I've ordered from solarbotics and had good experiences with them.

When you get it, could you let us know what you think about the arduino stuff? I've been thinking about it, but besides reading a book I haven't been willing to commit.

Thanks, drezdn! I'll let you know.

I've had great experiences with Adafruit.

Now that I've looked over the projects, I'm not sure they will grab him. He's 16 years old, likes math, but is much more mechanically able than I am. He hasn't shown much inclination to get into programming. Maybe I'll get a copy of the MAKE: Electronics book and assemble parts as needed.

Fwiw, the kits aren't so good for learning how stuff works, but rather for learning how to solder and realizing that you too can make awesome electronic stuff.

If you're wanting to explore/learn, MAKE: Electronics is a great book. And if you need tools/parts, Adafruit offers a fantastic starter kit for about $100 that will give you all the tools you need, plus many of the basic parts. I think MAKE also offers a couple of higher-priced kits specifically tailored for the book, but I'm not sure it's worth it unless you plan to do every project in the book from start to finish.

treepour,

I went into this thinking I didn't want to solder, because I've never done any electronics, but now I'm reconsidering. I think my son will really get into this if I find the right starter kit. He really liked his "electronic project lab" when he was about 5 years old.

I just picked up an Arduino kit last week (from Adafruit, the $30 or so basic kit). Haven't actually done anything with it yet, although I'm honestly more intrigued with its possibilities than just about anything I've purchased in years.

It seems like it might be good for someone who likes electronics and building mechanical stuff, but isn't so sure about the programming side of things. There are a lot of good libraries and sample code, so you can basically cookbook your way through the software side of things if you want/need to. But you can get as elaborate as you want on the hardware side, in terms of integrating your Arduino into the finished model/piece/device. It's pretty basic electronics too, at least in the kit projects I've looked at. (The complexity is all inside the chips; hooking them up is fairly straightforward ... the hardest thing is Ohm's Law, really.)

What seems neat about it is that you can take it in so many directions. If you want to get into the hardware side, you can do that. If you want to get into the software side, sky's the limit there as well. If you just want to use it to make blinky LED things for art projects, it's cheap enough that it's not even wasteful -- have at it.

Really hard to go wrong, I think.

Just ordered the kit from Solarbotics. Thanks, everyone!