Package up some gear into an Altoids Tin and I'm almost automatically going to think it's awesome. Make it tool based, so it can be used to do novel stuff, and you can pretty much expect me to rave about it at some point on my blog. The Mintronics: Survival Pack is just such an Altoids size container of goodness.
Rather than housing a wilderness. or urban, it contains a sort of electronics "survival kit." It includes a small breadboard, various components like resistors, capacitors and transistors, and various odds and ends to make little electronics projects.
I see it less as an every-day-carry item, and more as a really nifty sized package to bust out and get some hands on practice with basic electronics. Projects, like say this one, that are more about expanding your mind than building practical solutions, seem like they would be a good fit.
The big catch I see with the pack, and the reason I haven't immediately added it to my wishlist, is that it lacks any sort of documentation that describe what projects you can actually build with it. If Mintronics provided an ebook, or better yet, a series of videos, showing 20 or more projects that can be done with these basic components I'd be all in. After all, one of the big hurdles I find with electronics projects is just getting the parts together. I'd rather spend a few extra bucks and buy a kit that I know can actually be used to build stuff, rather than one that just looks like it might be useful.
YouTube user BirdShotBrad has a cool collection of videos where he shows a number of cicruits he's created using parts from the Minotronics tin. Heck, maybe Mintronics should throw a few bucks his way to produce more?
So the tin is cool, and I love the idea of playing with little projects using such a small footprint. But it needs a book. Maybe some entrepreneurial soul is ready to step up to the challenge? Just tell me what to buy, and give me 20+ circuits to build, from simple to complex, and I'm in.
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