| Electronics > Beginners |
| Learning Paths |
| (1/5) > >> |
| icharters:
I'm trying to figure out what the smartest path is to take regarding learning EE as a hobbyist right now. I bought a ton of stuff of Aliexpress like resistors, caps, transistors, etc. Probably $200 of assorted EE frequently used items just to get me started with some essentials. I also bought a Siglent SDS 1140X-E scope, have a couple of bench power supplies, hot air, iron, etc. I own Art of Electronics and was thinking about buying LtAoE, but getting the parts seems to be a bit of a screw around. Some things are obsolete, a lot of the parts can be substituted for cheaper stuff apparently, etc. Digikey doesn't seem to even sell it anymore - it has been on backorder forever. Should I just bite the bullet and buy all the LtAoE stuff and find the substitutes for the things no longer sold? I saw that there are some MIT courses available as well, I was considering perhaps going that route and just starting from the beginning and working my way through the courses. Any advice? |
| Siwastaja:
Take things apart. Interested in power supplies, for example? Open broken power supplies, trace how the components are connected, try to see what topology they used. Appnotes are quite good (sometimes they are crap, but academic books can be crap as well, so...). Hit any practical question, just Google it and read the appnotes from component manufacturers, discussing it using practical terms. Finally, use a quick iterative design-build-debug-design-build-debug cycle. "Debug" in this case means learning, and includes reading on the subject. The field is so vast that without this process, you don't know where to start, and may be tricked into spending a lot of time in some completely theoretical part which ends up never paying back in practical knowledge. But if you let the practical circuits drive your theoretical learning process, it works out. You did the right thing with basic components, scope, power supplies, hot air and iron. This is exactly the basic set you need. A good stereo microscope would be the next one, but it will blow your budget, comparable investment to the oscilloscope. (The fact is, modern extra-miniatyrized SMD IC's offer very handy features, for good prices. If you avoid them because you can't solder them, this limits your ability to do and learn things by quite lot. With hot air, soldering iron, and a good stereo microscope you can use almost any part on the market! You can do dead-bug prototypes with small QFN's, BGAs, and so on in mere hours.) Get some unetched bare copper clad PCB material. It allows you to "deadbug" or "airwire" circuits on a top of a good ground plane. Very effective in testing out ideas. I started getting into power supply design by driving a random MOSFET lying around, soldered to a piece of copper clad, driven from a function generator, connected to a transformer I wound using totally random pieces of ferrite and magnet wire. These projects proved successful proofs-of-concepts in mere hours, very rewarding. Such experiments are a vital part in the iterative learning cycle: read-experiment-read-experiment. If you try to do it with books and courses only, you never properly succeed, and it's slow anyway. If you only experiment, you can develop the whole theory you need, but it will take decades. But combine the two in an iterative process, and you learn quickly (and it's fun as well). |
| garethw:
Just as Siwastaja wrote but in addition I would say the most useful thing I have found is to have a goal. There is so much stuff to learn about that it can seem daunting. So some previous projects of mine have been a temperature/humidity display for my disabled son’s bedroom. This required me to learn how to program and code a PIC24, I2C interface with a Bosch BME680 sensor, layout a through-hole pcb with Eagle and prepare the Gerber files for manufacturing. Recently I’ve started exploring surface mount components and have just received my first SMD pcbs, again, designed on Eagle. This was a breakout board for an STM32 mcu. Clearly what you learn about has to interest you to keep you engaged. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
| MosherIV:
I found doing projects where I want something slightly different from examples I have reserached has helped me to to learn and understand how the circuits work. I started by being interrested in linear audio electronics. Simple op-amp mixer circuits, guitar effects peddles. Bench (linear) psu, lots to learn: emitter follower for the output stage, instrument op-amp for current limit The point is, to design or modify a circuit you trully have to understand how the circuit works. |
| techman-001:
--- Quote from: icharters on June 22, 2019, 05:23:08 am ---I'm trying to figure out what the smartest path is to take regarding learning EE as a hobbyist right now. I bought a ton of stuff of Aliexpress like resistors, caps, transistors, etc. Probably $200 of assorted EE frequently used items just to get me started with some essentials. I also bought a Siglent SDS 1140X-E scope, have a couple of bench power supplies, hot air, iron, etc. I own Art of Electronics and was thinking about buying LtAoE, but getting the parts seems to be a bit of a screw around. Some things are obsolete, a lot of the parts can be substituted for cheaper stuff apparently, etc. Digikey doesn't seem to even sell it anymore - it has been on backorder forever. Should I just bite the bullet and buy all the LtAoE stuff and find the substitutes for the things no longer sold? I saw that there are some MIT courses available as well, I was considering perhaps going that route and just starting from the beginning and working my way through the courses. Any advice? --- End quote --- As mention/hinted here I think the best and only way is to start building gear. The electronics world is far too big for you to become a expert in everything, so you must specialise in a particular area, one that interests you is best, one that pays dollars is also good. You have the fields of rf, audio, instrumentation, automotive, embedded, power, IoT, medical and many more to choose from, so pick one and start building the things that interest you. For instance a bench power supply is a worthy and vital project which should supply plenty of learning and building challenges for you. My first project was a bench power supply built by following the plans in the 1954 ARRL handbook. A wood chassis, 400 volts dc via a type 80 valve rectifier, brass terminals, everything made from scraps as I had no money and electronic parts were scarce when I was 12 years old. That one project taught me a lot and lasted well into the "transistor era". Once you start building, you will soon know what parts and equipment you need and making do with what you can get, instead of what you want, so as to achieve your aim, is to me the art of engineering. Expect it to take decades, even a whole lifetime! |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |