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Episode: 867
Title: HPR0867: Gift Guide for Electronics Engineers of the Future
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0867/hpr0867.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:46:45
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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. This is Mr. Fisticat, it's 10th promise. The continuation
of my episode slash dot drive last week about how we need to get young people and anybody
else who has a time and the information interested in holding hardware and interested in learning
about the hardware that makes up the medical devices that make all of our lives wonderful
and fabulous here in the world of tomorrow except for my flying car. So I mentioned about
how I used to build kits and had various kinds of adventures as a young lad with an interest
in things technical and electronic and so I thought I would list out a whole series of
sites and of course give you some anecdotes about various ways that one can procure electronic
and fear not because I have not only information about here within the United States of America
which of course I mentioned at these apropos because it's just the cusp of our beginning of
our huge shopping season and our black Friday which probably this episode will play just
before black Friday and if you need to get ideas there's a whole bunch of them here but I also
have information about stores where you can buy similar types of items up in the fair commonwealth
of Canada just north of us here as well as another electronics source that I know of over in
the United Kingdom. So we're international this week on DIY and kit building and getting kids
interested in electronics. Okay so primarily then we need to have a real electronics store. Now
this is something which lamentably has gone by the wayside here with the U.S. We used to have
several just hearings here in the city and I've talked about them on various episodes but those
Lafayette, Bertie Nappley was local here allied those have mostly gone by the wayside various
electronics change. There are still change of course that do still electronic items but not the
kits that we're talking about and not electronic components and even magazines that are or
even towards this. In the U.S. all of the electronic magazines have sadly gotten the dust they could
no longer keep their doors open but there's been a resurgence of magazines so we'll talk about those
a little bit later in the episode but of course the best way to get started with this is to have
something you can see that you can hold that you can touch that you can get your hands on right away
and within the United States of America that easiest source of both electronic components when
you're more advanced and you're wanting to get some parts that you can use and they might be a
little bit cheaper if you order them online and there are various sources of parts online but you
can get them right away and a source for kids and there's been a resurgence of said kids and that
is of course the ubiquitous radio shack store which is I used to joke with people that pretty soon
your question will be do you want to eat dinner at the McDonald's across the street or at the
McDonald's next door and of course there'll be a radio shack on every block. Now that is also kind
of gone by the wayside but there are still radio shack stores across the width and breadth of this
great nation and there are similar stores that actually used to be radio shack stores up north
in candidate so up in candidate it was kind of interesting there's this interesting aspect to
radio shack stores. Radio shack stores are mostly owned by Tandy Corporation which is actually
a leather company or at least that was originally what Tandy did with leather and there's at least one
outlet where you can still buy supplies if you are a person who likes to actually work with leather
make leather pouches and bags and belts and such there's one Tandy store still in town.
Initially the radio shack was from down in Texas and that's where Tandy was from Fort Worth
Texas and they bought out that and franchised it essentially initially so a lot of the stores
were initially franchise stores. By the time I was interested in electronics there were really only
three franchise stores in the Kansas City area that were left and there are some interesting
stories about that that I might go into on some future episode. A lot of times when you go into
the rural areas of the states you'll see a Tandy store I mean a radio shack store that's kind
of part of another store or a lot of the more rural ones are franchise stores. I've always
liked the franchise stores because you can find the most interesting old stuff there.
And sometimes it's the old stuff that you're looking for in terms of just the parts that you need
or just the particular thing that you need to do this and we will have a talk early or later
in the series here of building things about how you go out and look for items and you buy them
on the super cheap you buy them on the clearance sale not because you're ever going to use the
item for what it was intended for but for all the interesting parts that are inside right in what
you can tinker with. So the franchise radio shack stores are kind of gone by the wayside here in
the states however up until a few years ago every radio shack store in Canada was actually
owned by I believe if I'm not incorrect it was computer city but and oddly enough computer city
in the United States was subsumed by a radio shack you know subsidiary but anyway so whoever it
was everything in Canada was franchise and there was some kind of a dust up between the which
is a real Texan kind of a term there were some kind of a dust up between them a few years back
this is all around those six years ago or so I do a little googling and that seemed to be about
the time frame and so they said we'll find we'll just you know we own all the locations and we
can source parts and we can source a lot of the stuff that we sell we're just going to rename
those the source so now in Canada you have everything that was a radio shack store is now a
the source and it's not exactly the same things whether it's mostly the same stuff because then
going back to the manufacturers if there's anything that's that's candy branded that's radio shack
branded they're just going to the same you know people in China and having them run the same parts
with a different that a packaging so a lot of the same stuff but some extra interesting stuff
I when I go on a trip to Canada I always go to a a at least one source store in fact my favorite
of all the places to go is of course in downtown Toronto and there's all kinds of interesting things
we'll talk a little bit more about Toronto here with of course the episode but excuse me the
most interesting thing about source stores is they have extra things that you would not see
in a regular radio shack store so it's interesting to go to for me because I get to see you know
interesting new things involved with that so now after this whole everything became a source
store and one of the reasons why I like going to downtown Toronto I have several customers there so
I've done various of these trips to the years and one of the most interesting parts about it is
there's this big huge shopping center on young street now young street is kind of main street for
Toronto for want of a better term it is the street that goes north from the lake pretty much
straight north from the lake and it keeps on going and going and going I mean it's hundreds of miles up
into you know Ontario the big problems that's Toronto then so that whole aspect of going up
young street well there's King Street and there's Queen Street right coming up and I think it's
just at King Street that this huge shopping center and I'm not going to name it by name because
its name has changed and I don't remember what the new name is but this is a big thing I mean
it's got three or four fours and it's got you know and it's long it's four or five blocks long
literally I believe it's Queen Street and then King Street I forget which one is north these are
parallel streets that cost young and whatever that that street that's on the south part of this
there's a subway station there and this thing is strung out along young street far enough
and a sufficient number of blocks that there's another subway station on the other end of the
shopping center very large and thusly since it's so large there were always two radio sectors
so there's one in one engine there's one at the other oh boat of service right to the little
thing I had to do at night when I left up there doing a training session or something like that
so I'm just walking around and and wandering around they got an apple store had that left time
we went up and the apple stores came into play and as I mentioned this is all about five six
years ago since then radio check has moved back into Canada and opened quote unquote real radio
check stores right I'm doing air clothes here so now there's three stores and so electronic parts
all of this lunch shopping center of course this is Nirvana for me right so one night I'll
sleep just wander around in that shopping center and stop at all the electronic stores one way
plus there's a New Gillian you know cell phone places oh kind of stuff so anyway sources for
parts and sources for kits now the interesting and exciting thing about radio check now within the
states I don't know I've got a compatriot that's been up to Canada several times but she's not
type person to go to a radio check or a source store so I don't know about this but radio
check here in the state has started back into serious kits now they've had some kits through the
years they even still have that item that I talked about where it was a 30 in one kid and a 75
in one kit they still sell some of those and if you do have somebody start with a smaller kit
a simpler kind of a kit and if they seem to have an interest in that then you could build up to
one of those I think it's 150 in one kit 150 different circuits it's got a little breadboard
that you can stick parts into the little one with a little holes and things like that it's got
multiple ICs that are involved so it's very nice very nice kind of a lab it's really literally
an electronic lab that you can use to experiment with different parts without soldering or anything
like that and also there's some new things that have come on into play it will be talking about
that over the next few minutes our do we know is a little micro computer chip now there's very
been various little microcontrollers they've been called through the years and they've always been
of interest to people who want to experiment around with not just computers that you can use to do
data processing and graphics and things like that these microcontrollers would be the kind of
things you would use to control your robot or turn on and off you know servos or control lights
and you know things like that so it's much more towards the turning a signal on and off or
having some inputs that you could detect whether a switch was closed or things like that when
you're getting down to the nitty gritty of controlling something and they were easier to program
and things like that or do we know have come on to the scene here it's open hardware it's an
open spec and it is very very exciting stuff so a lot of this you'll hear a lot about our do we know
our do we know it's a little bit too daunting though to start out right away you're probably in
you know you're probably going to want to experiment around with some of these other electronics
first before you jump right into Arduino but you know your mileage may vary here so they're
going to start selling some of the Arduino kinds of kits and parts that you use in conjunction
with that right there in the radio check store so I find that very exciting and there's also
various kinds of kits they're adding on to their they've always had through the years some
very simple kind of kits a very beginner youngster kind of kits but they're having some more
serious kinds of kits that are going to become available and I found out all about this at our
maker fair we had a Kansas City maker fair talked about that I think in an HVRI episode and
they had a lot of kits there at the maker fair and those are the kind of things they're stocking
in the stores now and speaking of stockings they're great stocking stuffers right there the size
that they could put in there so there's a lot of kits they're available a lot of parts that
are available at radio check those are readily available there's lots of good books there most
of those if you're interested in electronics there's a guy named MIMS forest MIMS who has written
the definitive kind of electronic books for electronic circuits and explaining how they work
and things like that so that those that would be an excellent excellent source I think they'll probably
be something similar at the source there's also a story in the UK called maplen and I ran
across this 20 little probably 24 years ago or so on a trip I used to work in our national before
I came to the company I worked now for a company called well it was a small company in Kansas
city that got bought out and I talked about that before and the latter part of my career at
Informix and latter part at Innovative was working with translators and on one trip I was visiting
a translation house that was in London that could do some work for us and right down the street
from that was a maplen store literally two doors down and so that's how I discovered maplen my
latest two trips to the UK I didn't actually look up to find out where the local maplen store was
and I kind of regret that because I always enjoyed that they are online you can get there
to if you look up maplen and I'm going to send Kim links so hopefully you'll have links to
all of these things here as part of the show notes and the maplen store I know I can see from
the website I was on a mobile device so I couldn't see the full site but I know it's got a lot of
components there and things like that I'm not sure how well it's fixed for kids you know and things
but I imagine that would be a great source for electronic parts and things like that which
eventually you're probably going to develop and interested now there's also internationally
some franchise stores for radio shacks so there are a few countries I noticed that you know there's
Radio Shack Locator and it's located outside the US and they have some locations of franchise
stores outside of the US there seems to be one store per country but now an interesting
point of this is if you have an interest in this and you have a knowledge of this I have no idea
what the equivalent of the maplen store or the Radio Shack store would be in Germany although I
imagine there is in France although I imagine there is in you know I did find kind of the
approximate equivalent of this of some components and things like that in Bangkok when I spent some
time there with my company so there's lots of lots of different places and lots of lots of
different countries so if you're in a country you have a similar type of show by all means call in
and spread the kind of kits in electronic parts and where you would go to get them in your country
okay so we have the Radio Shack stores the source stores the maplen stores
magazine-wise to get interested in this there's something called I'm I limited there used to be
a popular electronics I believe technically it was popular electronics was where Bill Gates
well technically his Paul Allen saw that the MITF computer was going to be available as a kit
computer kit that you could build and got with Bill and that's how they got it so excited and
started up Microsoft and that one then got bought out by radio electronics or the ultimately the
yeah there used to be also radio electronics and radio electronics I believe bought popular
electronics and it became modern electronics and then that'll die so there's no more
there were no paper magazines about electronics for several years of the US but recently O'Reilly
has started up make magazine make magazine is the most fantastic resource for this kind of thing
do it yourself electronics and do it yourself other kinds of ideas and so go to makezine.com
there'll be a link in the show notes and the make magazine you can get four issues a year
you can get electronic issues so if you're international and you don't want to pay whatever
the exorbitant fee is to get the paper shipped to you you probably can find this in a bookstore
that does handle some international magazines you might be able to find issues there there's only
four issues a year but it's a nice thick issue and it usually has lots and lots of ideas for projects
and a lot of these are projects that are directly available and would be doable by children you know
youngsters right in that age frame of the tweens right the the preteens and tweens and early
teams there where you can really capture their interests lots and lots of stuff they can do
one thing I would caution you about and I would encourage you I have lost the feeling in my
tips of my fingers I can't tell you how many times from hot soldering irons nowadays there's
actually a cold tip soldering iron that the tip remains cold until you touch it to the
metal that you're actually soldering so you've got an extra safety kind of aspect of things for
for your kids excuse me so kids that are available they have a store a maker store where you
can buy all kinds of kits another very interesting company that's come on to play that has a lot
of the Arduino kind of things as well as other interesting kits is called Ada Fruit the lady who
started that lady Ada and you should go out and you should you should search YouTube for Lady Ada
or Ada Fruit and see some of the YouTube things because she's had some fairly high profile kinds of
interviews that are you get off of YouTube Bloomberg and CNN and some of the news people are
starting to pick up on this and she has all kinds of interesting kits and other kinds of things
that she's selling maker store actually sell some of the Ada Fruit kinds of things but you know
she probably gets a little bit more or maybe gets a little bit more we'd buy directly from her
so you can always check that out another exciting aspect of this and other places that you can get
you know kits locally here is various electronic stores now the best one I've ever run into
outside of you know radio check electronic stores let's stay up in 7 8 9 o'clock at night
there may be an electronic store in your town there's one here in the campus city area
but it's really designed to sell electronic parts to professionals to businesses and things
like that so it closes at 5 o'clock right and if you work a normal business hour you can't get to
that store unless you take off at lunch and go down and they're really more oriented towards
lots and lots of parts and and purchase orders and there's electronic distributors here in town
that are designed to sell to them I'm talking about people who are designed to sell to you as an
individual on a retail basis here right so the best one I've ever found is something called
you do it electronics and it's in suburban Boston and whenever I have a car in Boston I always
drive to you do it electronics and they they've got components but they've also got interesting kits
and just all kinds of electronic things and that's always a pilgrimage that I make another pilgrimage
I always make is when I'm out in California there's fries and fries have a lot of electronic kits
and a lot of components as well as the everything else electronic that they sell in fries but there's
some really good aisles if you're interested in building stuff and there's some kits and things
like that at fries so there's another source if you happen to live somewhere where there's a
fries store fries is kind of funny I've told the story of fries right it actually started with
well I think I told the story of fries I'll save that for another time because they're going on
here another thing that I noticed and I talked about this in the HDR store when I was in Ohio and
I've noticed now at my local one also if you have a micro center that is within driving distance or
a micro center in your town micro center has started handling some of the kits that are the maker
kits mostly the ones related to Arduino and microcontrollers and things like that so you can acquire
some of that interesting stuff that is in the maker stores like having a maker store right there
as a little you know section of the wall in your micro center store so if you have a micro center
store you have that availability to you that I know there was a place that I went to once that was
just a regular electronic center place the kind that's really more just electronic parts for you
know people who you still need those on a professional basis but and that was in Ohio somewhere
this has probably been 15 to 20 years ago but I remember going to that store and it stayed open until
eight or nine o'clock at night which is very unusual for those types of stores that micro centers are
really interesting sources for that now it not only have you know it has those kinds of kits
and things like that in Toronto it's kind of the opposite of fries I have kind of talked about how
fries started as a a little kind of hardware oriented computer oriented thing within a different
kind of store the opposite of that kind of has has happened in Toronto there was an electronic store
along a street and I can't remember the street up top of my head but there's a whole line of
computer stores in Toronto very easy to get to by subway and bus and there's a whole line of
those and just row after row I mean store after store all the row here that are all the
baseball stores there the stories that would show you various kinds of components to build computers
and things like that well some enterprise thing young lad opened up an electronic store that
was selling microcontrollers and are doing those different kind of parts that you would want to
you know pursue this type of hobby but he wasn't quite making you know the rent and he was going
to have to close down and a little hardware store in that neighborhood bought out that inventory and
I guess he works for them now I'm toxic for them and and anyway there's like a niler to in this
hardware store where you go to my paint and hammers and nails and stuff like that there's literally
a little section of that story that's all the electronic parts and I thought that was interesting
instead of a electronics thing that grows bigger than the store this was an electronic store that
went smaller and went into a different kind of hardware store so that hardware store you can buy
everything right it reminds me of years ago there was a there this is way way back when micro computers
were first starting and in which I can this there was a micro and micro store you can buy microwave
ovens which we still relatively do and you can buy micro computers in this table store that store
didn't make it anyway but so all these different places and the the maker store interesting enough
last year there was a special book that they came out from make magazine it was included with
your recognition description it was a special edition it was all about tools right had one of the
guys from oh shoot I can't even think of the name the the TV show where they tried mythbusters
one of the guys from mythbusters the guy with glasses and he was the one that's not bald I can't
move the name anyway he was on a cover and they had tools that you would use if you were a maker
right if you were you know you need tools and so it was a special thing on tools this year they've
got a whole new section in make magazine that on that magazine site you can go to a special link
that is a special page that's all about kip and they have an issue of make magazine that is the
kit builder special and you can get a printed version of it maybe at a store near you or you can
order it from them and I believe that's 999 us and for 699 us and I assume that would be within the
us as well as outside the us you can order a electronic version of it and get the pdf and I believe
that's 699 so there's various and sundry places where you can find kips oh there's another one
and you can find it on make or store I can't remember the name of it right now but I'll also send
a link to them to Kim so he can include it and that is this new electronic thing that's designed
for kiv and and really small children where you don't want to get into soldering and you don't
even want to get into connecting wires right to the little springs on the electronic lab and it's
got these little modules and they're brightly colored and it's kind of like Lego blocks for
electronics and you've got various little kinds of modules and you connect the modules together and
then you get a working circuit and it's just the kind of thing that will really suck in smaller
children because they can literally put together light beer they're little interconnecting these
locks only when they're done they get something that blinks on and off an LED light or you know does
some other kind of cool thing and they built it and as I said last week there's nothing quite
like that feeling of I built the circuit and they even the little program for the microcontroller
that is why this little LED comes on whenever that door opens or you know I can blink that and
whatever patterns that I want or I can have a little set of LEDs and I can put whatever message I
want on those LEDs and there's just nothing like that feeling that I made this so if you want
sunshine in your life to have that kind of feeling these are the kind of things you need to give
them started go out there see what's there don't hesitate to send me questions I got some fantastic
feedback on the show about acoustic suspension speakers and I need to get back with the gentleman
to see if I can post or if you'll give you information to talk about some of the info that you
talked about with me on that he had spent years in the high fly business and has forgotten probably
more than I ever knew about speaker systems and so if you want to give me some feedback you can
send me email through the hpr site I am mr. gadgets on Google plus send me any kind of email you
want to hpr at mr. gadgets.com and if you have any questions on this I want to have me you know
look up some info for you or if I talk about something and I can't find the link right away don't
hesitate to give me some feedback here on the episodes but other than that I hope everybody is
having a safe shopping experience for the coming holiday and whatever holiday it is you happen
to celebrate and hopefully I give you some ideas on what and you know there's nothing that says
you know you were all kids at heart so as often as it says that if you got some time and you're
interested in this you can go out and build one of these kits and some other future episodes will
delve off into you know there's some more complex kits now if they're interested in radios boy
there's some radio kits now that that once you get some skill at soldering you know some parts
to a board and things like that you can build some radios now that go way beyond anything that I
had available as a kid and but that will be the subject of another episode okay so this is
mr. gadgets without your scarring parts on the electronic front here and we'll talk to you next time bye
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