Hi, My little brother is basically obcessed with robots, electronics little gadgets etc. When I was young my parents never really encouraged me to do what I wanted and pushed there career on me. Since he enjoys it I'd like to try and give him the skills/option to make it career, hobby whatever. I'm more at home with a welder or a grinder in my hand rather than electronics and also have access to a 3d printer so I'd be learning alongside,. but can put together some more heavy duty stuff. Any recomendations for some kind of building kit that will give him a good foundation in electronics and writing software thats also fun aswell. I'm getting him a little Netbook/laptop aswell so deosn't need to be to expensive. Cheers
I'd go down the Arduino route, due to the sheer volume of project logs/tutorials out there. Start with a robot kit (there are many to choose from) to learn the basics before becoming more ambitious and breaking out the fabrication tools for more ambitious projects. http://blog.arduino.cc/category/arduino/robot-arduino/
Sparkfun do some good kits - you get an arduino and a breadboard and a bunch of electronics and a little book of projects of things to build, which is great for understanding programming and some of the basics of electrics. I would get him an iron too and some of the soldering kits from maplins or from the net, like an LED light cube or something - soldering is an important skill for anything electronics. It's quite easy to build a keyboard using an arduino or a teensy as the controller.
Another vote for an Arduino. Also look at Modkit for an easy introduction to programming it, and Fritzing for designing hardware around it. And besides a good quality 25W soldering iron (get one with a silicone power cable rather than the usual PVC one --if he accidentally rests the tip on it, it won't melt through) also get him a multimeter.
Littlebits is something I'd suggest too, learning about making circuits from individual parts but without having to solder or bread-board ( that can come later... ).
This may well read as extremely well tailored spam but I've just this last week launched a Kickstarter for a starter robot arm, which is based on Arduino. You can also 3D print the parts if you have access to a 3D printer (I laser cut them). I can second most of the recommendations here too. Sparkfun, Littlebits, Arduino all good shouts. Most of the starter kits are based on the ARDX kit by a UK set up called Oomlout - their kit is still probably the best out there (in terms of presentation and documentation). You can find kits with more bits out there for less money but you (or your brother) probably won't use half of it.
Well after a hectic Xmas Period thought I would update this. Ended up getting the Arduino UNO Tutorial Kit from Maplins for 50 notes along with a breadboard. Going to leave the iron till he's a little older hence the breadboard. He seemed made up with it on boxing day which was nice to see, unfortunately my folks had to make an issue out of it so we haven't had chance to make anything yet. Hoping to try some stuff this week and see where it leads! Thanks for all the suggestions.
