathkit was a household name among those who liked to play with electronics.
From 1947 until 1992, Heathkit — which was the “brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company,” according to Wikipedia — was among the biggest, if not the biggest, game in town when it came to electronics kits.
Most ham radio enthusiasts and electrical engineers “of a certain age remember fondly their first Heathkit,” wrote EDN Network in May, 2013. “Everybody had at least one Heathkit.”
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
