Interesting electronics projects ↗
A dense historical index of radios, oscillators, sensors, imaging, software radio, test gear, computers and robotics.
End Up Here · a capability shelf
The Small
Workshop.
Things to make, measure, repair, animate and understand. A retro doorway into electronics, science toys, small computers, robots, instruments and the practical imagination gathered around them.
MakeMeasureRepairSeeListenMove
01 / The proposition
A bench for
whatever matters.
A small workshop is not merely a room full of components. It is a way of staying in contact with the world: detecting what is hidden, repairing what has failed, building a tool for an unserved need, or making a phenomenon visible to somebody else.
The question here is not whether everybody should become an engineer. It is what useful capabilities remain worth having when intelligent tools become abundant and people have more freely chosen time.
Post-agentic, not post-apocalyptic. The workshop can support resilience and local independence without making collapse the centre of the story. It is about agency, curiosity, care, repair and shared attention.
02 / Open a drawer
Where do you want to begin?
The archive is large, so the first view should be simple. Each door is a route into a capability, not a dump of links.
01 · CircuitsElectronics HobbyistSignals, radios, sensors, amplifiers, repair and tiny computers.02 · WonderScience ToysMagnetism, optics, heat, biology, mathematics and first principles.03 · ProjectsThings You Can BuildLow-energy models, instruments, demonstrations and supervised work.04 · MachinesRobots & Moving ThingsHistorical toys, rovers, camera robots, mechanisms and current products.05 · CommunicationSignals & RadioListening, transmitting, receiving and understanding local infrastructure.06 · PerceptionSeeing the InvisibleMicroscopes, infrared, holograms, fields, sound and thermal effects.07 · MotionPower, Heat & MotionGenerators, motors, batteries, solar experiments and engines.08 · ArchiveThe Historical ShelfOld kits, magazines, suppliers and product memories.09 · BoundaryThe Specialist CabinetInteresting material that is not casual construction advice.
03 / Electronics Hobbyist
The intelligent
bench.
The AMASCI electronics pages show the hobby as a whole ecology: components, radios, amplifiers, sensors, scopes, software, repair, robotics, suppliers, scratch-built computers and explanations of what electricity is doing.
Education and tools ↗
Educational routes, circuit archives, design software, kits, books, embedded processors and the wider hobby ecosystem.
A simple generator ↗
A small model of motion, magnets and visible electrical effect—an excellent historical source card.
An electronic charge detector ↗
A route from static charge and fields into sensors, measurement and the pleasure of finding what cannot be seen directly.
04 / Things you can build
Capability before gadget.
The public catalogue will not copy old instructions wholesale. It will ask what a project teaches and what capability survives after the original kit, supplier or component disappears.
Build a local instrument
Thermometers, digital sensors, electrometers and simple scopes turn the environment into something a person can notice and discuss.
Reveal a hidden process
Field bottles, holograms, Schlieren images, infrared goggles and microscopes extend ordinary perception.
Understand the object
Transistors, batteries, radios and motors are not just parts; they are ways of recovering agency over everyday systems.
Build a demonstration
Van de Graaff displays, traffic models and magnetic toys become public experiments when another person can see the idea happen.
05 / Robots and moving things
From toy to
companion.
The AMASCI toy pages preserve a history of robotic vacuums, RC tarantulas, micro helicopters, rovers, Furby hacks, LEGO Mindstorms, robot lawnmowers and camera-vision kits. The point is not nostalgia alone. It is the question of which capabilities survive when a product disappears.
Robotic vacuum
A small domestic machine that made navigation, sensing and household autonomy visible as a toy-sized idea.
AMASCI toy index · source ↗RC tarantula
A creature-shaped remote machine: part novelty, part mechanism, part invitation to imagine legs as programmable motion.
AMASCI toy index · source ↗Micro helicopter and Draganflyer
Early small flying machines that connect radio control, lightweight structure, batteries and aerial sensing.
AMASCI toy index · source ↗LEGO Mindstorms
A kit culture in which sensors, motors and programming became something a learner could hold, rearrange and test.
AMASCI toy index · source ↗Furby hacking
A toy treated as a platform: open it, listen to its behaviour, and discover the electronics inside the character.
AMASCI toy index · source ↗Rovers, steam bots and lawnmowers
Different routes into the same question: how does a machine move through a real environment and decide where to go?
AMASCI toy index · source ↗These are short catalogue descriptions by End Up Here, based on the linked historical index. They are not quotations or claims that the old products remain available.
Original index
The complete historical product shelf remains available for provenance, further reading and source checking.
Open the complete AMASCI index ↗Current products
Verified suppliers and makers belong in the Robot Directory, with old and current companies kept separate.
Visit the Robot Directory ↗Possible lives
Robots as instruments of care, exploration, maintenance, play and shared capability—not only labour replacement.
Open the catalogue ↗06 / Signals and radio
Listen to
the place.
Crystal radios, three-penny radios, simple receivers and transmitters form one of the clearest small-workshop traditions: communication built from understandable parts, patience and attention.
Science Toys radio shelf ↗
Crystal radios, a ten-minute radio, household-item radios, a transmitter and the three-penny radio.
Communication as capability ↗
The catalogue question is not “can this replace a phone?” but “what does it mean to understand how a signal gets from here to there?”
07 / Seeing the invisible
Extend the
senses.
Some of the best material in the archive does not produce a useful product. It produces a new way of noticing: infrared, hand-drawn holograms, microscopes, visible sound, magnetic fields, solar furnaces and thermal effects.
This is where the workshop becomes more than electronics. It becomes a way of making the hidden world available to shared attention.
08 / Power, heat and motion
Energy you
can see.
Generators, motors, batteries, solar experiments, heat engines and pumps belong here. They are useful as models even when the historical apparatus is obsolete or the old instructions need modern review.
09 / The historical shelf
Old tools,
new questions.
Old kits, catalogues, supplier pages and science magazines are not merely obsolete shopping lists. They record what ordinary people were once encouraged to learn, repair and imagine.
They belong alongside the Whole Earth electronics shelf and the Science Hobbyist tribute: not as endorsements, but as evidence of a culture that assumed people might build some of their own understanding.
10 / The specialist cabinet
Curiosity needs
a safe container.
Safety boundary. Some source pages involve mains electricity, lethal high voltage, stored charge, heat, lasers, radio transmission, microwave-oven internals, chemicals, pressure, projectiles, explosives or possible X-ray production. This page is a reading and catalogue guide, not a construction manual. Historical instructions do not override current law, electrical codes, laboratory practice or qualified supervision.
Those subjects can be described, historically situated and linked to the original source. They should not be presented as casual “try this at home” projects.
11 / The route forward
From source to
possible life.
The full AMASCI register remains the research layer. Public pages will select representative objects, group the rest by capability, cross-reference relevant End Up Here work, and keep uncertain or unsafe material clearly labelled.
Source → capability → activity → possible life.
That is how the archive becomes part of the website without becoming a dump.