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Comment by nanna | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to learn about electronics in general - resistors, transistors, all those things that make up even just basic circuit boards which are all magic to me?

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When I was about 30 and wanted to scratch the same itch, I found an introductory electronics course being run at my local community college. From distant memory, it definitely covered off resistors, capacitors, coils, Ohm's Law, then worked its way to transistors and I think op amps. Somewhere along the way we got into the basics of creating logic gates, which also served to fill a void I had in my understanding of computers.

At a much younger age, I was interested in amateur radio. As luck would have it, I learned of a night school course being held at one of the local high schools that was meant to teach you everything you needed to know to get your license. The instructor (late 20s, if I had to guess) really knew his stuff. I think this gave me a far better grasp of the relevant electromagnetic and electronics theory and practice than I feel is made available through present-day amateur radio "memorize the answers and some context around them" teaching materials. My point is, if you want to stretch your understanding of electronics, it's possible a local ham might be another good option to consider.

Everybody will probably recommend a bunch of books or MOOCs with varying degrees of practicality but if you want to learn in the sense of building some sort of intuition, then just buy:

- A large breadboard

- A battery holder

- An online kit with an assortment of passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors)

- A cheap USB oscilloscope

Some of these kits even include things like FETs, opamps, 555 timers etc. Which really stretches what you can build.

Then just look online for circuits that you find interesting, build them and probe them (with the oscilloscope). The closer you get to building something you find useful the more engaging the experience will be.

If you want a bunch of ideas what to do with the venerable 555 timer, have a look here:

https://www.555-timer-circuits.com/

The Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) are a good high level overview that can help you learn which areas you want to explore further. Specifically to the questions you asked, module 1 will give you the overview on basic circuits.

[1] https://archive.org/details/neetsmodules_202003/

I'm sure someone will have a much better recommendation. Do you have an old physics book? Working a few or a lot of simple voltage divider problems, to just really nail down V=IR is helpful. a ton of digital stuff can be thought of as snapshots between two states. might give you some help reading schematics as well.

a pretty ham fisted analogy, imagine a full glass of water on the left, and an empty glass of water on the right. you pour the water from the full glass into the empty glass. There is a BOATLOAD of physics happening there. but all you really care about is Left glass full -> left glass empty. easy peasy.

if you're comfortable with https://nandgame.com you've pretty much got all you need to know how computers work. the last bit is pretty much, how do you use a transistor to make a nand gate? it blew my mind to find out it's just - https://mathcenter.oxford.emory.edu/site/cs170/nandFromTrans...

Stuff that's changing is tougher, like radios or whatever. digital is sort of steady -> chaos -> steady. analog you care a lot about all the little partial derivatives.

The ben eater videos maybe? https://eater.net/8bit/ He'll walk you through a lot of basic electronics in a pretty casual way.

I wish I could give you something more "sure fire way to learn electronics" but my knowledge is pretty haphazard. that stuff helped me.

I was going to recommend Ben Eater's videos and kits as well. I'm not-so-patiently waiting for my oldest kid to be ready to work through those with me.

I know it is targeted at kids, but I think Snap Circuits is pretty great. All the electronic components are attached using what are effectively clothing snaps. But they’re all real electronic components and you can make really interesting things. The books walk you through from very basics to more advanced and help you learn the basics. I learned from it playing with it with my son!

Back in the 80s, Forrest Mims was 'the guy' for hobby electronics books. This new edition of his basic book looks useful:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-M...

Take one of those kits for kids, play and experiment. Build your intuition. Then you can go with the theory little by little as needed. I would recommend against going theory first as it is often overwhelming and discouraging.

I did a number of basic electronics tutorials and kits without much of it sticking. Mainly because there wasn't anything very interesting on the other side of the project. What got me through the basics into understanding was, http://www.ic0nstrux.com/design-your-own-video-game-console-... in which you learn how to build simple video game consoles.

Now, resistors, capacitors, transistors and everything else had functions that solved problems I was having.

There used to be these massive electronic experiment kits you'd get from like Radioshack during the early 2000s. Like this: [0][1]. I haven't found any all-in-ones with the same depth sold today but maybe someone else has found something.

[0] https://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/BestBuy_US/images/produc... [1] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oNgAAOSwiZ9k1T1y/s-l1600.jpg

I think Elenco still sells that kind of thing.

You can make your own project, with arduino and a bunch of components. There should be a project that will require use of different techniques, like using a transistor instead of a relay, using resistors to not burn up components, using a voltage divider circuit (requires 2 resistors), and other techniques.

I am a beginner, so it would be hard to suggest what project to implement. I mainly used resistors to not burn the arduino I/O pins, and voltage divider circuit to step down the voltage for components with voltage different than 5v.

That book Code, by Charles Petzold, is good. It starts talking about the development of switches and relays, then logic gates, then how to add and subtract with logic gates, build memory from logic gates, then about the first integrated circuits from the mid-1970's, the 8080, and I don't remember what else.

It's more computing focused that electronics focused, but it's a great entrypoint for learning about how logic gates translate into an algorithmic unit and memory.

the sparkfun videos give a pretty good intro to the kinds of parts they sell.

Also, if you're only interested in small hobbyist circuits, it will simplify things if you only think about DC. AC is a rabbit hole of electrical engineering and physics complexity that you may not be interested in quite yet.

This book is great and got me through my electronics degree:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Circuits-Devices-Systems-Electrical...

The books Make: Electronics and Learning The Art of Electronics are pretty good hands on resources.

I’ve wondered this too. Far too many resources rehash the fundamentals that I learned in middle school/high school/college.

I know things can get dangerous with high voltage, but it’d be fun have a “playbook” for low voltage applications.

Here's a nice list of resources:

https://github.com/kitspace/awesome-electronics

Have you tried using a breadboard? That'll give a hands-on experience. Try the Khan Academy Electronics course if you want to know the science behind the stuff.

I would recommend getting an Arduino kit with a breadboard.

Arduino kits are a good first step, but they need to be followed by more complex projects.

Some years ago I really enjoyed Sparkfun’s Inventor’s Kit, which is Arduino-based and has a good starting supply of components and some fun projects.

I don't understand questions like this. You have the entire internet to search, powerful search tools, libraries, bookstores, etc. You're asking about the most basic building blocks of a subject (akin to asking "How can I learn about arithmetic?"), of which there must be an effectively infinite amount of material aimed at beginners.

The best answer to your question is "Do anything. Anything at all".

Learn maths first, right up to calculus. It'll hurt a lot less and improve your life anyway. You can wire up circuits without knowing much but without maths it's difficult to build anything more than trivial stuff on your own with an objective set out to "I want to solve problem X". Until then you're an assembly worker wobbling on the shoulders of various dubiously designed assemblies put out by people who shouldn't be allowed to do it (Forest Mimms is an example).

Consider a transistor is a voltage-controlled current source (TRANSfer resISTOR) as a model and the head scratching starts.

Why is just as important as doing it.

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