Where to Begin? + Projects

[RichardX13]

Hi Folks,

I am 22 years old.

I have only just started on my path to Electronic Engineering as a hobby, I work in IT Business Solutions, but I am so intrigued with what can be done with the physical hardware.

I bought a small simple alarm clock kit the other day and made it.

I was wondering if I could get your advice people, I would really like to know where to start, I really need to begin somewhere but I am starting from the very beginning I know not where to go, like a lost sheep if you will.

I was looking at this kit here:
http://www.makershed.com/Getting_Started_with_Arduino_Kit_V3_0_p/msgsa.htm

Do you think it would be a good place to start, I really would be appreciative for your direction here.

Thanks in advanced

Regards
Richard

[digsys]

You could get all kinds of advice on - learning the basics, taking courses etc etc but everyone is different. Some will get bored, some
to eager to start and others just won't "get it". Given that you've already started the ball rolling, there absolutely NO HARM in continuing
the path you suggest. Most start by building stuff the like right from the start and learning as they go. Heck, even oldies are still
learning, this game is changing ALL the time. I'd suggest you scour youtube, ee-sites, forums etc etc to see what people are up to,
and pick stuff you identify with. Starting with practical / useful stuff (even if it's WAY over your head now) is definitely worthwhile.
You'll may notice we have at least 2 "newbies" here a lot that are incessantly using this forum to learn. It does get a bit tiring,
but that's the method they've chosen. Most members are pretty tolerant  :-)
What fields are of interest to you?

[Stonent]

If you're wanting basic electronics in an interesting and easy to read way, take a look at Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims III.



Some good youtube channels to watch are of course EEVblog, anything by Collin Cunningham, Mikeselectricstuff, mjlorton, and definitely Afrotechmods (very good on electrical theory and why stuff is the way it is

If you're interested in Arduino, take a look at
Sciguy14 (for getting started with Arduino and programming)
HumanHardDrive
ChickenParmi

[DenzilPenberthy]

Yes! I had that book when I was a kid. Wow, that takes me back!

[RichardX13]

Thank you Digsys and Stonent for your replies, it is much appreciated.
I do not want to be a burden in the forums by using them to learn as such, I do like to use them to help point me in the right direction and to lend a hand to people where I can.

I will check out your references Stonent, cheers

Digsys, your dead right, people will always be learning in this feild. The areas I am interested in at the moment, is getting a firm grasp on the basics of electronics (conceptual) and then I think I would like to branch off into arduino, when I have a firm foundation of the basics.

Regards
Richard

[Stonent]

Yes! I had that book when I was a kid. Wow, that takes me back!

Complete with lightning bolt through head transistor and sad melty diode.

[jpb]

As you work in IT it might be fun to build a few basic digital circuits from transistors. One of the first circuits I built at an electronics club at school was a flip-flop with two leds to indicate which state was high. If you did this on a breadboard it would allow a lot of experimentation. You could go on to using TTL logic chips (or CMOS) with standard gates to build up more complex logic. I think it is better to get an understanding of the building blocks in a practical way rather than build up kits where the core component is probably an integrated circuit that does all the work and is closed.

I don't know what equipment you have, if you don't want to spend money on an oscilloscope yet then you need to think of how you will detect what comes out of your circuits and similarly what you might use as input. For analogue you could stick to audio and use headphones or a small speaker for output and perhaps a pc sound card for input and then build one or two transistor amplifiers. For digital you can use LEDs or cheap numeric displays for output and dip switches for inputs.

Much of modern electronics involves highly complex integrated circuits, these allow very sophisticated circuits to be "built" with few external components. The down side of this is some of the fun has gone as well.

[RichardX13]

Thanks JPB for you reply, what your saying makes sense and would be a great way to build the fundemental knowledge resevoir .

Where abouts would be the best place to source these parts, I live in Ireland so its difficult to find a good place so I generally need to buy online.

Regards

[vk3yedotcom]

I was wondering if I could get your advice people, I would really like to know where to start, I really need to begin somewhere but I am starting from the very beginning I know not where to go, like a lost sheep if you will.

Why not build some circuits from scratch?

Just 1 or 2 transistors to start with or using a couple of chips. 

Being able to build something straight from a circuit diagram is a core skill

Stuff out of the Forrest Mims books or the Talking Electronics website would be ideal.

A lot of people use solderless breadboard for prototyping and this is good if you want to easily change component values.

Personally though I know from the start that it will be a permanent project so I generally solder stuff even if prototyping.  But it's a good idea to use a construction method (eg matrix board or blank PC board) that can be changed later on (rather than an etched PC board).

The RF oscillator circuit below is one of my favourites. 



Even if you're not into radio it's a good basic building block for things like generating an RF waveform for an oscilloscope, a rough frequency standard (eg with a 10 MHz crystal) or an inductance meter.

The latter requires adding a tuned circuit to the output of the oscillator plus a detector (a transistor + LED) to indicate maximum RF.  When the variable capacitor in the tuned circuit is set to a particular position (that resonates with the crystal oscillator's frequency) RF passes through and the LED lights.  As different inductors need a different capacitor value to resonate on frequency the knob of the tuning capacitor can be calibrated with various inductance values.

If you want several ranges you use a different frequency crystal.  3.58 & 10 MHz are common frequencies and are ideal as they give ranges that are 10 times apart.  I'll leave it for you to work out why.

[cthree]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you, at 22, go back to school and become an engineer. I realize that isn't for everyone with all the math and stuff and maybe you don't have the grades, I don't know but if its an option you might want to consider it.

[vk3yedotcom]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you, at 22, go back to school and become an engineer. I realize that isn't for everyone with all the math and stuff and maybe you don't have the grades, I don't know but if its an option you might want to consider it.

For a career - definitely.  For a hobby (which I think the OP wanted) maybe not.

The practical 'bag of bits / build stuff' approach sounds more fun.

Having said that there may be tech school or evening classes convenient to someone working.   

Or a radio club may have evening courses.  These shouldn't be too expensive and teach the basics of electronics.  No need to sit the amateur radio exam at the end, though it's not a bad idea to do so (there's a lot of software defined/computer/radio interfacing these days). 

Also you'll likely meet people only too happy to offload spare parts (or tell you where the junk sales are), meaning you'll never be short of free/cheap parts.

[RichardX13]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you, at 22, go back to school and become an engineer. I realize that isn't for everyone with all the math and stuff and maybe you don't have the grades, I don't know but if its an option you might want to consider it.

I have a BSc in Business Computing already, and have no intention of going back to college as I have chosen my career path already.
I appreciate your reponse, but this is a hobbie that I would like to become proficient in.

[jpb]

Thanks JPB for you reply, what your saying makes sense and would be a great way to build the fundemental knowledge resevoir .

Where abouts would be the best place to source these parts, I live in Ireland so its difficult to find a good place so I generally need to buy online.

Regards

Transistors, leds and so on are generally pretty cheap so shopping around is not so important.

I'm in the UK where, like Ireland I suspect, there isn't a lot of options. I use Farnel, Conrad and Maplins. With Farnel I think there is a minimum order for free postage and the prices are not the cheapest but they have more choice and delivery is quick. Conrad have a good range and are a bit cheaper but prices are variable and seem to suddenly jump, also their delivery is pretty slow. Maplin has the least choice and can be expensive for things like cables - but in the UK they do have shops so can be handy (especially if you want to buy something that can't be posted easily like IPA). Other options are RS - I used to use them when I worked in electronics but haven't as a hobbyist - they probably have the greatest range but are expensive and you have to set up an account I think (mind you, you need to do that to get free next day delivery with Farnel but it was fairly painless). Another UK source is Rapid who seem to have good prices for some things but I've never used them. Mouser also now seem to sell direct to the UK but are pricey from what I've looked at and sell more equipment than parts.

Perhaps the best place to go to start with for a small breadboard and bits and pieces is Conrad, but be careful I've found it easy to add lots of little things to my cart and suddenly find that I've spent over £100 just on cables and a couple of hand tools!

They do some cheap sets such as LED and resistor set for £3:

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/182245/Conrad-37-Piece-Coloured-LED-And-Resistor-Assortment-Set/?ref=detview1&rt=detview1&rb=1

a breadboard for around £7:

http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/product/526835/830-Point-Solderless-Breadboard-EIC-102-165-x-55-x-85-mm

and logic ics, transistors etc are sold separately but are mostly only a few pence or tens of pence.

[MikeK]

The best thing you can do is just to build stuff.  Get some components and build simple circuits.  Talking Electronics has tons.

[richcj10]

I like coding, but working on pure hardware is where it is at! 

[vk3yedotcom]

Now we've moved onto the topic of bits to start off with, it's worth mentioning that some suppliers (eg Jaycar) have assorted bulk packs of components eg resistors and capacitors.

My experience is these are hit or miss. You may get lots of odd values in a pack that are seldom used (eg 680pF) and few if any that are very common (eg 100n).  Ditto with electrolytic capacitor and resistor packs.   So you use few and have spares left over. Though it does teach you how to cobble values from series and parallel parts!

You are better off buying quantities of 10 to 100 of the most common parts and lesser quantities of in between values.   Eg 10nF, 100nF and 10uF are extremely common for decoupling and you could hardly have too many.  Similarly with resistors there are common values like 100, 220, 470, 1k, 2.2k, 4.7k, 10k, 22k, 47k, 100k etc that you won't go wrong with.

[MacAttak]

The best thing you can do is just to build stuff.  Get some components and build simple circuits.

This is what I was going to say. Just start making stuff. Don't expect it all to work the first time. Most won't for a while. But just spend the time learning why and doing it better the next time.

Eventually you will figure out where your real interests lay.

The Arduino kit is a good starting point for someone coming from a software background. You can always get closer to the metal later if you want, or you can go further from the metal too. Or you can do both - the cool thing is that as a hobby, you get to make the rules!

Just don't tinker with anything that plugs into a wall socket until you know you are ready for it

[RichardX13]

Thanks Guys, Im really appreciating all your help and thoughts here, they are really helpful and its nice to be able to get different opinions and viewpoints