BSA Electronics Merit Badge: A Short Course

The Electronics Merit Badge has been around since 1963, but electronics have changed a lot over the past 5 decades. Integrated circuits (“chips”) had barely  been born in 1963, but now it’s hard to find anything electronic that doesn’t use them.

This short course aims to provide a sequence of study that will enable scouts to earn the merit badge, fully satisfying all the requirements, while guiding them enough to avoid the intimidation factor that many will face (the “where do I start” problem).

Scouts need to have a basic understanding of algebra to be able to solve problems involving Ohm’s Law. This doesn’t mean they need a full understanding or have completed high school algebra, but they do have to be able to solve simple equations involving one or more unknown variables.

Although the official BSA pamphlet recommends scouts building their own circuits rather than using kits, the actual recommended circuits described in the pamphlet are given as recipes which strongly suggests that the BSA does not expect scouts to understand circuit design. At that point, I’m at a loss to understand why these are any better than kits, at least if the scout spends time to understand how the components interact to make the circuit work. That, of course, is the point ot this short course.

In order to facilitate completion, this course will be based on using the Velleman Kit EDU01 which can be purchased from Jameco Electronics for about $24 (as of June 2016). This is solderless breadboard kit with multiple projects. At some point, to satisfy requirements 3a and 3b, you will need a something that involves soldering. Velleman offers several “mini kits” for under $10 (you have to supply your own soldering iron and solder) some of which are the same as those in the EDU01 kit, also available from Jameco Electronics. This means you could buy both the EDU01 and one of the mini kits which would effectively be a repeat of something the already built, just the second time they will solder it onto a PCB.

Some other sources for general electronics parts and kits include DigiKey, All Electronics, Allied Electronics, Mouser Electronics, Adafruit Industries, SparkFun. Google is your friend for finding others. Little Bits are fun, but they won’t really get you through this Merit Badge.