Re: Circuits that techies need ?

> Of course, most 'techies' make their own circuits, but I could see
> junior engineers and scientists enjoying the luxury of having a simple
> 'development' board they can try and tweak in their system rather than
> spend too much money or time.
> Those are my ideas.
>

Hmm so your plan is basically to make some modules that can be tied together
in order to form a reconfigurable system. And the modules can be trimmed to
match the application.

I dare to doubt if it would be really interesting to work with 'black box'
modules. I think it is more interesting to tie together 'basic' resistors,
caps and transistors.
With special modules it will be hard to explain the blackboxes so well that
the user knows exactly what each potmeter/trimcap serves for. The knowledge
that you get about the box is not so useful as the knowledge about the real
resistors / capacitors / transistors / opamps / comparators.

Do you know the Philips 'experimental boxes'? Below was the one that made me
enthousiastic for electronics:
http://www.rrd.demon.nl/Philips%20experimenteerdozen/Electronic%20expert%20lab%20grundstufe%20c.htm

The only 'module' there was a robust opamp with decoupling and some
compensation circuitry, the rest was discrete wire components. A system with
special 'springs' enabled rather reliable connecting.

What I liked:
1) many nice applications possible, ranging from humidity sensor, bistable
and monostable multivibrators to 'beeping' devices and even a heterodyne AM
radio receiver.
2) good documentation so you can understand what you build
3) cheap components readily available for replacement or expansion.


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