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Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

tronclub.com

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Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#81

Post by hga »

Randomplayer wrote: post #66
hga wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, not at all. I'm 54 years old, played this sort of game in the early '70s in elementary school with kits from Radio Shack, but it didn't really take (science and later computers was my thing), and I'm seriously considering subscribing. I'm potentially interested in doing the projects, but definitely don't want to spend a lot of time on the net gathering the parts and info, although it would, as others note, be…

This sounds like the box you would be mostly interested in: Hackerboxes.com You can find them on Kickstarter here: kck.st/1LbXJtB

Nah, I've done plenty of that sort of thing, am quite handy with a soldering iron. What Tron-Club indicates they're doing is exactly what I want, smallish circuits on these newfangled white plastic breadboards, which per Wikipedia were invented in 1971. I potentially want to understand (further) the circuits, not, at this moment, make anything in particular.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#83

Post by mluskind »

It’s awesome to see so many teams working on making it easier for people to get into the hardware maker space!

To that end…. since everyone is showcasing their projects, I’d like to introduce everyone to http://thimble.io/

Our aim is to make it much easier to learn and expand your skills in a more structured format. We’re working on a learning app and monthly hardware subscription kit. You get all the parts you need to assemble an entire project - the first month will be a wifi-enabled robot. We’ll be running weekly webinars every month in order to field questions aside from the community forum and slack group.

We’re also working on incorporating a competition element for those interested in pushing their skills. Every month a panel of judges from the industry will choose the top submissions - customized beyond the basic kit (naturally cool and useful prizes and accolades will ensue - cool hardware stuff + software subscriptions).

SHIPPING: We’re working with fulfillment houses to hopefully be able to ship internationally from the get go. Volume will dictate how much we can drop the overall price of the kit by. I can say that it’s a priority for us to do so and drop the price through better vendor partnerships and preferential rates from fulfilment houses to make Thimble more accessible.

Pricing: $70-80 for our first robot kit. We're looking for feedback on the first kit and from there we’re going to adjust price/kit complexity.

Would love to know what you guys think.

Thanks, Michael

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#84

Post by hga »

jlonglaw wrote: post #62

This is a very cool idea. We have a project along a similar vein at HackerBoxes. Tron looks like great basic circuit education/exposure, while we're doing things more on a project level. These could even be complimentary, so some may want to subscribe to both. Either way, please keep in touch with us over here at HackerBoxes. In order to gauge what users find more or less interesting, we definitely want to hear feedb…

I submit that while what you and I now see thimble.io are doing is very worthwhile (I found it fun back in the '70s), Tron-Club is doing a fundamentally different and also worthwhile thing, teaching basic electronics, or as they say "Over 252 Circuits per year".

Although I sincerely hope they're going to do plenty of analog as well as the two digital ones in progression they showed on their page; that would be key to my signing up.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#85

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

batou wrote: post #18

The only killer value here is the material and there's little of that on display at the moment. What appears to be there is stuff you can find for nothing on the web with a little googling ( http://allaboutcircuits.com/ http://electronicsclub.info/ for example) The parts are worth little to nothing; less than $30. You can get bagged kits from bitsbox.co.uk with everything you need for $24. I can't see the value propo…

I spend a fair amount of time offering electronics/firmware assistance online on various forums. You'd be amazed at how many people have problems just doing this. Seeing a circuit, collecting the parts from a variety of sources, and putting it together is trivial for those of us who have been doing it since we were teenagers. For those completely new to electronics, there are many little hurdles among the way that can eventually cause them to just give up.

Yes, these guys are monetizing a simple concept, but they are providing value. Value is worth paying for.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#87

Post by mluskind »

StoneTable wrote: post #86

I love all these hardware hacking options! I wish someone would do a project-based one for the raspberry pi, though.

We'll be doing that through the learning app. Not only are we going to put together project-specific course content that will teach soldering, coding and how to work with the components in a structured way but we'll be opening up the platform so that makers can create their own kits and courses. We're focused on the learning aspect - useful, structured course content so you don't have to spend hours online on multiple sources. With some semblance of progression built in so you can move onto more ambitious projects or learn a new skill in the field - think TeamTreehouse or CodeSchool but for Hardware.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#88

Post by DanBC »

teh_klev wrote: post #30
empressplay wrote: post #7

Cool concept! A couple things: 1) Using 'Tron' could be a bit problematic if Disney's lawyers get bored. 2) You might want to drop the annual price a bit, and maybe work on your shipping costs.

Disney most likely took the name from the TRON command which is/was a debugging feature in BASIC [0]. The site itself also (whether conciously or not) make no mention of the movie. "Tron" could also be an shortening of "Electron" but without the hassle of an apostrophy, e.g. 'tron-club. I could be talking bollocks though :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_command

My favourite machine name is TIMTronic - ticket issuing machine electronic. It was a bus ticket machine made and sold by Almex control systems. It had 7 segment LED displays and mechanical keys and mechanical (not thermal) printer, and was huge. Bus drivers would push coins into them to short out the machine, thus allowing them to use hand-written emergency tickets which had much weaker auditing.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/calummelrose/8514115994

That Flickr account has some nice photos.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#89

Post by pmelendez »

jordan0day wrote: post #80
peeters wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the shipping rates will be the same anywhere that they serve. That's usually an incorrect assumption. This format allows for variations in the shipping while keeping the same unit price. Edit: Although, I am confused that they send me through the Paypal service before collecting my shipping address. Are they actually quoting me a price based on IP geolocation? That's kind of a dumb assumption; I sen…

You're not wrong, but it just seems like bad design. Why do they still show shipping rates at all, if the separate price/shipping prices are meant to deal with the uncertainty of shipping fees? I'm not sure if they're altering the page based on geo-ip or not, but what I'm seeing on their page is "$14/mo (plus low 5.99 shipping) and $150/yr (plus 69.99 shipping)." Why not just say $20/mo or $220/yr (additional shippin…

> Why not just say $20/mo or $220/yr

Geolocation is not a reliable way to detect a shipping address (you could be using a VPN for instance). If you don't separate the shipping cost then it would be harder to tell the client why the final price is different to the initial quote.

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