Reddit reviews Elenco 350 Piece Pre-formed Jumper Wire Kit

I highly recommend the Hakko 936 soldering iron Hakko 888 soldering iron, which is still actually available. It's hard to fathom how a $100 soldering iron could be that much better than a $20 one, but once you start doing anything more serious than just sticking some wires together, it's worth it.

As for other tools,

• Standard needle nose, dikes, and pliers set
  
• Tweezers - Additionally plastic ones if you're going to do PCB etching.
  
• Dental Picks - for positioning surface mount parts and pushing wires into molten solder.
  
• Wire strippers - You'll often see people using the combo wire stripper / crimpers. They're not as nice as a real pair of strippers.
  
• +/-12V power supply for basic analog electronics, 5V for digital work
  
• Breadboard
  
• Solder sucker - Copper braid is useful for the same thing, but given the choice of the two, I prefer the sucker to undo soldered joints.
  
• 30x Jewelers Loupe - Mostly useful for surface mount work, but pretty much all soldering is easier when you're able to look at it.
  
  As for components, I've been buying them piece-meal for years, so other's will probably be able to yield you a better recommendation for kits than anything I can find just from a quick search. I do mostly digital work, so as far as passives, my main stock is:
  
  
• 0.1uF and 100uF capacitors, 25V
  
• 100, 330, 1k, 4.7k, 10k, 100k, 1M resistors
  
  If I need any other resistor for a specific project, I'll tend to just buy an extra 10 and keep them in labeled coin envelopes.
  
  Random other pieces:
  
  
• Precut Breadboard jumper wires
  
• 7805 - 1A 5V linear regulators
  
• 1N4007 diodes
  
• 1N4148 small signal diodes
  
• 3V linear regulators if you do low power work (MSP430, etc)
  
• An Arduino - If not for real projects, I use this a lot to hack together crude digital signal generators to test other chips.
  
• LEDs - I found a good deal on bright red ones, but any will do
  
• push buttons, power switches, DIP switches (4 in a tiny package that fits in breadboards)
  
• Copper clad perf board - To make through-hole projects permanent. Be careful because this also comes without the copper pads, which is just more of a pain in the ass to use.
  
• Copper Solder braid
  
  Edit: Fixed the soldering iron model.
  
  Disclaimer: I'm using my Amazon Associate links for all of these, which always feel a little amoral and a conflict of interest, but really, if my apartment were to go up in flames and I could afford it, I'd buy every link on this list right now. Does anyone have strong opinions one way or the other on using them?

Get the pre-made wires and don't bend them. The lengths provided are at breadboard sized increments and will fit without bending.

> Noone here is saying that this would substitute a formal education with more advanced tools

>overly complicated.

You're building a strawman here. Breadboards are not "overly complicated." They're actually quite simple and extremely versatile. If you ask me, the pen is overly complicated as it only really solves the problem of using a piece of wire. You still need a way to connect the wire, so they're promoting using magnets which to me is very clumsy and much more fragile than a breadboard.

If you're really that scared of wire, just buy a pre-cut wire kit. You can even re-use it when you're done!

The only "feature" of this pen is that it lets you draw which actually distracts from any educational benefit of the device.

Yes, telephone feeders work good.

You can buy kits that has the wires pre-bent too. They are easy to use and much faster to build with. I use pre-formed for most stuff then use phone feeder for those lines that can't be laid flat for some reason.

http://www.amazon.com/Elenco-Piece-Pre-formed-Jumper-Wire/dp/B0002H7AIG

This is a 350 piece kit, but they make smaller kits too.

Oh dear god, please buy one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Elenco-Piece-Pre-formed-Jumper-wire/dp/B0002H7AIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345765743&sr=8-1&keywords=jumper+wire+set

http://www.amazon.com/Breadboard-jumper-wire-70pcs-pack/dp/B0040DEI9M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1345765764&sr=8-2&keywords=jumper+wire+set

You are going to injure yourself cutting and stripping wire for your project.

I know you said you didnt the longer lengths, but at a cost of $20 you get the whole kit which includes every size you could need for a single standard size bread-board....

https://www.amazon.ca/Elenco-Piece-Pre-formed-Jumper-Wire/dp/B0002H7AIG