ELEGOO Upgraded Electronics Fun Kit

Superb complete breadboard kit for prototyping and testing. Great value as it includes jumper wires, a useful selection of components, and a power supply module. Arrived quickly with low postal costs.

Bought this to help my granddaughter with her electrical units for GCSE physics. Just the job, plenty of components to construct the necessary circuits. A bit fiddly, but bread boards are! Included power supply enables two different voltages from a USB supply and can be used with programmable microcomputers such as Rasberry pi to practice and learn coding. Great value for money.

Bought this as the next step for a 10yo grandchild who showed great interest (4 hours non-stop) in an excellent electronics intro kit we bought for Christmas. The range of components and functionality is good and includes plenty of components without too many 'black box' ICs. This is also my first breadboard and I was aware of measurements form my researches, but I was nevertheless surprised how small the board and components are (they are standard), so I'm not sure how easily the child will be able to manipulate the components and how easily he will be able to see things as we discuss/exlore/explain the simple circuits we have in mind. There is a video of 5 fairly simple projects on the Elegoo website (altho takes a bit of finding) which should prove of interest once the principles of the breadboard connections (see YouTbube videos), simple circuits with lights (LEDs) and switches are mastered. I would say all of this needs adult supervision, preferably with someone who already understands the basics of circuits. Many of the Elegoo kits seem to be intended as add-ons for Raspberry Pi or Arduino computer boards, but this one does seem to be intended for standalone fun. If using batteries (so far I have used a 2 x 1.5v AA battery pack) rather than the little power module that is in the kit (3.3 and 5v options from the module), some small variation to the components being used in a specific project may be needed.

Arrives in a box with all components in separate bags. 30 or so LEDs and dozens of jumper leads, plus dozens of wires with reinforced ends to make pushing into the breadboard easy. Breadboard of a decent quality. 10 switches, 5 NPNs , some diodes, a pot, resistors, caps and more besides. Buying these individually would cost a lot more than the kit. Just finished making an astable multivibrator. Took 10 mins and worked first time because the connections are so secure. A power board is in the kit but it needs an adapter. I plugged in the adapter from my laptop but that delivers 19V so I took that off immediately. Then I powered the breadboard from a 9V battery, which worked fine. (There is a USB connection on the power board which I think could be connected to a laptop using a male to male USB cable but I have not tried this, because I don't have such a cable). Also the inclusion of a few 555 chips would enhance the kit. But to conclude, it is an impressive kit for the money.

Great starter kit

Good value and seems everything I needed.

Well I am a techie and have played about with the Arduino for a while. I was not at my normal location, so needed a breadboard and bits to build up a circuit for use with a Genuino UNO and ordered this kit has it contained the main stuff I needed at a good price. It arrived promptly and I had no trouble building my circuit with some other components I already had. Although I use the Arduino to power the circuit normally, the breadboard power supply module is very useful for testing. Alasdair McCormick mentions "They even have a great tutorial website to teach you if like me you don’t know what your doing". Well I am not sure about that, as I could not find that type of tutorial on the Elegoo website (perhaps they did have that sort of thing posted originally, but took it down for some reason?). They do have a zip file available for the kit (along with others) in the directory "tutorial" (added with a slash after website name). You can either bring up that URL and use "Save Link As.." to save the zip, or from the website Download page (click Download menu item to get there); scroll down and then click the picture for the "Elegoo Upgraded Electronics Fun Kit - E3" and you should get a pop-up dialog box with the "Save File" option. The zip file contains 17 PDF files which give you datasheets covering each type of item in the kit. The information may be too complex for some people, but at least you can check the spec and requirements of each component (e.g. from the "White LED Datasheets.pdf, you can confirm that Super-Green LEDs are Part Number: RL5-G8020 and are maximum 4.0V forward voltage and maximum 20 mA Continuous Forward Current). I was slightly amused with the component pictures and descriptions inside the lid of the box. They include a picture of what is described as a "104pF Ceramic Capacitor 10PCS). Well, someone slipped up there! The 104 marking on a ceramic capacitor should be interpreted as follows: Two significant digits followed by the number of zeros. example: 104 = 100 000 pF = 100 nF = 0.1 uF (where my u should be the micro symbol). so NOT 104pF, lol. The datasheets are good, just someone messed up when doing the inside lid information! I will not knock of 1 star for that though! In conclusion, this is a great value kit and well worth the money. The technical information is available for it at the time of writing anyway. I may well buy another one as I can never have enough breadboards, LEDs, links etc. I will also consider other kits made by them.

The components are okay, but there are two major problems with the kit. **UPDATE** Elgoo saw my review and sent me out a replacement kit. The replacement board was fine, so perhaps just a dud that sneaked through QC. 1. The breadboard is borderline unusable. Most of the tie points have the plastic out of alignment with the metal conductor so either the components wont fit in or you have to try multiple angles to try and push them through the holes. Very frustrating! You end up spending a lot of time trying to locate a row of usable pins. To give you an idea, I've even bent one of the legs of the power supply module pushing it into the board. Speaking of which.... 2. The Power supply module has a power jack and USB connector, but the USB connector is a type-a female (ie the same as you find on a PC/Charger). So you''ll need a type-a male to type-a male lead if you want to use it. I like most people only have type-a to micro-b, and type-a to mini-b.