How I learned electronics [video]
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I live in HK, where real estate is at a premium. I’m a family of 4 people, living in a 700 sq-ft home with no garage. (And I’m reckoned to be on the fortunate side of things.)
There is no way I can set up a home lab here.
I know there are circuit simulators, but simulators are not the real thing. I think that simulators (the free ones that I know of anyway) typically don’t simulate random defects and physical variances that you would have to debug and deal with on the real thing.
There are also tangential, and nonetheless practical things that you cannot learn from a simulator: e.g. how to arrange your lab so you can work efficiently and with as few accidents as possible; how to make a good solder.
Alternatively, you might have some luck contacting a local university, they might be open to let you use their lab (again, probably for a fee).
The lab is really only necessary for soldering and creating custom PCBs.
The only extra tool needed is if you need to replace a chip (or solder some QFNs / BGAs), but the cheapest available hot air station will do just fine.
Very similar to the fact that most people don't have a dedicate place to do a puzzle, a card table or kitchen table will suffice.
Be careful with the microcontrollers; it's easy to fry them when you make mistakes!
Another comment suggested working at a hackerspace, you might need your own "toys" to take there.
As for equipment you can get started with a multimeter.
Of all my hobbies, electronics is probably the one that takes the least space. When I was a kid, I had all kinds of fun with those "100 in 1 Electronics" kits that RadioShack sold (smaller than an autoharp). Did not even have a multimeter then, ha ha.
The modern equivalent is indeed a breadboard. You can get component kits that cover the spectrum for resistors and capacitors (the size of a recipe box).
I find a handful of transistors, some op-amps, some IC's can be a lot of fun - but it depends on what you are interested in.
If you just want to learn general electronics (as opposed to say, digital, or audio, etc.) do a Google search for "100 Transistor Circuits", "200 Transistor Circuits", "100 IC Circuits", etc. So much free stuff out there.
And this amazing site:
Still available new on ebay fwiw, "Maxitronix." Pdfs of the instructions are around on the web too.
Lots of people like setting up sprawling labs, but there are a few things to keep in mind:
Parts drawers are an incredibly inefficient way to store components. I picked up a few kits of basic components (resistors, capacitors, LEDs) that come in small compartmentalized containers, then stuck those containers and a few loose parts (breadboards, perfboards, small spools of wire) into a cookie tin.
You only need a small collection of hand tools like wire cutters, wire strippers, a soldering iron, and a multimeter. I even have a small digital oscilloscope/signal generator that hooks up to a computer and is about the size of a multimeter.
Modern microcontroller development boards are a huge space saver. They are compact, easy to repurpose for each project, and remove the need for other equipment in most cases (e.g. they provide rudimentary ADCs/DACs and can power for low power projects).
While there will be limits, the biggest hurdle will be self-restraint.
Learning electronics is easier than ever before. You can buy smartphone-sized oscilloscopes for less than $200 or even use your smartphone or computer as an oscilloscope/signal generator if you work with audio frequencies. Or plug in a microcontroller board for a few bucks.
You can find textbooks (e.g. [0]) freely online which would've cost you a fortune back in the day (and still do if you want it on paper).
And finally... We still can buy through hole electronics components you can plug into a breadboard. They are obsolete for almost all industrial uses but still widely available. The supply is dwindling but most common components can still be bought.
I am a bit afraid of what will happen when we can no longer buy components in a large form factor that you can solder by hand or stick in a breadboard.
But the DIPs are readily available on the *Zon and for fast delivery too!
Of course SMT also requires somewhat of a lab I suppose as a hot air tool is the way to go.
My question is how many people actually use these devices for anything other than trivial purposes these days?
I feel that mine just collects dust and takes up space and does not compare to my multimeter which is probably my most used tool, but maybe I'm missing something.
In terms of needing one: no, if you can borrow one or have access to someone else's lab. Oscilloscopes have relatively low benefit given the cost. They will either be too low frequency to be of value for many modern applications, or too finicky to learn how to use properly for higher frequency applications (not to mention expensive for higher frequency applications).
An AM radio works too, and works above audio frequencies, wirelessly! The loopstick will pick up harmonics off everything in the circuit so you can hear a lot of what's going on. Helps to know what might be going on though.
I had a boss that had retired the following interview question (maybe it was a PhD qual question, I forget): He'd give the candidate a portable TV and an AM radio and have them measure the horizontal scan frequency of the TV. It was probably a chestnut in some circles.
You don’t technically need one, but that’ll make a lot of work much harder and some work impossible.
So no, it's by no means essential but it certainly opens some new doors in the hobby. If you want to build kits, say for guitar pedals (pretty popular electronics-related hobby), you can manage without an oscilloscope.
But for designing experimental circuits from scratch, it's really nice to have one.
And it's just fun to play your guitar with the signal plotted on the warm glowing cathode ray tube.
An oscilloscope is invaluable if something dynamic isn't working correctly. All that LCR stuff becomes real when you can see it. SPI bus and i2c bus issues become possible to visualize - though a protocol analyzer is even nicer, a scope will do.
Also, simply browsing through parts catalogues and looking at datasheets can be a great learning experience.
But as others said, many of us have learned electronics at home in even smaller apartments. You really don't need much to get started.
Arduino or various other microcontrollers, multimeter, breadboard, and a bunch of small parts (resistors, capacitors, ICs, LEDs, sensors, wires, etc). Having "lab" gear like an oscilloscope, signal generator is definitely nice but not needed to get started
> how to arrange your lab so you can work efficiently and with as few accidents as possible; how to make a good solder.
There are many videos in youtube, it is genuinely easy. You don't need efficient place as a beginner, but if kids are small, you need to be able to defend table with hot iron so that they dont burn themselves accidentally.
I'm a software guy. But I had enough brushes with electronics as a child to use it for hobbies. My first broken device was a speak and spell. I connected wires to random spots to make it "talk funny". My parents first astonished that I was destroying my toys, realized this and pushed me to the electronics section of Radio Shack. Lots of projects starting with the 555 timer IC. I made radios and timers, and connected my computers to things that moved. This microcontroller revolution really has made me wish I had these things growing up.
One important thing though is I had a friend who was at a similar level as myself for grades 5-7. Though he was literally a ham in grade school. We both learned programming around the same time and the back and forth made it seem so much easier than it really was. And we were so much better at recognizing what was going to be useful, popular, powerful when we worked together as compared to working under instruction.
I lost him to a move. And I needed that so much in higher grades. One good industry-centered mentor would have given me so much. But I guess self-motivation is the skill that got me where I am; and I create incredible things on a daily basis. So there's that I guess.
Also quite a lot of fun is Electronoobs - not quite Ben Eater's rigorous approach or info density, but for sure a lot of enthusiastically shared "doing" and inspiration at the beginner level (and analog projects Ben Eater doesn't cover, as he tends to focus on digital logic and signal transmission topics).
He has a very interesting series of videos on repairing a wide variety of things he buys from scrapyards in Germany.
Why are there small value capacitors near all the power inputs on the various chips? Why do many of the inputs and outputs have the similar value resistors right near them? What are these diodes doing, going from ground towards the power output?
Curiosity leads to understanding, leads to pattern recognition, leads to greater understanding, and so on.. Now I'm building my own circuits from scratch and routing custom boards in KiCad and it just seems like second nature almost. There are still SO many mysteries and so much more to learn, but once you begin to understand the basics that knowledge allows the next step and so on.. I think all you really need to get started is a soldering iron (get one with adjustable temperature, I love my Hakko but started with a cheaper one), decent multimeter (The UT61E is really great and cheap) and some leaded solder (just don't eat it).. There are cheap digital handh-held scopes these days too and you don't HAVE to have a scope right away.
Components are cheap (check tayda electronics) and it's endlessly fun, especially for those with a side gig working on the computer all the time. I find having something 'real' I can tinker with a great hobby and don't see myself ever stopping at this point.
I like the ‘do’ advice.
> If I had one word of wisdom on learning it’s ‘do’. Don’t wait, ok? You’ll be waiting on Godot.
I'm the opposite of just "do", I research so much ahead of the "do" and the gap gets so big that it just feels incredibly hard to backtrack to where I last actually "did". It's like I eat dessert before the main course and just like my grandma said, I won't eat the main course because I ate the dessert.
And yet. When I was young and poor, a friend lent me his 4-track recorder for just one weekend and I knocked out 5 or 6 songs to make for one side of a cassette tape.
I think being resource-poor made me creative-rich. Now, not so much.
It turns out that Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives..