For someone wanting to get into "making",is there a good set of starter resources like this?
Software I'm comfortable with, but I'm not really familiar with all of the physical components or how to put them together, when you might use each, etc...
Software I'm comfortable with, but I'm not really familiar with all of the physical components or how to put them together, when you might use each, etc...
I find the best way to get started is to have an idea of something you want to make, then just buy what is needed for that.
Pick a microcontroller first. Arduino is popular and well documented. Raspberry Pi is overkill in my opinion. I find I like the NodeMCU. The mini D1 specifically as it as an ESP8266 for Wi-Fi support. If you need Bluetooth or whatever look for the ones you need. And use the Arduino IDE to program and code it. From there, most motors need a motor drive and there’s a million of those and it’s typically a separate board (breakout board). You want to stock up on breadboarding supplies.
Openbuilds.com store is great if you have the need and budget for this type of items. You can get anything to build most any type of contraption and generally know it’s going to fit together if you plan correctly.
YouTube is your best resource. I like reading text when it comes to software but reading electrical diagrams is hard for me and it’s so much easier if I can watch someone else. They often tell you the little gotchas too.
Amazon is good for almost everything else. If you’re like me you’ll end up placing 50 orders in the first 2 months. The hardest part is no retail store, even hobby shops, stock these types of items.
I will say I don’t find kits particularly helpful. They can be fun, but at the end of it you’ve just followed the directions and didn’t really learn anything. It’s like putting an ikea dresser together, if you’re trying to learn how to build furniture it’s not very helpful.
Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc have some good stuff to get you off the ground and building projects almost right away. I think they're great "taster" in how circuits work and what some of the components are for.
Khan Academy has a course for EE, I haven't used it but I've used the site for other stuff like brushing up of my math.
Manufacturers actually make some really nice training materials, if you like analogue stuff, TI's Precision Labs series is a great resource for that. Analog Devices has an intro to electronics wiki series too. https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/text/...
For a deeper look, an undergraduate electronics textbook will hold your hand from the very basics through to more advanced concepts. You can ignore some of the more advanced stuff like AC analysis and non-linear components for the most part (Unless they interest you!)
I learned from this book (https://www.pearson.com/en-gb/subject-catalog/p/electronics-...) and found it quite approachable in how it laid out the basics before contextualising them as systems.
Theres also the famous Art of Electronics which is a good book but personally feels a bit dated (even with the new edition) and really analogue heavy. A good reference manual though.
I don't think anyone will really have a problem wiring up an H-bridge or whatever to run a motor.
I'm personally wondering how to use the physical properties of a motor to like, move Magic The Gathering cards around, or other real world tasks.
It very quickly becomes a mechanical levers / pullies / motion kinda problem, rather than electrical. And I have no idea how to study mechanical engineering.
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Like: how does a damn printer pick up just one piece of paper? Yeah yeah, there is a motor involved, but it's not the hard or interesting part.
There has to be little rotating mechanical fingers, the shape of the basin, the winding path the paper takes internally. Who designed that? How do I study that stuff?
Though printers use rubber rollers on the top sheet in the pile so the friction between the rollers and sheet is greater than the friction between sheets and therefore only the top sheet is fed by the rollers.
Ah, the task of Singulation! The answer is "with a lot of difficulty" :-)
I used to work for a large corp whose specialty is building high-speed paper handling machines for offices and industry. It is a far harder task than it seems on the surface.
I would use a suction gripper on a 2-axis CNC platform.
> How do I study that stuff?
Take a printer apart to see how it works. The pros do it, too.