Hi All,
First of all, Hi! I’m Tom, 26 years old from the UK, Working in IT Management, Software Dev, and System Administration within our wonderful National Health Service!
Been on and off with electronics for 5-6 years, but finally built my lab and am fully concentrating on it for the last 5-6 months!
I am here because I am in a bit of a rut(
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+a+rut) with my electronics! I seem to only get my head around the digital side of electronics!
(maybe because of my IT background?)
For example, recently, I watched a project that came out of the 555 timer contest, the
“Le Dominoux“ -
http://youtu.be/PQOjkuJtBfMPretty much using a photodiode/LDR to detect the light output of an LED and reproduce it again, put them in a row and you have a kind of light chain/pass it on. Type of thing! Perfect, quite a simple 555 project! Take a LDR “state” if it reaches the fresh hold it fires the LED. Nice!
Couldn't get my head around 555 timers!!!
Ended up producing it with an attiny85! (What isn’t too bad because I’m going to do as Mike (mikeselectricalstuff) did and create a kind of IR comm’s link to control RGB legs!
Now let me explain, I REALLLLLLLY want to understand analogue electronics more! I want to watch Dave’s videos and understand his tear-downs of analogue equipment, or even the analogue side of a digital system..
Don’t get me wrong, I have a “mild” grasp of some analogue things, smoothing CAPS on IC’s, so a rough (not as advanced as Dave) understanding of a capacitor.
Resistors I have a basic grasp of also (although why I use a 1k pull up resistor instead of a 10k I don’t really know…)
However, op-amps, impedance, etc… Confuse me!!….
And it’s not from lack of trying to learn either, I've watched 4-5 videos of 555/op-amps timers without any better understanding; the video on impedance blew my mind!
Has anyone else encountered this problem?? Does anyone have any advice on where I should look at learning this stuff from? Do I need a book(be warned, I’m personally more of a video person, books I find hard to remain focused on!) surly YouTube with its millions of videos has refined the art of producing instructional videos enough to teach me 555 timers?!
HELP!
I really don’t want to have to keep through a MCU into everything (there are even areas of electronics where an MCU wouldn't work)
TOM!