I searched the internet thoroughly to determine the best starter kit for a gift for my 11 yr. old grandson. The kit seems to be OK but there is no parts list, documentation, instructions, or any type of guidance at all included. There is a tiny note in the kit thanking me for the purchase. There is a website link printed on the note but I cannot read Russian print and cannot find anything there. Several emails to 16Hertz support in the past three weeks have not been answered.
There are several packages of component parts and PC boards but we do not know what they are. Can someone guide me to any type of documentation for this kit?
Did you already buy it ? You can make a photo of the parts that you don't understand.
I hope you didn't pay more than 35 dollars/euros.
The 16hertz.com site doesn't mention that they are located in Berlin in Gemany. I wonder why.
Many of us don't like the kits. You can buy so much more for that money. You can start with an Arduino Uno, a breadboard and some wires. Add a servo motor, some resistors and some leds to that, perhaps even a few sensors and a LCD shield. See the examples in the Arduino IDE, and what is needed to do those.
Yes, Peter_n, that's the kit I purchased. AND I paid $59 US plus shipping. I feel like a fool.
I have opened each of the small packages in the kit and searched the internet for info. on each. That worked pretty well. We now have a data sheet on each major item in the kit with technical information as well as price and supplier alternatives.
I have not looked at the 9V wall-wort to see if it is certified. The kit is now with my grand son and he lives 60 miles away. I think he's using the USB connection on a laptop for his power supply. At least for now.
I must say that the quality if the parts seems to be very good.
It doesn't look like a bad starter set to me, nor particularly overpriced.
You might hope for slightly "cheaper" considering that it's based on a clone, and it has some parts that I personally would not have considered valuable (like the baseplate), but it does have some relatively high-value parts (LCD, protoShield, ultrasonic rangefinder, Accelerometer and Gyroscope Module. You probably could have saved SOME money by ordering parts or kits from China via AliExpress or eBay, but buying one of the more official Arduino or Adafruit starter sets would have netted you less stuff for more money.
What you DON'T get with this sort of starter set is the customized set of instructions and tutorials that will lead you through various levels of learning. Some of the basic components (LEDs and buttons and such) will be essentially the same as any other starter set, but those less-common parts are going to be harder to find introductory material explaining how and why to use them. Adafruit has tutorials for lots of things, but they may require some "adapting" to match the components in your set.
There is this "summary card": http://www.16hertz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/11.jpg
which says you should be getting: "1x PDF Product Guide (please allow for 7-10 days for email to arrive at your inbox)"
You should probably keep poking them for that (and check your spam filters/etc...)
