get some surface level chem from crash course and get some decent books. ham radio manuals cover the basics in a different context and staying off the computer helped me personally retain everything better. you can get a bunch of kid's kits on Amazon cheap which help give you something tangible on top of all the theory. good luck dude it's fun and I don't think inventors have ever had the powers we have today.
another electronics noob here. Electronics seems to be a language with a lot of different accents. Everyone knows "their own version" of how electricity really works. I suggest for the basics to just hammer down any concept that sticks and that is mostly true. What annoyed me the most is that when I come across questions there never is a clear cut answer so I can move on. Does electricity flow from - to +? Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no. but the entire world thinks it comes out of + now for some reason while it comes out of -. Same for resistors, it would make sense that if you got a huge wave of volt that you would break that with a tidal bank (resistor) so that the condos on the beach dont get damaged. But apparently you can place the tidal bank a kilometer behind the condos and it will be fine. Weird shit like that
>Your condo explanation makes it sound like there is no closed circuit of the water going back to the source.
This is what makes electricity so confusing though.
How does it "know to flow"? Information can (apparently) only travel at the speed of light.
Yet, somehow, the very instant you create a voltage differential, the other end knows and shit starts flowing.
But, if you have a wire the length of the speed of light, it's going to take 1s for anything to happen at the other end.
How am I meant to conceptualize this? It feels like something is happening instantaneously?
Something smells like fish and I don't like it.
t. not condo anon but another confused anon
>Yet, somehow, the very instant you create a voltage differential, the other end knows and shit starts flowing.
nah, that's not it unless we're dealing with longitudinal stuff
>How am I meant to conceptualize this?
Buildup of pressure, buildup of height something like that. You should probably learn about fields. >It feels like something is happening instantaneously?
Your feelings are irrelevant, you won't notice 1ms, despite it being on the slow side of many things.
>How am I meant to conceptualize this? It feels like something is happening instantaneously? >Something smells like fish and I don't like it.
Just stop with the theory. Get a battery or a weak power supply that won't hurt you, connect some resistors, light bulbs, diodes, whatever, and a multimeter, and burn some shit up. Learn how to push a component to its limit, whether it's the power source or the other components. Don't worry about fields and electrons at this point. Just make simple things work and make simple things fail. Then when you are comfortable with that, go back and the theory will make a lot more sense.
>length of the speed of light wire
1second = about 300,000km , yeah umm dont bother with that shit unless it excites you, do what this guy says
>How am I meant to conceptualize this? It feels like something is happening instantaneously? >Something smells like fish and I don't like it.
Just stop with the theory. Get a battery or a weak power supply that won't hurt you, connect some resistors, light bulbs, diodes, whatever, and a multimeter, and burn some shit up. Learn how to push a component to its limit, whether it's the power source or the other components. Don't worry about fields and electrons at this point. Just make simple things work and make simple things fail. Then when you are comfortable with that, go back and the theory will make a lot more sense.
>. Does electricity flow from - to +? Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no. but the entire world thinks it comes out of + now for some reason while it comes out of -.
When this is covered in EE 101 the book and the instructor should end by saying AND IF YOU'RE NOT INVENTING A NEW TYPE OF SEMI-CONDUCTOR THIS DOES NOT MAKE ONE DAMN BIT OF DIFFERENCE, SO MOVE ON TO SHIT THAT MATTERS.
Electrons are negatively charged, they flow from negative potential to positive potential, as opposite poles of a magnet are attracted to each other. Current is from + to - however, think of it as a bunch of marbles in a line moving in one direction. The marbles are the electrons, and as they jump from one atom to another, there is absence of electrons. Anyways electrical current is from + to - and is opposite to the flow of electrons.
Don't waste your money on ""official"" arduino stuff, the people behind arduino are buttholes who stole it all themselves. Might just buy cheap chinese clones.
Learn basic maths, physics and about electricity. How it's generated, stored and regulated.
What makes it dangerous and what makes it safe (safer).
Then basic components on circuit boards as that's what I guess you mean by electronics. From there there's IC's and RF.
I disagree with the 'read a book' people. Unless you are doing a structured course, reading about electronics is boring and it'll go in one ear and out the other. Get a kit and play with that, then decide on something you want to make and research the various components needed to make it. Then keep doing that, fix stuff and play with stuff. That's how you 'learn electronics'. Maybe get 'practical electronics for inventors' as reference material
get a breadboard kit and find a PDF of "Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims. It starts off very very simple and kid friendly, but trust me it ramps up into more technical things very quickly. Study whatever way you like to. After you get through this book you can move on to "The art of electronics". It's pretty complicated for a complete beginner so I would really urge you to go through the getting started book first, it's not very long.
I buy textbooks and study in my free time. I also try things and experiment hands on. these shouldn't be mutually exclusive. reading about electronics without making circuits would be useless, and so would shoving things in a breadboard randomly.
If you just want to play around pick a project and make it, then try to make it do other stuff. Like find a well documented completed project that interests you and you would basically just be ordering parts for and assembling. You’re new so you’ll have a million headaches getting it working but if you stick it out you’ll learn a lot. Then once you get it working use what you’ve learned to make it do something different. Like maybe you get some led project that flashes a certain way and color. You learn how it works as you assemble it, kind of, not enough to make it but enough to generally understand and maybe frick with the timing or signal lines so you can change the color or flashing patterns. Then just keep doing that until you know enough to feel comfortable making your own shit which is basically the same process but harder.
For a better foundation and/or along the way read the art of electronics. It’s a tough read because it’s pretty dry but it’s very worthwhile and will give you an excellent foundation. and maybe brush up on math skills a bit if they’re terrible. From there it really depends on what you want to do; microcontroller shit, rf, high voltage shit, etc and then you branch out as necessary
my current strategy is
get a general understanding of simple circuits and how different components like resistors are supposed to work.
I took apart some broken electronics and wondered what the bits and pieces are actually for.
as I check part numbers I end up web searching to try and find relevant info which sort of works at least I'm learning what to ignore, I've pulled together a list of maybe 20 sites and a bunch of youtube channels that contain decent information, along with a blacklist of sites I avoid.
I began staring at simple circuit diagrams trying to figure out what they do and trying to research the parts that I couldn't fully explain.
there are definitely some worthwhile textbooks available many have copies available from libgen.
I'm avoiding indians, arabs seem to be okay on the electronics front, eastern and central europeans are magicians. audiophiles give some incredible advice on circuit tuning.
Don't shape the way electricity works into an analogy. It is its own physical set of rules and behaviors. It flows in all directions. It is a property of matter. When others pretend it's water, they miss out of core concepts. The concepts become more important with understanding components and other phenomena.
>avoiding indians
Impossible in electronics, I'm afraid.
I disagree with the 'read a book' people. Unless you are doing a structured course, reading about electronics is boring and it'll go in one ear and out the other. Get a kit and play with that, then decide on something you want to make and research the various components needed to make it. Then keep doing that, fix stuff and play with stuff. That's how you 'learn electronics'. Maybe get 'practical electronics for inventors' as reference material
Study direct electronics texts, indirect related sciences that crossover (physics, math, chem, materials), and do your own lab. By lab I mean get your hands on test equipment, tools, and parts then start making things. The rubber needs to hit the road, to see if you can apply what you're trying to learn. It often points to your weaknesses so you can hone your study.
Recommending Forrest Mims as well. Excellent resource that puts the concepts in easy to understand digestible lessons. I got a bunch of old ones from my neighbor when he learned I was studying EE. Definitely helped me get through early circuits courses.
This is true, but they do offer ways to experience interactions between simple components and written logic. Interactions that the user then comes to understand can also be done with a bunch of advanced component/chip connections.
So it offers an extremely simple way to prod components in ways that illustrate how they work, while also offering ways to prod arrangements of simple components in highly complex ways, with written logic, to create complex behaviours.
Writing logic and connecting components are useful to learn side by side in a hands-on way.
Literally just search amazon for bread board kits and buy the highest rated and best priced one. Do all the exercises in the kit and you'll have a solid foundation.
Replacing caps teaches you dick about electronics. Then you become the stupid butthole that comes into every electronics problem thread and goes “replace all the caps durrrr” like it’s a magic solution to every problem when 99% of the time recapping is unnecessary and needlessly stresses the board, especially when done by amateurs who suck at soldering
Assuming you can do some math, you start with a Circuits 1 textbook. You can find PDFs of pretty much every textbook all over the internet. Circuits 1 is DC. That's sufficient to handle any DC system if you toss in learning enough AC to convert to DC with full-wave bridge rectifier circuits. AC is generally circuits 2. Then you have microelectronics, this is taken after Circuits 1, and requires lab work. I'd also recommend digital logic.
I mean just find an electrical engineering curriculum from the internet at some engineering college and use it as a guide.
Anyway, once you have circuits 1, microelectronics, know how to code C and all that entails, you can start working with microcontrollers.
Learning all the basics can be done in a year +/- if you actually put the time in.
art of electronics, student manual for the art of electronics, learning the art of electronics. probably the last one will be the best. you can emulate the boards or buy the bill of goods, depending on how rich you're feeling. i think laoe ends with a zilog.
after you do that then you can firm up on the detail and precision if you want to.
I tried reading the art of electronics and practical electronics for inventors and they're very dry and tedious to read.
The arrl handbook is the best when it comes to it being the right combination of accessible and packing information.
>I tried reading the art of electronics
try learning the art of electronics then. it's pretty much just the harvard course and is self-contained. aoe is something of a reference book and is pretty different. learning the art thing is meant to be completed in 25 days, but i think that's summer school days ie a working day each.
illuminated magnifying work light, or microscope of some kind. low magnification is good (5x eyepiece and 0.5x objective is nice on my stereoscopic one) , USB ones with screen are also practical.
a solder fume ventilator, one strong enough to stop the fumes rising straight up into your face, if you use a microscope. It doesnt have to be filtered or venting to outside, but those are required if you cant open a lot of doors/windows to keep the air fresh
a pair of 160% magnifying glasses like aliexpress stock are extremely useful of your eyes are older than ~30 years
flush cutters
hot glue gun - trust me, they are just useful
fiber optic strippers, for any wire finer than 28AWG
an assortment box of connectors and crimp terminals for anything you intend to use. JST XH is a good start
crimpers for the above - the simple kind are better than the larger more complex type
these are excellent for electronics: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004251797726.html
ferrules are also a very useful type of terminator
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006134266908.html
forever but you should stop being a fricking whiney ass gen-A homosexual and just learn to solder. soldering will make you instantly more useful than 10 years spent fricking with bread boards and still not being able to solder. seriously what the frick are you afraid of?
design it on a breadboard. Then make a more robust version by soldering perfboard... which will suck a bit becasue soldering perfboard does suck compared to soldering a PCB, but wont be as easy to break as a breadboard where its far too easy to accidentally pull a wire/component.
I agree with learning to solder, but the breadboards are useful for learning how it works first. For me, breadboards are to pencil as protoboards are to ink. Not to mention, you'll need some basic soldering to assemble most microcontroller boards.
As far as the learning goes, I recommend practical electronics for inventors. Gets you on your feet quicker than most, and you can pick up proper rigorous theory once you have a working knowledge.
https://files.catbox.moe/q1peam
Since nobody's mentioned it so far, I'm gonna rec Mike Tooley's Electronic Circuits book. I read that little book 10 pages a day while working as an electronics repair technician. It helped me make sense of a lot of stuff like impedance, transistors, and a smattering of digital electronics and communications.
It was good as a primer prior to actually going off to college to study EE, and I think it's good if you wanna get a rough idea of how electronic stuff works without going too deep into anything.
Practical Electronics for Inventors has a lot of good info on plenty of stuff, but it's like 4 courses crammed into one, so I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except as a reference work.
The Art of Electronics is one of those odd books that was originally written as an upper-level university textbook but became a popular reference work since it covers a lot of stuff, from basics to really advanced stuff. It's not bad, but I don't think the average person should try to learn something as basic as what a capacitor is from The Art of Electronics.
I think the best way to go is to start off with really simple stuff, like learning how to turn some LEDs on and off with a push button, then learning how to control DC motors, and after that going full Signalstown and fricking around with all sorts of waves and signals.
Seeing PCBs might inspire some people to learn more about stuff, like instrumentation, regulators, control circuits, and all that, but I don't think spending 500 hours just starting at a green PCB full of tiny-ass components is really gonna teach you much. It's like trying to climb Mt. Everest after learning to walk. Like, you might get SOMEWHERE, but you might just end up getting overwhelmed, burn up, and then get confused in a mixture of noise. Gradually scaling up in difficulty sounds like a better way to go in my opinion.
Python (or pseudocode) -> C -> Boolean logic -> assembly language
At least that's the path I took. You could do it backwards, but you'll find a lot less material for learning assembly language than you will for most popular high-level programming languages (C is actually high-level in comparison to assembly language btw).
Python (or pseudocode) -> C -> Boolean logic -> assembly language
At least that's the path I took. You could do it backwards, but you'll find a lot less material for learning assembly language than you will for most popular high-level programming languages (C is actually high-level in comparison to assembly language btw).
I'm not sure if Python is so necessary nowadays. I know a few people who started learning to program with C and are doing pretty well, and there are languages like Nim that have the simplicity of Python but compile directly to C or C++. This
Get a radio amateur (ham) license. The course work will be a good start, see [...] for details.
is also solid advice, and a lot of radio enthusiasts are more than happy to learn the basics of electronics. Understanding how simple radios like AMs and transistor FMs work is not a bad place to start as far as hardware goes. Once you have a grasp of that, it's easier to understand what digital technologies contribute when you begin to implement them.
>get an electronics starter kit, just to have a vague idea of what it's all about
Your lack of attention span puts your ability to follow your own advice into doubt.
I had something like this as a kid, had like a hundred springs on it to connect components.
Modified one of the light detecting circuits to be a fake Geiger counter, did the crystal radio that actually picked up the AM highway information channel which was amazing to me, a timer circuit that you had to fine tune by using different resistors and capacitors, flip-flop blinker circuit.
Good times.
Search for Starting Electronics by Mims, you can get it for free on the Internet Archive.
It is the best beginner book on electronics out there bar none. I'm fairly competent with electronics and I still use it as a reference throughout the years.
Even the most "basic" components like caps and inductors require calculus knowledge. And it only gets more complicated when you encounter amplifiers (Laplace transforms, diff eq) and AC power (complex phasors).
Resistive circuits are easy enough -- just Ohm's Law basically, for DC or AC. Start with those. Then caps/inductors (how they behave with input frequencies, their transient responses). Then things with switching behavior, like MOSFETs. Then maybe logic circuits, which require MOSFET knowledge. Filters are a bit complex, maybe steer away from those or stick with basic opamp amplifiers like inverting/noninverting topologies.
It's easy to get too lost in the weeds with regards to circuits -- there's a lot of math involved if you want to get super-deep into it. I'd recommend picrel because it handwaves the more complicated math and can be understood with basic algebra. He also discusses practical applications of each component with real-life examples.
Good luck anon! Circuits are a ton of fun once you get the hang of them, and have endless applications.
Classical understanding of electricity is based on Maxwell's equations which already involves multivariable calculus and partial differential equations. Then if you want to start understanding semiconductors you will get bogged down with quantum mechanics which just remembering it makes me uncomfortable as someone with master's in EE. Fortunately you don't need any of this for (most) practical work with electronics. Even if you wanted to apply all that math resulting numbers would be completely useless because real devices have tolerances and parameters vary all over the place. It all comes back to fundamental theorem of engineering - approximations. A great course on practical application of math in electronics is
It's well worth watching after you know some basics. Not many people know about things like extra element theorem, even in university nobody mentioned this to us. It makes understanding analog circuits so much more intuitive.
get some surface level chem from crash course and get some decent books. ham radio manuals cover the basics in a different context and staying off the computer helped me personally retain everything better. you can get a bunch of kid's kits on Amazon cheap which help give you something tangible on top of all the theory. good luck dude it's fun and I don't think inventors have ever had the powers we have today.
>get some surface level chem
chem?
>chem?
chemistry, learn the basics behind material science so that you have a surface level understanding why electronics do what they do
Chemistry is just applied physics. You need to learn basics of atomic physics so you can have a surface level of understanding of chemistry
Calm down XKCD
another electronics noob here. Electronics seems to be a language with a lot of different accents. Everyone knows "their own version" of how electricity really works. I suggest for the basics to just hammer down any concept that sticks and that is mostly true. What annoyed me the most is that when I come across questions there never is a clear cut answer so I can move on. Does electricity flow from - to +? Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no. but the entire world thinks it comes out of + now for some reason while it comes out of -. Same for resistors, it would make sense that if you got a huge wave of volt that you would break that with a tidal bank (resistor) so that the condos on the beach dont get damaged. But apparently you can place the tidal bank a kilometer behind the condos and it will be fine. Weird shit like that
Current through a circuit is constant.
Voltage drops across each component.
Your condo explanation makes it sound like there is no closed circuit of the water going back to the source.
>Your condo explanation makes it sound like there is no closed circuit of the water going back to the source.
This is what makes electricity so confusing though.
How does it "know to flow"? Information can (apparently) only travel at the speed of light.
Yet, somehow, the very instant you create a voltage differential, the other end knows and shit starts flowing.
But, if you have a wire the length of the speed of light, it's going to take 1s for anything to happen at the other end.
How am I meant to conceptualize this? It feels like something is happening instantaneously?
Something smells like fish and I don't like it.
t. not condo anon but another confused anon
>Yet, somehow, the very instant you create a voltage differential, the other end knows and shit starts flowing.
nah, that's not it unless we're dealing with longitudinal stuff
>How am I meant to conceptualize this?
Buildup of pressure, buildup of height something like that. You should probably learn about fields.
>It feels like something is happening instantaneously?
Your feelings are irrelevant, you won't notice 1ms, despite it being on the slow side of many things.
>How am I meant to conceptualize this? It feels like something is happening instantaneously?
>Something smells like fish and I don't like it.
Just stop with the theory. Get a battery or a weak power supply that won't hurt you, connect some resistors, light bulbs, diodes, whatever, and a multimeter, and burn some shit up. Learn how to push a component to its limit, whether it's the power source or the other components. Don't worry about fields and electrons at this point. Just make simple things work and make simple things fail. Then when you are comfortable with that, go back and the theory will make a lot more sense.
>length of the speed of light wire
1second = about 300,000km , yeah umm dont bother with that shit unless it excites you, do what this guy says
>. Does electricity flow from - to +? Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no. but the entire world thinks it comes out of + now for some reason while it comes out of -.
When this is covered in EE 101 the book and the instructor should end by saying AND IF YOU'RE NOT INVENTING A NEW TYPE OF SEMI-CONDUCTOR THIS DOES NOT MAKE ONE DAMN BIT OF DIFFERENCE, SO MOVE ON TO SHIT THAT MATTERS.
Electrons are negatively charged, they flow from negative potential to positive potential, as opposite poles of a magnet are attracted to each other. Current is from + to - however, think of it as a bunch of marbles in a line moving in one direction. The marbles are the electrons, and as they jump from one atom to another, there is absence of electrons. Anyways electrical current is from + to - and is opposite to the flow of electrons.
Get a radio amateur (ham) license. The course work will be a good start, see
for details.
Grab a physics textbook.
Would something like this be good to begin with?
https://www.jaycar.co.nz/arduino-starter-kit/p/XC9200
yep
that's not electronics.
Why not?
Don't waste your money on ""official"" arduino stuff, the people behind arduino are buttholes who stole it all themselves. Might just buy cheap chinese clones.
Learn basic maths, physics and about electricity. How it's generated, stored and regulated.
What makes it dangerous and what makes it safe (safer).
Then basic components on circuit boards as that's what I guess you mean by electronics. From there there's IC's and RF.
Read books (from library?). Remember information. Acquire equipment. Connect according to learned information.
Great success? Congratulations champ!
Horrible fail? Blame your influencer.
I disagree with the 'read a book' people. Unless you are doing a structured course, reading about electronics is boring and it'll go in one ear and out the other. Get a kit and play with that, then decide on something you want to make and research the various components needed to make it. Then keep doing that, fix stuff and play with stuff. That's how you 'learn electronics'. Maybe get 'practical electronics for inventors' as reference material
>. Get a kit and play with that,
And waste no time getting your hands on an oscilloscope. Even the shittiest lowest bandwidth scope in the world is 1000x better than no scope at all.
get a breadboard kit and find a PDF of "Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims. It starts off very very simple and kid friendly, but trust me it ramps up into more technical things very quickly. Study whatever way you like to. After you get through this book you can move on to "The art of electronics". It's pretty complicated for a complete beginner so I would really urge you to go through the getting started book first, it's not very long.
I buy textbooks and study in my free time. I also try things and experiment hands on. these shouldn't be mutually exclusive. reading about electronics without making circuits would be useless, and so would shoving things in a breadboard randomly.
If you just want to play around pick a project and make it, then try to make it do other stuff. Like find a well documented completed project that interests you and you would basically just be ordering parts for and assembling. You’re new so you’ll have a million headaches getting it working but if you stick it out you’ll learn a lot. Then once you get it working use what you’ve learned to make it do something different. Like maybe you get some led project that flashes a certain way and color. You learn how it works as you assemble it, kind of, not enough to make it but enough to generally understand and maybe frick with the timing or signal lines so you can change the color or flashing patterns. Then just keep doing that until you know enough to feel comfortable making your own shit which is basically the same process but harder.
For a better foundation and/or along the way read the art of electronics. It’s a tough read because it’s pretty dry but it’s very worthwhile and will give you an excellent foundation. and maybe brush up on math skills a bit if they’re terrible. From there it really depends on what you want to do; microcontroller shit, rf, high voltage shit, etc and then you branch out as necessary
my current strategy is
get a general understanding of simple circuits and how different components like resistors are supposed to work.
I took apart some broken electronics and wondered what the bits and pieces are actually for.
as I check part numbers I end up web searching to try and find relevant info which sort of works at least I'm learning what to ignore, I've pulled together a list of maybe 20 sites and a bunch of youtube channels that contain decent information, along with a blacklist of sites I avoid.
I began staring at simple circuit diagrams trying to figure out what they do and trying to research the parts that I couldn't fully explain.
there are definitely some worthwhile textbooks available many have copies available from libgen.
I'm avoiding indians, arabs seem to be okay on the electronics front, eastern and central europeans are magicians. audiophiles give some incredible advice on circuit tuning.
Don't shape the way electricity works into an analogy. It is its own physical set of rules and behaviors. It flows in all directions. It is a property of matter. When others pretend it's water, they miss out of core concepts. The concepts become more important with understanding components and other phenomena.
>avoiding indians
Impossible in electronics, I'm afraid.
Study direct electronics texts, indirect related sciences that crossover (physics, math, chem, materials), and do your own lab. By lab I mean get your hands on test equipment, tools, and parts then start making things. The rubber needs to hit the road, to see if you can apply what you're trying to learn. It often points to your weaknesses so you can hone your study.
"Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims III. They used to sell it at Radio Shack. I imagine it's out on the internet somewhere.
Recommending Forrest Mims as well. Excellent resource that puts the concepts in easy to understand digestible lessons. I got a bunch of old ones from my neighbor when he learned I was studying EE. Definitely helped me get through early circuits courses.
All available on:
https://archive.org
Blast from the past bro. Thanks for the member-berries!
>How do I start?
not here
>How do I start?
you have already failed.
What's with the hate for Arduinos
I thought this place loved Arduinos and hated raspberry pis?
Usually something like 'it's not real programming, it's pseudocode'
This is true, but they do offer ways to experience interactions between simple components and written logic. Interactions that the user then comes to understand can also be done with a bunch of advanced component/chip connections.
So it offers an extremely simple way to prod components in ways that illustrate how they work, while also offering ways to prod arrangements of simple components in highly complex ways, with written logic, to create complex behaviours.
Writing logic and connecting components are useful to learn side by side in a hands-on way.
If you're not writing in assembly, (you) are a pseudocode homosexual.
Literally just search amazon for bread board kits and buy the highest rated and best priced one. Do all the exercises in the kit and you'll have a solid foundation.
buy a soldering iron and start replacing bulged capacitors.
also
Replacing caps teaches you dick about electronics. Then you become the stupid butthole that comes into every electronics problem thread and goes “replace all the caps durrrr” like it’s a magic solution to every problem when 99% of the time recapping is unnecessary and needlessly stresses the board, especially when done by amateurs who suck at soldering
Assuming you can do some math, you start with a Circuits 1 textbook. You can find PDFs of pretty much every textbook all over the internet. Circuits 1 is DC. That's sufficient to handle any DC system if you toss in learning enough AC to convert to DC with full-wave bridge rectifier circuits. AC is generally circuits 2. Then you have microelectronics, this is taken after Circuits 1, and requires lab work. I'd also recommend digital logic.
I mean just find an electrical engineering curriculum from the internet at some engineering college and use it as a guide.
Anyway, once you have circuits 1, microelectronics, know how to code C and all that entails, you can start working with microcontrollers.
Learning all the basics can be done in a year +/- if you actually put the time in.
art of electronics, student manual for the art of electronics, learning the art of electronics. probably the last one will be the best. you can emulate the boards or buy the bill of goods, depending on how rich you're feeling. i think laoe ends with a zilog.
after you do that then you can firm up on the detail and precision if you want to.
I tried reading the art of electronics and practical electronics for inventors and they're very dry and tedious to read.
The arrl handbook is the best when it comes to it being the right combination of accessible and packing information.
>I tried reading the art of electronics
try learning the art of electronics then. it's pretty much just the harvard course and is self-contained. aoe is something of a reference book and is pretty different. learning the art thing is meant to be completed in 25 days, but i think that's summer school days ie a working day each.
step1 is learning how to use a search engine
>Soldering Iron
>PCB Holder
>Multimeter
>Cutter and Stripper
>Power Supply
What else do I need?
illuminated magnifying work light, or microscope of some kind. low magnification is good (5x eyepiece and 0.5x objective is nice on my stereoscopic one) , USB ones with screen are also practical.
a solder fume ventilator, one strong enough to stop the fumes rising straight up into your face, if you use a microscope. It doesnt have to be filtered or venting to outside, but those are required if you cant open a lot of doors/windows to keep the air fresh
a pair of 160% magnifying glasses like aliexpress stock are extremely useful of your eyes are older than ~30 years
flush cutters
hot glue gun - trust me, they are just useful
fiber optic strippers, for any wire finer than 28AWG
an assortment box of connectors and crimp terminals for anything you intend to use. JST XH is a good start
crimpers for the above - the simple kind are better than the larger more complex type
these are excellent for electronics: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004251797726.html
ferrules are also a very useful type of terminator
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006134266908.html
solder flux dispenser
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004749322420.html
pen + pencil and journal
BASIC ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING BY ERWIN KRYSIG
How long can I put off learning soldering with breadboards? Can I learn the basics with just them?
forever but you should stop being a fricking whiney ass gen-A homosexual and just learn to solder. soldering will make you instantly more useful than 10 years spent fricking with bread boards and still not being able to solder. seriously what the frick are you afraid of?
design it on a breadboard. Then make a more robust version by soldering perfboard... which will suck a bit becasue soldering perfboard does suck compared to soldering a PCB, but wont be as easy to break as a breadboard where its far too easy to accidentally pull a wire/component.
Question, are contacts from ladder logic based off their unenergized state or from the intended position off the switch?
I agree with learning to solder, but the breadboards are useful for learning how it works first. For me, breadboards are to pencil as protoboards are to ink. Not to mention, you'll need some basic soldering to assemble most microcontroller boards.
As far as the learning goes, I recommend practical electronics for inventors. Gets you on your feet quicker than most, and you can pick up proper rigorous theory once you have a working knowledge.
https://files.catbox.moe/q1peam
Since nobody's mentioned it so far, I'm gonna rec Mike Tooley's Electronic Circuits book. I read that little book 10 pages a day while working as an electronics repair technician. It helped me make sense of a lot of stuff like impedance, transistors, and a smattering of digital electronics and communications.
It was good as a primer prior to actually going off to college to study EE, and I think it's good if you wanna get a rough idea of how electronic stuff works without going too deep into anything.
Practical Electronics for Inventors has a lot of good info on plenty of stuff, but it's like 4 courses crammed into one, so I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except as a reference work.
The Art of Electronics is one of those odd books that was originally written as an upper-level university textbook but became a popular reference work since it covers a lot of stuff, from basics to really advanced stuff. It's not bad, but I don't think the average person should try to learn something as basic as what a capacitor is from The Art of Electronics.
I think the best way to go is to start off with really simple stuff, like learning how to turn some LEDs on and off with a push button, then learning how to control DC motors, and after that going full Signalstown and fricking around with all sorts of waves and signals.
Seeing PCBs might inspire some people to learn more about stuff, like instrumentation, regulators, control circuits, and all that, but I don't think spending 500 hours just starting at a green PCB full of tiny-ass components is really gonna teach you much. It's like trying to climb Mt. Everest after learning to walk. Like, you might get SOMEWHERE, but you might just end up getting overwhelmed, burn up, and then get confused in a mixture of noise. Gradually scaling up in difficulty sounds like a better way to go in my opinion.
What about from a software point of view? Should I start learning assembly?
Python (or pseudocode) -> C -> Boolean logic -> assembly language
At least that's the path I took. You could do it backwards, but you'll find a lot less material for learning assembly language than you will for most popular high-level programming languages (C is actually high-level in comparison to assembly language btw).
Why go from higher to lover level?
I'm not sure if Python is so necessary nowadays. I know a few people who started learning to program with C and are doing pretty well, and there are languages like Nim that have the simplicity of Python but compile directly to C or C++. This
is also solid advice, and a lot of radio enthusiasts are more than happy to learn the basics of electronics. Understanding how simple radios like AMs and transistor FMs work is not a bad place to start as far as hardware goes. Once you have a grasp of that, it's easier to understand what digital technologies contribute when you begin to implement them.
>get an electronics starter kit, just to have a vague idea of what it's all about
Your lack of attention span puts your ability to follow your own advice into doubt.
Check out: American Science and Surplus (web and store locations)
They offer tools, toys, science kits, educational toys, school supplies, arts and crafts items, hobby tools, scales, lab glass, ...
https://sciplus.com/
Picrel electronics trainer for $29.50
nice, good suggestion, i had the '50 in one' kit of these ..like... 40 years ago.
>I have no prior knowledge. How do I start?
track one of these down, ebay or etsy, no soldering, covers all the basics for circuit theory
Many SNAP Maker Kits at AMERICAN SCIENCE AND SURPLUS:
https://sciplus.com
This is their 750 project model ($129- other cheaper specialized trainers).
More for kids (as a gift) then for OP.
Have fun.
I had something like this as a kid, had like a hundred springs on it to connect components.
Modified one of the light detecting circuits to be a fake Geiger counter, did the crystal radio that actually picked up the AM highway information channel which was amazing to me, a timer circuit that you had to fine tune by using different resistors and capacitors, flip-flop blinker circuit.
Good times.
Search for Starting Electronics by Mims, you can get it for free on the Internet Archive.
It is the best beginner book on electronics out there bar none. I'm fairly competent with electronics and I still use it as a reference throughout the years.
Art of Electronics is also good, that was my proper intro and now ref work.
(Mims is also a Christcuck)
How basic are we talking here?
Even the most "basic" components like caps and inductors require calculus knowledge. And it only gets more complicated when you encounter amplifiers (Laplace transforms, diff eq) and AC power (complex phasors).
Resistive circuits are easy enough -- just Ohm's Law basically, for DC or AC. Start with those. Then caps/inductors (how they behave with input frequencies, their transient responses). Then things with switching behavior, like MOSFETs. Then maybe logic circuits, which require MOSFET knowledge. Filters are a bit complex, maybe steer away from those or stick with basic opamp amplifiers like inverting/noninverting topologies.
It's easy to get too lost in the weeds with regards to circuits -- there's a lot of math involved if you want to get super-deep into it. I'd recommend picrel because it handwaves the more complicated math and can be understood with basic algebra. He also discusses practical applications of each component with real-life examples.
Good luck anon! Circuits are a ton of fun once you get the hang of them, and have endless applications.
When ppl write about math what a they mean?
Shoud i know calculus?
Classical understanding of electricity is based on Maxwell's equations which already involves multivariable calculus and partial differential equations. Then if you want to start understanding semiconductors you will get bogged down with quantum mechanics which just remembering it makes me uncomfortable as someone with master's in EE. Fortunately you don't need any of this for (most) practical work with electronics. Even if you wanted to apply all that math resulting numbers would be completely useless because real devices have tolerances and parameters vary all over the place. It all comes back to fundamental theorem of engineering - approximations. A great course on practical application of math in electronics is
It's well worth watching after you know some basics. Not many people know about things like extra element theorem, even in university nobody mentioned this to us. It makes understanding analog circuits so much more intuitive.