YouTube University. Seriously: watch 30, 50, or a 100 videos. You will develop an intuition for what is happening. <i>THEN</i> read books (some good ones already suggested in other comments) and you will learn the concrete theory.<p>I want to emphasize the importance of developing the intuition behind the theory. It's vital, and the lack of intuition is why so many people find a complex, theoretical topic difficult. If they had spent time developing their intuition, then they would not struggle so much to understand and remember the theory.<p>Last, you have to build stuff (this also helps with the intuition). Decide that you are going to spend $300, and start buying parts. Don't go to Radio Shack, because you will (in my experience) pay an order of magnitude more for the same part. Shop on Aliexpress (or sometimes Amazon or Ebay). Who cares if you have to wait 6 weeks for the part to come in... do it today and it will be here about the time that you are ready for it. Never buy just one of anything. You can usually buy 10 or 20 for the same price that you can buy 2 or 3.<p>Most importantly: DO SOMETHING! Anything. Watch videos. Buy parts. Put things together, and then try to figure out why it's not working! Whatever you do, just don't stop. You will learn if you keep at it. At this stage for you, though, the most important thing is that you actually start.
I self-learned enough electronics a few years ago to get to 16.5K karma on the Electronics StackExchange.<p>I was motivated by doing some audio projects. Projects have real requirements, and so they force you to iterate on the design until you hit all your requirements: power supply logistics, signal purity, enclosure, ...<p>Get a good textbook like Horowitz <i>The Art of Electronics</i>.<p>Learn how to use a CAD-based circuit simulator program like LTSpice. Build the circuits you read about in the simulator, and run them: apply signals, and look at how the voltages behave at various nodes in the circuit, as a function of time.<p>Read schematics.<p>Read schematics for equipment that you know. If you're into vintage audio, that is not hard to come by.<p>Recently I was looking at the schematics for a "Furman PQ-3" parametric equalizer (Google for it). I blinked twice and did a "double take" and then immediately recognized that its filter bank consists of "state variable filters": <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_variable_filter" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_variable_filter</a><p>Bam! Didn't even know what that was some four, five years ago.<p>Here is one copy of the schem: <a href="https://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/so-much-gear-so-little-time/564390d1465327647-furman-pq-3-greenface-schematic-needed-broken-help-furman_pq3_small.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/so-much-gear-so-...</a><p>Check out the power supply: the output of the transformer goes to a dual-voltage regulator. That feeds the chips. The unregulated voltage is also tapped and that is used for an emitter-follower output-stage on the upper left.<p>This is completely pointless. The op-amp IC's have such stages inside them too; why do they get regulated power and this one doesn't? On a dual supply, op-amp chips don't really need regulation.<p>If I built a clone of the device, I'd completely leave out this discrete component output stage; it is pointless. You're not going to drive speakers with this thing, but relatively high-impedance inputs (the next device in the chain, possibly a power amp).<p>So you can see what I'm doing here; critically looking at (the electronic aspect of) a complete product. Doing that requires some learning, but it also produces learning bit by bit.<p>You ask questions: why is that stage here? Why did they include this component? What is this transistor/resistor/diode doing here? Is there a pattern to this, and where have I seen it before? Is it really the same pattern and is it justified in this context? And so on.
Avoid first principles (to start with), instead focus on a domain you're interested in and buy a DIY kit from a vendor in that domain to solve a niche application. Repeat 3-10 times. Start dabbling in other domains. If you have a question, youtube it.<p>The way a lot of people get into electronics, as a hobby, is wanting a piece of hardware for a simple application, seeing existing solutions are very expensive, and discovering a community of people building their own solutions.<p>The way a lot of people get out of electronics, as a hobby, is loosing interest. Seeing something you built come to life is a great way to maintain interest, getting stuck in theory and first principals may delay that gratification long enough to loose interest. Later on it's fantastic for building something new from scratch that no one has seen before (even more gratifying.)<p>For every generation this is different so depending how old the person you're asking you'll likely get a different 'stock answer' about how <i>they</i> got into it.<p>In the 50's it was radio equipment. In the 60' was home built hi-fi. In the 70's it was kit computers. In the 80's it was a lot of radio controlled aircraft. In the 90's a lot of car tuning. In the 2000's it was modchips for video game consoles. In the 2010's a lot of stuff with Arduinos for smarthome, smart clothing, art projects. The details and exact time periods may vary a bit but the general idea is you get something tailored to your needs better and cheaper than buying off the shelf.<p>A good place to start is find a project someone else has done and written up, recreate it, modify it, then publish your twist on it. Repeat. For instance, here is a good starting point to add custom mood-lighting to your home: <a href="https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide" rel="nofollow">https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide</a><p>Keep a journal of things you have open questions about as you're going through these projects on dropbox paper (for instance) and fill them in with knowledge by asking on forums, stack exchanges, youtube, here and elsewhere.
I really like the 3rd edition of <i>The Art of Electronics</i>. The text is a fun read, and the student manual is a great extension of the main text, with a bunch of practical insight and discussion that puts it beyond mere exercises.<p>Caveat: I'm a software guy. I burn myself when I solder. I make smoke come out of components. I might not be the right person to listen to :-)<p>With the exception of an oscilloscope, you can put together a simple bench for a few hundred dollars. I've had mixed luck stocking components (for instanced, either my circuits are clueless crap, or the 10Mhz crystals I bought off of eBay are just empty cans -- in any event, a circuit that should oscillate just sits there). I found a used Tektronix scope and couldn't be happier, it really makes a difference when you're debugging something.
There are a few recommendations for <i>The Art of Electronics</i>. It's a great reference, but probably hard to approach as a beginner unless you're very motivated and comfortable being confused at points.<p>Electronics covers a huge field and many people specialize in just one area. Here are some of the main areas that are accessible to hobbyists (roughly in increasing order of difficulty):<p>- Digital electronics. Using microcontrollers to do things in the physical environment.<p>- Audio electronics. This is a fun area of electronics because the quality of what you build is directly reflected in how it sounds.<p>- Amateur radio electronics. Lets you talk to other people around the world. Harder than basic audio circuits because you need to know about antennas and radio operates at higher frequencies. Also requires passing an exam to get licensed, but studying for the exam helps with learning some of the theory.<p>- FPGAs. These are sexy, but not many applications that are that compelling for a hobbyist unless you have something very specific in mind. Plus you have to learn Verilog or another HDL and the way of thinking is very different than normal programming (since you're effectively describing the hardware you want rather than an algorithm).<p>My advice is to first figure out which field you're interested in, then find a project to work on related to that field. Having something practical to refer to makes understanding the theory (like what you'd learn in <i>The Art of Electronics</i>) easier.
These days it is a lot easier to get a good grounding in electronics. I would recommend you get a copy of <i>The Art of Electronics</i> by Horowitz and Hill, and ideally the teacher's manual (which has answers for many of the exercises).<p>Then get a simple "combo" tool (oscilloscope, signal generator, power supply, digital multimeter) like the <i>OpenScope MZ</i>[1] or the Espotek <i>Labrador</i>[2]. Add a handful of components, a wireless breadboard and some jumpers and you've got enough to do most of the labwork that the first few years of an undergraduate EE program can do.<p>If you can find an old Maxitronic "n00 in 1 electronics projects" kit[3] they give you a pretty solid platform for building different circuits that you could analyze fairly completely with the USB attached lab instruments.<p>Depending on how it goes (if you're doing circuits from the all in one kit or building them out of the Art of Electronics book) you can look at how things interact and get a solid feel for things.<p>[1] <a href="https://store.digilentinc.com/openscope-mz-open-source-all-in-one-instrumentation/" rel="nofollow">https://store.digilentinc.com/openscope-mz-open-source-all-i...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/espotek/labrador" rel="nofollow">https://www.crowdsupply.com/espotek/labrador</a><p>[3] I picked up one of these when I was teaching electronics to kids (<a href="https://www.elenco.com/product/300-in-1-electronic-project-lab/" rel="nofollow">https://www.elenco.com/product/300-in-1-electronic-project-l...</a>) and got one of the 500 in one versions at a garage sale.
FWIW, this is like saying "how do I self-learn programming?" - in that there is some common underlying theory, and then specific branches you travel down. it helps to have a goal or project, so it anchors you down one of those roads.<p>I was schooled in electronics for 5 years - I have the fundamentals down enough that I can reason about things. I can draw the schematic for a power supply, but I couldn't tell you what sort of capacitive or inductive circuitry specifications would be needed.<p>On the other hand, i'm building a MTG card sorting machine; and while i've never controlled relays and stepper motors before with software, I know enough that I can fill-in-the-blanks and what sort of issues to be mindful of.<p>So projects helps a lot - always be tinkering with something or somethings. Watching youtube channels (like aVe) that are tinker-focused and do experiments and explore electronics theory and applications - that can help a lot too.<p>Also, checkout a hamfest if there's any near you coming up. You see all sorts of crazy stuff there that can inspire all sorts of projects. Just don't go with too much money or room in your car.
Build stuff. Modify things. Be stubborn when they don't work. Take things apart and figure out why they <i>do</i> work.<p>Here are some fun project ideas, drawn from stuff I actually did when I was growing up/learning electronics. For reference, I almost completely skipped college, and am a hardware engineer at a company you've heard of (I can't believe it either).<p>-Lego car with electric motor scavenged from a floppy drive + 9V battery (grade school first project)<p>-High voltage generator (10kV?) using CRT flyback transformer and 2n3055 transistor circuit.<p>-Pocket audio amplifier using an OPAMP circuit. (search: mint tin amplifier)<p>-Countdown timer that can set off fireworks (don't end up on a list please).<p>-Worm robot using ATMEGA328, hobby servos, cardboard and masking tape.<p>-Disassembled hard drives and built a laser-scanning XY galvo system from the parts, fed by an amplified audio stereo pair (easy, fun and psychedelic)
Speaking as someone who got a degree in CS / software and then taught myself electronics after I got out of school. I relied heavily on Sparkfun.com to get started. Adafruit.com is also a strong competitor these days. They each have a ton of really great tutorial material for beginners. There are a lot of links here that people are listing that are great content but not for beginners. Along the same lines I would explicitly avoid reading any books on the topic cover to cover. I bought the Art of Electronics because it is billed as a bible for the field. It is, but I never use it.<p>As for tools and supplies. I would avoid buying very many things upfront* instead buy them as you need them to complete a project. The only general tools I would buy are a multi-meter (Fluke 115), bread board, jumper wires, resistor kit [0], solder iron (Weller WE1010NA), and maybe oscilloscope / digital logic analyzer combo like the Saleae Logic 8. You can get all these things, name brand top quality tools, for about $800 total. I would stay away from super cheap import type stuff to start. Some of it is fine but it isn't worth the frustration for a beginner when it doesn't work. The more expensive stuff will also grow with you as you get more advanced where as you will quickly out grow the cheapo stuff.<p>As far as formal equations you need to know the only ones I ever really use are V=IR (Ohm's law) and P=IV. If you paid attention in high school physics you probably already know these.<p>*The problem with buying a lot of stuff up front is that you end up with a bunch of less expensive stuff that doesn't really grow with you or a pile of parts that are a pain to keep organized and are obsolete by time you get around to using them or that you can't find datasheets on.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10969" rel="nofollow">https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10969</a>
It sort of depends on what you're interested in. Audio? Radio? Basic robotics? Cool digital sensors? Something that tweets every time you open your refrigerator door? Simplest answer buy an arduino intro kit with breadboard and some pre-made jumper wires.<p>There's lots of advice geeking out about special high-quality soldering gear, my advice is don't even worry about that yet. You're mostly going to be doing breadboarding at first anyway. And besides a cheap iron is fine. (Everyone, please stop glaring at me.)<p>Only other piece of equipment you might want is a cheap multimeter. You can get these off amazon for $9. Sure it's not going to be accurate in some edge case you can find but 97% of the time you only ever use the continuity tester and after that the voltage tester, which are pretty hard to get wrong. No, you will not need an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer or a special high quality multimeter or anything like that.<p>Save the big purchases for when you know you really care about it. Front-loading the cost of a bunch of special gear before you even know why you might need it and may never is a hobby anti-pattern. You can just buy cheap beginner kits.<p>There are some good youtube channel suggestions. One to add is Eugene K's visualizations of the physics of voltages and electronic components: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkyBCj4JhHt8DFH9QysGWm4h_DOxT93fb" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkyBCj4JhHt8DFH9QysGW...</a><p>Otherwise, and arguably sort of ruining the fun, are circuit simulators. A good one is falstad.com/circuit/ . It's much faster to draw up a simulation than to put together a breadboard circuit, you can add instrumentation and swap values ad nauseam, and you are less likely to make an inscrutable wiring mistake that contributes to small declines in your mental health than you are with a physical prototype. I use this for small analog circuits all the time to double check myself.<p>Have fun.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourth-Scherz/dp/1259587541" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...</a><p>Going to throw another book in the ring. I generally recommend this book for people getting started, because it teaches them how to solve specific problems with real examples. The theoretical side of electronics can be quite daunting because of the sheer number of concepts and understanding of mathematics that are required.<p>Practical Electronics for Inventors covers a large number of important circuit/electronic concepts but grounds them in real world application. Perfect for getting your hands dirty while learning the most pragmatic aspects of electronic theory.
One solution would to be to buy this: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-Electronics-Hands-Course/dp/0521177235" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-Electronics-Hands-Course...</a><p>And this <a href="https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/edu/harvard-lab-kit" rel="nofollow">https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/edu/harvard-lab-kit</a> (BOM's with all the components needed by the book)
Here's a really nice entry-level soldering station that's not hundreds of dollars:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D-23BY-Digital-Soldering-Station/dp/B00ANZRT4M/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D-23BY-Digital-Soldering-S...</a><p>Also, get a Soldapullt.<p>This is a plenty good enough multimeter: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-101-Multimeter-Equipment-Industrial/dp/B00JT5RUUU/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-101-Multimeter-Equipment-Indust...</a><p>Most importantly: Your first oscilloscope should be analog.<p>You don't need fancy test equipment with a zillion features, but it's especially important for a beginner to have well-made and properly-functioning test equipment. You need to be able to trust the readings even if you do something silly with it.
Buy a bunch of cheap battery operated toys (<$10, no remote control), the simpler the better. Take them apart. Try to put them back together, or put just parts of it back together. Start increasing the complexity of the toys you take apart.<p>People say basics are resistors, capacitors, inductors. Only for theory. If you want to build stuff, start with understanding power, switches, circuits -- not ICs, just making closed loops, series vs parallel, etc.<p>After your first few toy autopsies, get yourself a collection of LEDs, motors, copper wire, batteries, and perf-boards and paper clips. Make some switchy circuits doing various things. Make a car that can go straight. Make a car that will change directions when it hits a wall. Think about adding a microcontroller. Think about adding a USB interface, or a BT remote control. Add an LED display showing random numbers. If you spend the time on it and some loose change, you can learn a lot up to building real products from simple electronic toys. You'll learn about resistors and capacitors just from following the instructions of how to install these more advanced things into your existing circuits.
I've tried 3 times to teach myself electronics to the point where I can reliably make simple stuff work, and finally got it to start to click about 9 months ago. I'm still very much a newbie, but I am just slightly ahead of where it sounds like you are.<p>I recommend these YouTube channels:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/greatscottlab" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/greatscottlab</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog</a><p>Not all of the videos are useful, but if you browse through the "Most popular", you might find some interesting stuff. I did. There's also a long tail of other channels that post the odd interesting beginner-electronics video. Type in search terms for things you're confused by, and you'll find tens of people trying their best to explain it to you in a way you can understand. Don't understand one? Try the next person.<p>I bought an "Arduino starter kit" off eBay for about £35. It came with an Arduino Uno, a breadboard, some bits of jumper wire, resistors, a few capacitors, a relay, a servo, some LEDs, an LCD display, etc. Just a basic bunch of stuff to start playing with. (I think I paid more than the constituent parts were actually worth, but if they weren't all bundled together for me I wouldn't have known what to get at all, so I got plenty of value from it anyway.)<p>Then just start playing with it. In the process of trying to make stuff work you'll accidentally learn about pull-up and pull-down resistors, switch debouncing, filtering capacitors, using transistors to switch larger loads, SPI, I2C, and it'll all start fitting together in your mind. Every time you learn a new thing it opens up a bunch more avenues of stuff to research.<p>The resources available on YouTube are so much better than they were even 3 years ago. I think that's what has helped me "succeed" this time.<p>Good luck!
You can take the MIT sequence of courses on edX (taught by, I believe the CEO of edX, so, in a sense, this is the original flagship edX course)
<a href="https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circuit-mitx-6-002-1x-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circ...</a>
<a href="https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-2-amplification-mitx-6-002-2x-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-2-amplificat...</a>
<a href="https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-3-applications-mitx-6-002-3x-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-3-applicatio...</a>
A while ago I would have recommended you get <i>The Art of Electronics</i>, and <i>The Student Manual</i> for this, and then some cheap tools and components, and then just work your way through the student manual doing all the experiments and then reading the main book to learn the theory.<p>That's still a good choice, but you'll notice it's getting a bit outdated.<p>For learning the hobbyist end and some skills and techniques I recommend this guy: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g</a><p>He has some tutorials for simple surface mount soldering, and some useful reviews of equipment. He uses mostly correct soldering techniques too.
I'm a big fan of Adafruit, which is a great place to buy electronic components that all have projects, tutorials, active forums, etc.<p>Here's the "learn" page on the Adafruit web site: <a href="https://learn.adafruit.com/" rel="nofollow">https://learn.adafruit.com/</a><p>And the Adafruit Youtube channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/adafruit" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/adafruit</a><p>And it's definitely worth just dipping in and out of -- and eventually reading all the way through -- "The Art of Electronics." It's a terrific book, and manages to be both readable and super in-depth about every topic you could possibly want to know about when you're trying to figure out what's what.<p>There are also a number of inspiring blogs by electrical engineers who are also great writers. Which ones to follow sort of depend on what specialties you are most interested in, but Bunnie Huang's is a great one to start with: <a href="https://www.bunniestudios.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bunniestudios.com/</a>
Take up amateur radio and you'll be rewarded with a license and a lifetime of fun for the learning investment. Here are some resources:<p><a href="http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio" rel="nofollow">http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio</a><p><a href="https://www.qrz.com/i/ham-radio-howto.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.qrz.com/i/ham-radio-howto.html</a><p><a href="http://www.ncarc.net/?q=node/57" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncarc.net/?q=node/57</a><p>edit for form
I started with EEVBlog, especially "Fundamentals Friday" and the series where he designs things. Next, I turned to the textbook at AllAboutCircuits.<p>Next thing I did was design and build a DC lab. I bought my meters and scopes outright, but designed and built my own DC load and power supply. Since I'd already watched Dave's videos about them on EEVBlog, they were obviously influenced by his design, but I made a couple of non-trivial changes to the spec so that I'd have to make my own design decisions. I found this electronics stackexchange post very helpful for heat dissipation calculations [0]. Also, while it's very simple and not suitable for complex or precise work, Falstad's circuit simulator was very helpful for experimenting [1].<p>My next step was fixing things. This gave me an opportunity to do a bunch of things:<p>* Become familiar with ICs. At first I always had to look up the number on every IC I saw to figure out how it was supposed to behave before I could test if its actual behavior matched, but over time you'll start recognizing those numbers and understanding why it was chosen over another component that does the same job.<p>* Drawing schematics. Debugging is really hard without a schematic, so on anything remotely complex, my first step was often searching for a schematic. This search often came up empty, so my second step would be following all the traces and looking up all the chips so that I could draw a circuit diagram and figure out roughly what I should expect.<p>* Soldering. This should be fairly self-explanatory.<p>Frankly, I haven't gotten past here yet. I'm not terribly good with AC theory or RF stuff. I came to this thread looking for recommendations on that part, but I don't think there's any reason my methods so far wouldn't work; I just haven't had the time.<p>[0]: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/55513/can-a-soapbox-sized-device-dissipate-10-15w-of-heat-if-yes-how" rel="nofollow">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/55513/can-a-...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.falstad.com/circuit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.falstad.com/circuit/</a>
So I'm not really the right person to answer this question however.....<p>When I was younger I used to tinker with tiny electrical projects (from NZ so we had "Dick Smith" kits). I understood the very basics, but nothing complicated. As a fairly proficient software developer, real electronics has always felt alien to me.<p>Then recently I got an Arduino, and it's opened a whole new world. It's the perfect mix of feeling like you <i>want</i> to glue stuff to it, and feeling like you <i>can</i> glue stuff to it. That one device is already full of so much interesting circuitry (with the timers and the uart and little pins waiting to ground them to make stuff happen). But the docs and libraries will guide you through it. It's like training wheels for electrical circuits.
I'm channeling Einstein's (aprocryphal) statement of adopting a child's mindset when learning things for the first time.<p>In the 1970s RS and presumably others used to sell those "100-in-1" project kits with various analog components mounted on a single board, connected with jumper wires using springs. It was kinda cool, especially the project with the "bomb dropping" sound (1000 uF.)<p>That's my recommendation, assuming your skill level is "training wheels needed."<p>The spring-and-jumper style seems to have fallen by the wayside, but on eBay I see a few kits that use breadborads, and another called Snap Circuits that looks interesting. And some vintage spring-and-jumper kits which probably need a bit of cleanup.<p>None of these suggestions will teach you how to solder though.
Sparkfun.com is a great spot to buy and learn. They have several YouTube channels, one in particular "According To Pete" is a great set of videos to learn the ins and outs <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EF3C374FD903ACE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EF3C374FD903ACE</a>
I highly recommend checking out the Make: Electronics series. You can also buy kits for each book on Amazon if you don't feel like going out and finding all the parts yourself at RadioShack.
It will very much depend on your background, available funds and whether you are interested as a hobbyist only or you have some more serious plans for it.<p>What I have found is that having a dedicated space for your hobby is probably the best way to help.<p>Having a dedicated desk it means that all my stuff is immediately ready when I have few minutes of time to do something, test an idea, etc. No amount of hardware will help you if you will have to set it up on your desk and then clean up every day. At least that's what is working for me.
I learned electronics 35 years ago. After dabbling in high school, I took a college course that was part of the physics major curriculum. Beyond that point I'm self taught.<p>I think there are some things that have made it easier, others that have made it harder. The availability of parts, data, software tools, and knowledge, have of course exploded. You no longer have to call an IC maker on the phone and beg for a data book, though they were usually generous to students. There are some great videos and blogs. I like the stuff at the Adafruit site. I also like Teensy, a lot.<p>On the other hand the proliferation of stuff seems forbidding. My first Digi-Key catalog was less than a quarter inch thick! The last paper catalog I saw was over an inch thick, and lists only a fraction of their offerings.<p>It's too much.<p>For this reason I suggest choosing a small chunk of the field. If you're at HN because you're a computerist, maybe playing with Arduino would be a way to break in. Build a few kits, or just duplicate someone's published project. Gradually build up a little mental library of parts that are useful for your particular interest area.<p>A community college course that covers basic electronic measurement and technician work might be a good start. They will have all of the tools so you don't have to choose what to invest in right away.
Electronics is a big broad subject. So yeah, take it slow and take it easy on yourself as you're learning. It's more akin to asking, "How to self-learn programming?". There are many methods, resources and STRONG opinions, mine included. Here's my usual suggestions:<p>1.) Get into the culture of it all. Weird, right? But like lots of people are pointing out, YouTube has a bounty of electronics channels, one more niche than the next. There are also audio podcasts like Macrofab Engineering, Embedded.fm and The Amp Hour (disclaimer: this is my and EEVblog's audio podcast)<p>2.) This is probably the most important -- once you're a bit into the culture, you need something to shoot for. If the first part is figuring out WHY you want to build, then this part is figuring out WHAT you want to build. I would recommend starting with either a simple project (555 timer is a simple starting point) or slightly modifying someone else's existing project. There are no new electronics circuits, so lean into kits from adafruit, sparkfun and the sellers on Tindie. This is a wonderful time for all of the kits in the world. Electronics are cheap and plentiful and simply following someone else's instructions and getting the "muscle memory" for electronics is a good start.<p>3.) The last step is the HOW of electronics. This is going to be where peoples' opinions crop up the most. Some say start from the bottom up and learn semiconductors first. Others say you should start with firmware and arduinos and slowly learn what each piece is doing as you get into it more. To quote a familiar TV program, the right answer is probably "middle out". This is also a practical answer, since there are always lower level concepts you can learn and higher level concepts you can learn.<p>I usually do not suggest The Art of Electronics to people getting started. Instead, I think they should use a project idea of what they want to build and Google. Again, a shitty answer, but this is the best method I've found. Most books start with "What is Ohm's Law" and other math based operations and I think that's not the right move for most people. It lost me when I was getting started and I've been doing hardware for 15 years.<p>If you're unsure of where to start, make something blink. I have a short tutorial on how to build a circuit board, solder it up and blink it with a Rasbperry Pi. It sounds dumb, but it's important to get the dopamine flowing. Check it out here: <a href="https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/shine-on-you-crazy-kicad/" rel="nofollow">https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/shine-on-you-crazy...</a>
I'm sure all the information sources I know about have already been mentioned. I will instead share a few simple things I wish somebody had told me:<p>1. Don't stock up on components at the beginning. Only buy components that you need to build a chosen/designed circuit. Passive assortments contain useless stuff like many slightly different values of nanofarad capacitors. They will waste space in your parts storage.
1.1 Always keep your parts organized!<p>2. Surface mount (components sit on top of circuit board) is not hard. For any thru-hole circuit (components have wires that pass through holes in the circuit board), the surface mount equivalent will be easy to solder. Only the surface mount chips with tons of pins, like 32-bit CPUs, are tricky. Those don't exist in thru-hole. Plus, if you start making PCBs, you won't have to drill holes in them.<p>3. Classic op amps like the 741 and 358 suck. There are newer cheap op-amps that behave closer to the ideal model.<p>4. If you want to get into repair, practice desoldering before you desolder anything from an expensive board. It's easy to damage components and board by overheating when struggling to desolder.
Stop by and say hi to us sometime:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/beginners" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/beginners</a><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/education" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/education</a>
I learned electronics outside of school, but as part of a job (which has turned into a 20 year career of hardware design). I remember learning by needing to decipher schematics and repair broken circuits, which is what I was first asked to do, before I knew electronics. I would read the datasheets of the devices and try to understand. I would research what I didnt understand until I did to get to the next step.<p>For me this worked very well - I need a goal, a purpose. Designing things is good, but I think repairing things is perhaps even better for learning and getting started. Particularly if you have one working example and one broken example, and you can compare circuits.<p>So my advice - if you have one of something that works and has a circuit board, and you can find a schematic for it...go buy a broken one, and fix it. Then you can sell the newly working one, and do it again with something else. You'll learn a lot, and it will be very practical stuff to have learned. The art of hardware troubleshooting is its own wonderful talent to have.
To get started, here is what I'd recommend:<p>- bench power supply<p>- multimeter<p>- oscilloscope<p>- soldering iron<p>- wireless breadboard and jumper wire kit<p>- protoboard<p>- common resistor pack<p>- common capacitor pack<p>- Some basic components like 555 timers, flip flops, op amps, leds, variable resistors/knobs, small speaker, etc.<p>For books, I highly recommend Getting Started in Electronics, Forrest Mims - [1]<p>Spend some money and get a good power supply, soldering iron, and multimeter. You need an oscilloscope as well but you don't need to break the bank. You can get started without it but you won't get very far once things get complicated. The multimeter is like using print statements to debug your program. The oscilloscope is like using a debugger.<p>Next is to figure out what you want to make. Things like induction heaters and tesla coils are surprisingly simple to make. You can make a tiny tesla coil known as a slayer exciter using a transistor, resistor, led, and some wire.<p>[1][pdf] - <a href="https://theeshadow.com/files/Forrest%20M.%20Mims%20III%20-%20Getting%20started%20in%20electronics.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://theeshadow.com/files/Forrest%20M.%20Mims%20III%20-%2...</a>
It's such a wide topic.<p>I keep coming back to it, though I only tinker. I've recently gotten into modular synths, and that's neat becasue there are plenty of kits to build wihtout having to know a lot about hot the stuff works.<p>In the last month I've built a pretty complicated VCO and an Oscilloscope.<p>The stuff is cheap.<p>I've had a pretty good informal education as a nerdy musician and computer guy over the last 2 decades.<p>IMO the good thing is to keep in mind that a) for low voltage stuff you can mess around a lot and not hurt yourself (the devices can be another matter) and b) a lot of this stuff is just within 10% tolerance... like you can do a lot with minimal knowledge.<p>I got a lot out of a series of youtube videos that were tied to a company selling kits of resistors, breadboards, etc:<p><a href="http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/</a><p>And then it's like learning to code (if you know how to do that): find a project that seems like you more or less understand the broad strokes and try to implement it.
I'm studying Electronics Engineering and have found this course to be a good summary of the theory essentials: <a href="https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circuit-mitx-6-002-1x-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circ...</a><p>For the practical side of things buy a protoboard, a multimeter and some components (resistors, capacitors, etc) and start mounting simple circuits. Learn how to solder and start fixing stuff and doing fun projects. You'll eventually need more stuff to learn, having an oscilloscope to see the signals is needed to understand what is going on with AC circuits, but you could probably simulate it instead with software like Multisim <a href="https://www.multisim.com/create/" rel="nofollow">https://www.multisim.com/create/</a><p>Learn about Microcontrollers too, they give you the ability to do the really cool stuff, like robotic projects.
“Practical electronics for inventors” is a great book for getting started - and most importantly : nobody builds from scratch anymore - it usually a waste if time - there’s bound to be a platform/devkit out there that does more or less what you want it to
Buy "The art of electronics" and work through it.<p>Buy a PCB board some components and start putting things together. Supplement with youtube, blogs.
I'm trying to learn right now. I'm probably doing this backwards but:<p>I'm starting by soldering together kits for modular synthesis. That's teaching me all of the technical skills and ensuring I have the right tools. Some friends to help correct my shitty habits have given me the right skills and equipment to build.<p>Then I know how to assemble things, so now I'm trying to build my own very simple circuits. Once I can breadboard them, my friend can help show me the ropes to get PCBs printed and then I can manufacture my own things.<p>Finally, the troubleshooting exposes you to a bit as you have to understand what's going on.<p>Learning and watching on the side take the basic exposure and distill knowledge from that.
I don't think they're very popular today, but when I was a kid, I had a Radio Shack Electronic Project Kit [1], and I learned so much from it. Looks like you can still buy them though. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/samwibatt/773052449" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/samwibatt/773052449</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maxitronix-200-in-One-Electronic-Project-Lab/dp/B0002AHR04/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523043020&sr=8-2&keywords=electronic+project+kit" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Maxitronix-200-in-One-Electronic-Proj...</a>
If starting from scratch, first decide -what kind- of electronics you want to learn (analog, digital, audio, radio...) Maybe get a book of simple circuits you can build on a breadboard to help you decide what might be useful.<p>-Take it easy- and don't get in too deep. You want to learn, not get frustrated. (A mentor can be -very- helpful.)<p>I'd suggest breadboarding to 'learn electronics', while avoiding 'learning construction' at the same time. Also find out where you'll be getting the parts you need. As a beginner, you might want to start with a parts kit. Get a good book and learn what each kind of part is and the basics of what it does.
Videos are great. Also, modular synthesizer software. Get a copy of VCV and play. Listening to the behavior of circuit interactions will teach you a lot. Get one of those electronics in a box or breadboard kits.<p>Book wise, start with something from Forrest Mims III, who provides graduated and clear examples of basic circuits and theory. When you're ready for the hard stuff, the <i>The Art of Electronics</i> by Horowitz and Hill.<p>You'll never be as good as someone with a reasonably current EE degree, but developing your intuition will enable you to have meaningful conversations with them.
I got into electronics because I was too poor to afford the guitar effects pedals I wanted, so I set out to build my own. My intro book was Craig Anderton's "Electronics Projects for Musicians".<p>From there, an indespensible resource in my education was diystompboxes.com/smfforum (DIY electronics forum). Focus is on guitar effects, but there are people making amps, guitars, hi-fi, and digital gear as well. The community there has an excellent core of helpful veteran DIYers and engineers, and a strong culture of sharing and teaching.<p>The humble Fuzz Face is generally a "beginner" level project which you can get working in an afternoon, yet if you drill down into <i>why</i> it works you've got enough to chew on to fill 2 or 3 college courses (at least 1 of those being a "weed out" level course). This pedal was a staple of Jimi Hendrix, but he had a good ear and legend says he'd sort through boxes of them to find the good ones, because they varied a lot.
The <i>reason</i> they varied is because they were built around germanium transistors, which were low tolerance parts. And the circuit itself is really high gain and temperature sensitive and has all sorts of caveats around it.<p>So if you covet that Jimi Hendrix-quality Fuzz Face sound, you need to deep dive into things like measuring hFE and keeping wiring clean around high-gain circuits to keep from turning it into an oscillator (or a radio). There are numerous rabbit holes to explore, like "do old school resistors sound better?" or "what if I want to power it from a normal +9V power supply instead of a battery?"<p>Then you realize that turning the guitar's volume knob down causes the Fuzz Face to totally change character from racous fuzz into something like a Brian May-esque treble boost, and why the heck does that happen? It's because the input to the Fuzz is a low impedance relative to the guitar, and causes the (mostly inductive) guitar pickup to be heavily loaded at high frequencies, making the distortion smoother than it would otherwise be. So the guitar itself is part of the circuit, and inserting an active circuit (like another pedal) between the guitar and the Fuzz Face ruins everything!<p>So I guess my point is don't go into it with the generic goal of "learn electronics", instead have a specific goal like "make the best Hi-Fi system possible for my living room, for under $2000" or "make a quadcopter from scratch". Eventually you'll accumulate a ton of depth in a specific domain that you really care about, and you'll pick up general concepts along the way.
I can't recommend the Every Circuit app enough (<a href="http://everycircuit.com" rel="nofollow">http://everycircuit.com</a>). It's an interactive, real time circuit simulator. I've been using it for the past couple of years to teach myself electronics. I'd read about how, for example, opamps worked, but it wasn't until I could play around with them and try them in virtual circuits that I really understood how to use them. Honestly, for learning, it the best resource I've come across.
If you're interested in Digital Logic / FPGA / VHDL then I'd recommend this book [1] and this collection of Youtube videos [2]<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Circuits-Design-VHDL/dp/3319341944/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Circuits-Design-VH...</a>
[2]: <a href="http://www.montana.edu/blameres/book_content_vhdl.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.montana.edu/blameres/book_content_vhdl.html</a>
Step 1: Start with simple circuits. And implement them on bread boards. Don't go for the printed circuit boards yet. There are many circuits out there for beginners. Choose one and implement it. Vary the elements in the circuit. For example if the circuit asks you to use 10k ohm resister use a 100 ohm resister and see what happens. In this case there might be drop in voltage(I believe, my memory is quite vague). To measure this you use multimeter. Learn how to do that. It is fundamental for any one wanting to play with electronics stuff.
(P.S: If you are from India there is a magazine named "Electronics for you". If you have the money buy it. It is quite amazing. I haven't read it 6 years though so I don't know if the quality is still good)<p>Step 2: Start reading the datasheets of different Integrated Circuits that you might use in your circuit. Its not that hard. Once you understand what Vcc, ground etc., are it becomes really easy.<p>Step 3: Try and solder the the elements that you used on a board. Soldering is a basic skill that many engineers I know lack. It is good to know it. I have fixed many broken radios and other electronic items using this skill.<p>Step 4: Start designing printed circuit boards on a software and send it to a company and print it(there are other means to do this too).<p>Once you cover this, you can do a lot of really cool stuff with electronics. I hope this helps.<p>Note: This makes you an amateur. Now if you want to learn about FPGAs and other stuff, then its gets a little tricky. You might need a book for that.
Are you more interested in digital or analog? Do you want to build computers or audio amplifiers? Although the underlying physics is identical, you need to build stuff (as others have pointed out) and you can arguably build more successful stuff that encourages you to keep going if you start with digital. Analog is more difficult until you have a good grasp of the theory.
After that, they're both easy (until you get into RF, and then it all becomes black magic again).
I grew up with Electronics Magazine, Radio Shack (the Source).<p>Today, in addition to this there are monthly electronic subscription kits that can be pretty cool.<p>The way I'd do it today is find projects online that I can order the parts myself from AliExpress/eBay to come from China and have a project a month to do. Things take 4-6 weeks to arrive, and you can order the next project while working on the current one.
I find the best way to learn anything is to come up with a thing I want to make or do, start searching for similar things, and copy/modify/analyze until I can do it. But for hands on skills you should go find an in person class about it, stuff like how to solder I mean.<p>Without the motivation of a thing to do it's very hard to learn much useful for me. So much is interesting or important in theory but rarely used, and without a target goal it's hard to tell the difference.<p>Like, newton's law for circuit analysis was really great for lots of interesting problems -- I just never have to solve those problems in real life ever. It's important, but is harder when you're self-teaching. When I self-teach I want to be getting pulled into a rabbit hole and pick up deeper knowledge there. I want to know what questions I need to answer.<p>And when you get more sophisticated, read many, many datasheets very closely. It's the only way to really get a feel for the wealth of options available as an electronics designer.
Bit late to the party, a lot of great answers already and I can't add much more but this list of resources I maintain will probably be useful to you, especially the learning and video section.<p><a href="https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics</a>
This book influenced me the most: Bebop to the Boolean Boogie<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Third-Unconventional/dp/1856175073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523039646&sr=8-1&keywords=bebop+to+the+boolean" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Third-Unconventi...</a>
Think of a project that you would like to complete. Something simple to start with. Now search the web for pages, videos, how tos, related to it.<p>Electronics is a big subject. Some of it can be approached like Lego but others, especially high frequency work needs a more holistic and mathematical approach.<p>So I think you need to state your goal a bit more precisely.
First I would ask why you want to learn. Electronics is a broad field. Is there a certain area you have interest in?<p>Me - grew up with it as a hobby/passion. I just learned what I had to to accomplish my goals. So my advice would be to come up with some projects/goals and figure out what is needed to accomplish those.
I got into amateur radio recently and felt that my fundamental knowledge of electronics was lacking, so I picked up the Handbook for Radio Communications textbook and read through the first few chapters to solidify my understanding. Learning electronics without context for me is quite boring, and it's better to have something more concrete that you can use the electronics for that will motivate you to want to push yourself to learn more as the applicability of your understanding shows some real results.<p>One downside to this is that your electronics understanding will only be focused on a concrete usage of it, so you might not get the depth on certain areas of electronics that the application doesn't cover, e.g. you won't learn how a solid-state drive works in the context of electronics if you focus on radio technology.
Check out Adafruit: <a href="https://www.learn.adafruit.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.learn.adafruit.com/</a>
they have fantastic projects and learning material. I recommend just picking something that looks cool and build it! You'll learn by doing. And every part you buy from Adafruit has tutorials with it.<p>Also a plug for MakeCode: <a href="https://makecode.com/" rel="nofollow">https://makecode.com/</a>
It's the friendliest electronics programming environment I know of, and you can program Adafruit boards with it. You can program with blocks or Static Typescript.
(Disclaimer: I worked at MakeCode as an intern, specifically I made the breadboard system for <a href="https://maker.makecode.com" rel="nofollow">https://maker.makecode.com</a>)
There's a really good, single page webpage called "Concise electronics for geeks": <a href="http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/" rel="nofollow">http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/</a><p>It's a good read if you're trying to learn the fundamentals.
It will be hard without solid high school physics, which looks to be the case with most US secondaries.<p>Functioning of electronics was more or less clear for me by the time I finished high school in Russia, the only way up was to learn real electronics engineering.<p>So, begin with dusting off your school textbooks.
I somehow did so for a few monthes.<p>Note that: 1) I never understood electricity or even electronics, no matter the level (<HS, HS, College).<p>2) as a computer guy I had the fetish to actually know what the hell was going on. And since my first laptop, I have an itch to mod boards.<p>yet nothing happened for a decade, until .. maybe the rpi came out. You can find boards for 10$... so now I have a bunch. Then I bought other stuff (wires, multimeter). Then a soldering iron. Then I started to scrap old electronics and parts from stuff that people threw away.<p>But that doesn't teach you anything. I guess a blend of youtube videos (greatscott, electroboom, AvE) helped getting a tiny bit of theory. Then actually powering dc motors and esp8266 boards. Then trying to read proper text books. (just google 'best electronics books'). Oh also /r/electronics and #electronics on freenode <= an amazing bunch of people here, very knowledgeable, 99% helpful, even for idiots like me.<p>Also it depends on your brain. Some people will crave rigorous mathematics, some will want to solder stuff and light things up. I needed a blend so I went my own way.<p>One thing, for low voltage circuits, you can maybe assemble anything you want. Just get a pair of gloves and plastic goggles and you'll never injure yourself and plug things together without fearing capacitors blowing. Stay away from power electronics at first, actual safety is required unless you plan to either cry or visit nurses in the ER.<p>I find the topic quite fascinating.. that sophisticated green planar with lines everywhere and components.. is just an abstraction layer above waves of f/a and mathematical relationships between them. Even the clock of your circuit is most probably a crystal which material order waves.<p>Also, it's so damn tangible... it's not pure ideal like code. It's matter that you touch, that heats up. It connects to chemistry (you can make a resistor with a graphite rod, a pencil, and variate the resistance based on the length before the other terminal).
You may want to start with a DIY kit on an electronic subject that matters to you<p>Advantage of the kit is that you'll have a working product in the end, and you'll learn soldering (and other things) on the way. You may not understand all the underlying principles of the kit at first but Rome wasn't built in a day :)<p>As an example, I started with guitar pedals from techniguitare.com (allowed me to practice basic soldering + refresh opamp theory), then progressively moved to more complex projects. My experience with communities that build these kits is that they are generally very friendly and helpful when you want to learn.<p>Then, projects like led cubes (i.e. you'll learn matrix multiplexing) or esp8266 based IOT are easy and usually rewarding
I learned by building really simple circuits. People assume when you want to learn electronics that you should immediately begin with microcontrollers, and I think this is a mistake. Sure, learning with Arduino is a good next step to take, but if you don't understand the fundamentals then you'll end up a one-person cargo cult of electronics.<p>Make a light blink. (without 555 timer)<p>Make two lights blink at different intervals.<p>Make a light that only comes on when it's dark out.<p>Make a light that comes on in the presence of an electrostatic field.<p>Make a crystal radio.<p>Make a transistor radio.<p>Make a radio transmitter that your transistor/crystal radio can receive.<p>Make your transmitter send and receive morse code between computers.<p>Make your transmitter send and receive data with FSK.<p>Make an Arduino control your transmitter.<p>--------------------<p>Congratulations! You're off to a great start!
As there are already 21 mentions of Horowitz's and Hill's 'The Art of Electronics'[1], here I add another one. It's a great book.<p>[1] <a href="https://artofelectronics.net/" rel="nofollow">https://artofelectronics.net/</a>
We learn through mistakes, releasing magic smoke can teach a lot, so the first suggestion is to be prepared for failures: don't let them discourage you but rather use them to learn more.<p>Stay away as much as you can from microcontrollers and ICs, at least until you have grasped enough knowledge and handling/soldering capabilities. I'm very serious, stay away from Arduinos, Raspberries and everything like that. There will be a time for them. Opamps and logic ICs also are a vital part of electronics, but starting with them would do more harm than good. Get a book for basic electronics (No, The Art of Electronics although wonderful is not a good choice now).<p>Start with simple stuff to get an idea of what the Ohm Law means, that is, some resistors, a battery and some multimeters. While for serious stuff a Fluke is worth more than a billion cheap Chinese multimeters, having 3 or 4 of the latter will be immensely more useful than a single top brand one because seeing in real time the battery voltage and what develops around a voltage divider when you change the resistors ratio has no price.
Same for instrumentation: an oscilloscope is worth the information you get by using it, so you have first to know what it does measure, otherwise it's not even worth a 5 bucks Chinese multimeter.<p><a href="https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/voltage-dividers" rel="nofollow">https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/voltage-dividers</a><p>Try the voltage divider with a 9V battery and measure everything, the total current the battery voltage and both voltages on resistors wires. Change resistors and take note of what changes and try to find out why. Use from very low value resistors to very high ones maintaining their ratio and watch what happens to current and voltage.<p>Now swap a resistor with a led. Does it light or not? Was it inserted the right way? If yes why doesn't it work? If not why it still doesn't work? What's the resistor value and how much current is flowing through the led?
Measure voltage and current, choose the wrong resistor and burn some leds -> learn more.<p>Put a high value capacitor in parallel to the led, why the led turns on and off slowly when connecting/disconnecting the battery? Again measure voltage and current: why current increases before voltage when battery is connected?<p>Build a solenoid by winding from tens to a hundred turns of enameled copper wire around a big iron nail, then connect the battery with some iron small screws or iron powder near the nail head, what does happen and why?
When you remove the battery do you see a small spark? Why?<p>All those experiments though can be performed with very little money will put you on the right track.
When I was in junior high school we had a monthly mail order kit from American Basic Science. I made things like an amplidier, radio receiver, ham radio transmitter. It cost $5 a month for a year, much of the pay from my paper route.<p><a href="http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-stories/american-basic-science-club-case-history-of-a-successful-small-business/" rel="nofollow">http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-stories/americ...</a><p>An equivalent today might be a the add on kits for Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Plus the high school robot competition clubs.<p>Must have worked because I later attended MIT ;-)
A lot of good advice on here....<p>Just as an aside, if you have kids especially, the "BrainBox" kits are really cool for playing around. For instance <a href="http://www.cambridgebrainbox.com/Explorer2.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cambridgebrainbox.com/Explorer2.html</a> they come with a bunch of passive / active components to play with. I found I could demo a lot of principles to my son and we could play around with ideas. It's probably not going to last you more than a week in terms of learning electronics, but it makes playing with simple circuits super easy.
One aspect is the physical thing, try some soldering kits where you do simple through-hole components on a single-layer PCB. While this is more part of the manufacturing and less of the designing and theory, it does give you a great sense of accomplishment when you make your first few circuits work.<p>While there are many ways to connect components like breadboards and stripboard, and many modern and digital versions of circuits, getting some experience with basics, even something as simple as a low-component flip-flop to flash one or two lights, will help you translate thought and theory into knowledge and experience.
I would say find a mentor. The most important learning is from other people's experience, watching how they work. There was one "old timer" electrical engineer I worked with closely as a firmware developer who mentored me to the point I was comfortable doing my own design work. You'll still want to read AoE, understand theory etc. but the practice of electrical engineering is a lot more than that.<p>EDIT: Also, not sure if this is still the case today, but I learnt tons from reading Application Notes. I guzzled application notes books from all the semiconductor manufacturers.
I got myself a nodemcu (rather 10) on aliexpress, some relay boards, wires, resistors (haven't really needed them yet), some USB chargers, breadboards, LEDs, RFID readers, more wires, more nodemcu's (esp32 by now), more relays, etc, etc. and I just started hacking around with them. You learn quite a lot by having to solve 'how do I turn on this lamp?', 'how do I read RFID chips?'<p>My own and my neighbours garden lights are controlled by the nodemcu unit that I put together and I am working on a RFID project at the moment. Great fun.
I sort of learnt it from books I got in the bookstore and school library. I will not name them, because they're not in English.<p>At the same time I spent 8 years learning it day in day out in high school and university, so it's hard to tell how far you'll get with just self-learning.<p>It also depends on what you want to do with the knowledge. Perhaps just go book browsing to a library that has a good set of books about electronics, to find what you mind be the most interested in. Libraries associated with electotechnical schools typically have plenty of these books.
Make: Electronics is a good starter.<p><a href="https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed" rel="nofollow">https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed</a>
Echoing others that have mentioned Adafruit - you can’t neglect the practical side of electronics and Adafruit has some of the best, most practical tutorials, walkthroughs, and resources for much of the digital electronics space. Learn by doing with an Arduino, some lights, and maybe an Ethernet add-on or a sensor add-on.<p>Pick up the theory and math of EE along the way, and you should be good to go. There’s all sorts of neat things to learn in the analog space or in the op-amp space for those that come from a CS background.
Are we talking about digital or analog electronics? AC or DC power? For me, a DC powered circuit with a clock and chips made sense but I never understood how analog circuits worked until I was introduced to the concept of the LRC circuit. It has a resistor, a capacitor and a inductor. As a software guy I am trained to think in terms of discreet components. Then I realized that when you put those 3 discrete components together that things really start to happen.
I much prefer reading to videos. My suggested online resource:
<a href="http://lcmtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/" rel="nofollow">http://lcmtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/</a><p>Print: The Art of Electronics
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266/ref=dp_ob_image_bk" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521...</a>
I will sometimes check the local college's course on a given subject and obtain some/all of the required book list - I do quite a bit of private study.
I honestly don’t know much about electronics, but there is a bundle on humble bundle right now about hardware and electronics [1]. It might be worth checking out. If anyone has read any of these feel free to comment which ones are worth a read.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.humblebundle.com/books/makerspace-books" rel="nofollow">https://www.humblebundle.com/books/makerspace-books</a>
I second many of the tips here but also if you just want to make things happen while you’re learning, look at modules on Adafruit and Sparkfun. Like software libraries, they abstract away the complexity, and like software libraries you wire them up, write a little glue code, and focus on the application. This approach can get pricey but you will make things happen and get used to being in the space.
How in depth are you wanting to learn, and how do you like to learn?<p>You can build some cool stuff without having much in depth knowledge (there are tons of step-by-step projects for Arduino/RaspberryPi just a Google away).<p>If you're the type that doesn't mind hunkering down and reading textbooks, I'd suggest Electric Circuits (Nilsson and Riedel) paired with Fundamentals of Microelectronics (Razavi).
Many universities have lab materials for introductory electronics courses available publicly online.<p>For example, here are the labs for Berkeley's EE105: <a href="http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee105/fa15/labs.html" rel="nofollow">http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee105/fa15/labs.html</a><p>I believe MIT OCW has several electronics courses with lab materials.
I do hardware and software in parallel.<p>These days many electronic parts are from China, we will see the how the trade war impacts the price at aliexpress.
1) for Analog: build yourself an audio amplifier, starting from simple circuits in The Art of Electronics and building up to more complex amps. Having an oscilloscope is necessary<p>2) For digital: arduino projects to start with microcontrollers. After that, try an AVR dev kit if you want to go low level assembly/etc. or just move to RPi if you want to stay at a higher level
Depending on where you are (Europe or the United States) Velleman in Europe or Heathkit in the United States will sell you all kinds of electronics in kit form. Get some practice with that, try to figure out how what you have just built works (and in debugging you will learn a lot) and then later move on to your own designs or modifications of existing designs.
I’ll put in a vote for Chris Gammel’s Contextual Electronics course. Well worth the money. The emphasis on learning to make your own PCB’s early on definitely added to the sense of reward which boosted my motivation. Something about making a permanent circuit on a PCB is Michael more satisfying than temporarily making something on a breadboard.
I found a specific project that I really wanted to build, and copied online tutorials. After a few cycles of that (involving different sub-systems of the same large project) I developed increasing knowledge as a result of both the process itself and the information I found myself naturally encountering and reading along the way.
Adafruit is a brilliant starting point: <a href="https://www.adafruit.com/category/117" rel="nofollow">https://www.adafruit.com/category/117</a> a kit or two will give you the basics of _building_ and has the advantage that its wonderfully explained.
We are collecting books from Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Here are books from past year. I think you can read it, and post something, discuss with others.<p><a href="https://toptalkedbooks.com/topics/17" rel="nofollow">https://toptalkedbooks.com/topics/17</a>
Okay, I never knew I wanted to know the answer to this question untill it was asked.<p>I know a lot about development and architecture. Yet, I suck at electronics. Tried it a few ( short) times but not enough to grasp it.<p>Will follow up, the humble bundle deals about electrics is wasted money for now :p
Two online resources come to mind:<p><a href="http://www.learningelectronics.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.learningelectronics.net/</a><p><a href="http://learnabout-electronics.org/" rel="nofollow">http://learnabout-electronics.org/</a><p>Both are pretty good.
I have a related question, so I'll piggyback: does anyone know a book or some materials on electronics for people with mathematics background? Where not only methods of computations and formulas are given, but also explanations/derivations of these.
Start here <a href="http://www.technoblogy.com/show?NMX" rel="nofollow">http://www.technoblogy.com/show?NMX</a> and then check out (especially) the posts tagged ATtiny85<p>I've made/adapted quite a few.
Dave Jones' EEvblog:<p><a href="https://www.eevblog.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.eevblog.com</a><p>Lots of really useful stuff, entertaining too. You'll have to pick through the videos, but it's all there.
Starting from what level of understanding?<p>The old Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kits are informative and easy to use.<p>They're designed to teach the fundamentals; capacitance, resistance, logic (74-series) gates, volts/amps...
The Context<p>Electronics is a complex topic but doable with the right strategy. Suppose instead of electronics I wanted to learn "how does my mind move my finger?". As a person with a mind and a finger the answer is quite simple: my mind creates the command and the finger moves. While this is true, under the covers though the actual details are a lot more complex. The good news is that electronics is a lot simpler than moving your finger. The trick is to learn the simpler ideas that allow you do actual things without getting lost in the details.<p>Another problem is that once someone understands an area of learning they tend to want to teach it from a top down perspective. In the case of electronics it's "well here's Maxwell's equations and it's all you really need". But people tend to learn better working from the bottom up. Understanding various simple things and building up the abstract structure as they go.<p>So here's my recommendation for a hierarchy of learning for electronics. Understand that at each step you're never getting "the complete truth" but also you're not getting actual lies.<p>First electronics is divided into to types of things. Passive components and active components. A resistor is a type of passive component and a transistor is a type of active component.<p>It's best to get solid foundation in passive components before moving on to active components even though "proper electronics" is about active components. That's because most of the time active components are actually thought of as a kind of combination of passive components.<p>So start with a battery and a resistor and the equation V=IR. While this seems way too simple it's actually the idea that used in a lot of electronics so it's good to understand it pretty well. And it's conceptually pretty clear.<p>Once you feel you have a good solid, unshakeable under standing of one resistor and a voltage supply move on to two resistors in series and then two resistors in parallel. Calculate the voltage and current for each one.<p>Next keep adding resistors in arbitrary combinations up to say a dozen resistors and become confident that you can calculate the voltage and current regardless of any combination that is given to you.<p>At this point it's very helpful to think of current in terms of water flow and voltage in terms of water pressure. (The resistor is analogous to the size of the pipe that the water is flowing through) This analogy, with some refinements, goes a long way in electronics so it's good to start thinking like this.<p>The next step is to take a look at a circuit of a resistor and a capacitor in series. This is the classic RC circuit that is used a lot. A capacitor can store energy and so its characteristics can be quite different than those of resistors. However, with a little mathematical sleight of hand capacitors can be treated "just as if they were resistors" in many circumstances and this makes calculations (and thought processes) quite a lot easier.<p>Learn the mathematical techniques of analyzing circuits made of resistors and capacitors driven by both an AC voltage and a DC voltage for some very simple circuits. One resistor and one capacitor is plenty for starting.<p>Note that these circuits have both a 'transient phase' and a 'steady state' phase. You can think of this in terms of picking a ball up from the floor and then dropping it. The time during which the ball is bouncing is the 'transient' stage and after the ball stops bouncing that's the 'steady state' phase. For the most part electronics concerns itself with the 'steady state' phase. However, a circuit driven by a steady AC (sinusoidal) voltage (or current) and be analyzed in a steady state manner even though the values are varying with time.<p>The other standard passive component is the inductor. Don't worry about it until you get quite confident in your understanding of capacitors since inductors are intuitively harder to figure out and mathematically both components are treated very similarly.<p>Active Components
While there are quite a few 'semiconductor' based active components simplify by studying the three main types first. These are diodes, bipolar transistors(npn, pnp) and field effect transistors (FET's). The theory of how these devices actually work is very complicated and not really worth effort. The diodes are quite simple to understand so start with those.<p>The transistors are trickier. They operate in two modes, non-liner and linear. Non-linear is messy and best left to later. The linear regime is where these are mostly used and is conceptually not too difficult. In fact they operate in a manner not much different than the knob that controls water flow (there's that metaphor again) in your shower. A transistor had three terminals one of the terminals is used to change the resistance value between the other two terminals.<p>In the case of bipolar transistors the controlling input is a current. With FET transistors the controlling input is a voltage.<p>And that's it really. There are more complicated things like phase locked loops and more niche type devices like SCR's but these are the basics.<p>Once you start to actually put circuits together do yourself the favor of learning to solder and wirewrap rather than using bread boards. For a tiny bit of extra effort you'll likely save yourself hours of frustration because your circuit connections will be much more reliable.
Buy an Arduino-based starter kit that includes a breadboard and a bunch of small parts like LEDs and resistors. Adafruit or Sparkfun have some good kits.
growing up, this was one of my favorite books<p><a href="https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-book-ever-written/" rel="nofollow">https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-...</a>
i did this before youtube was a thing by purchasing a book covering analog circuits and digital circuits. from there it was a matter of doing the work.
IF you can, find a maker space and visit it.<p>There are guys with 30years' of experience in some of them and they can set you on the right path. Take their soldering class or intro class, and try to get some hands-on help with volt meters and oscilloscopes.