Ask HN: Resources for starting with digital circuits, cubieboard, gpio, etc.

Hi HN, I wanted to ask (seeing the news about “The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition” on the front page today) which resources electrical engineers and similar could recommend.

I'm looking to start doing GPIO stuff in C on Linux using a CubieBoard, but failing to get started with any practical electronics learning.

I have a handful of books, but they all dwell unendingly on linear circuits, the number of electrons per second per number of molecules of conductive wire, etc, and generally delve into the physics of electronics at a fundamental level (I even tried the Georgia Tech Coursera course on Linear Circuits). These resources bury me quickly as I have no formal background in Math (and my high school, in the UK never covered calculus).

I'm looking essentially to build trivial circuits using the GPIO on Linux SOCs, maybe some battery management (ok, then I need to learn about how electricity really works), and generally interface with accelerometers, GSP and GPS cards, etc over either SPI or I²C.

I'm not afraid of learning, and starting in a few days I'll have 40 minutes a day to kill on the train, so I'm looking forward to sitting with a pencil and a notebook, and getting deeply stuck into some dense learning materials.