In 1979 legendary Australian entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith released an introductory book about electronics, titled “Dick Smith’s Fun Way Into Electronics” which used basic parts, paper circuit overlays, and a baseboard with screws to construct simple circuits. The book featured 20 projects, and parts could be bought in two packs. The first pack included all the parts required to make the first 10 projects, and the second pack provided the additional parts required for projects 11-20.
This was followed by “Dick Smith’s Fun Way Into Electronics Volume 2” in 1980 with another 20 projects, which introduced more advanced skills such as the use of printed circuit boards. The projects in Volume 2 were produced as stand-alone kits, so readers could buy kits for the specific projects they wanted to build.
The third installment came in 1983 with instructions for a further 10 projects, and added integrated circuits for even more advanced designs.
These books were a smash hit in Australian schools. Tens of thousands of kids got started in electronics by building the kits. An entire generation of Aussie engineers can point to the Fun Way series as the inspiration for their career!
After Dick sold his electronics business, its focus changed from electronics parts and kits to consumer goods. The educational elements faded away, and the Fun Way series of books and kits became defunct.
This site is a passion project by Jonathan Oxer, founder of both Freetronics (the famous Aussie manufacturer of Arduino-compatible boards) and of SuperHouse Automation., and author of books including Practical Arduino and Ubuntu Hacks. Jonathan saw the need to reintroduce basic electronic educational resources, and wanted to honour the legacy of Dick Smith and his amazing contribution to the electronics industry in Australia by reviving and updating the kits from the original Fun Way series.
The goal is to make some of the kits available again in an updated form with modern parts and circuit boards, and also to extend the original content into the modern era of microcontrollers, surface mount parts, and connected devices.