Help in education in electronics

[dsaint]

Hi to all, I wish to continue learning about electronics but the usual basic electronics books i have consumed , and i'm finding them boring, I took some courses but now i wish to venture into the intermediate to advanced - any help would be appreciated

NB: My profession is in the media industry and IT, my studies concentrated into those sectors that's why I am not after the usual engineering degrees paths, i'm more into self learn pace and to be able to design something of myown

 

[FoxyRick]

What areas of electronics interest you? Radio communications, microcontrollers, audio...

I'm a electronics hobbyist, have been for a long time. I've never worked in the field properly, just a little in relation to being an IT guy who knows how to solder very small parts!

I find electronics interesting when I'm doing it. Building something, modifying a circuit to to my requirements or designing something from scratch. Reading theory is boring unless it has a specific purpose for me. It sounds to me like you need to get building stuff. That's when the real learning starts.

So, what are your interests?

 

[Chipmunk]

Here is a list of some books and some free material:

http://www.wisewarthog.com/electronics/recommendations-practical-analog-electronics-books.html

 

[ducvilla]

Hi dsaint,

I have already learned 6.002x Circuits and Electronics online course offered by MIT. Here is the link:

**broken link removed**

I think this course is pretty nice to motivate your learning process.

Hope this help!

 

[BabaYaga]

Mit's course is definitely worth watching,
but if you want to really be able to build circuits of your own, then start doing right away,
subscribe to EFY magazine, you will have an issue every month with some small circuits, and detailed explanation of those circuits, if you think that u need to get theory first, believe me the best way to get around in electronics is either start building your circuits or at least start simulating them, you will get better day by day on you way through.

Free Simulation Softwares

**broken link removed**
LTSPICE

I would suggest the best approach for analog circuits would be to simulate your analog circuit and if the outputs are satisfactory build the hardware.

Just to make things interesting, start off with building an amplifier.

For digital Circuits its always easy to build digital circuits around some processing element like a microcontroller, this will definitely be interesting to you as some of our cool gadgets are built using these elements, in fact you might even build your own.

 

[FoxyRick]

A big part of my own area of interest is designing test equipment.

As a young child, I was interested in electronics (ever since I stuck a door key into the live pin of a mains socket 8-O ) but never had the money for test equipment. I was home schooled and my parents had no money to buy stuff like that. The best thing I got was a Tandy (Radio Shack) projects kit - the type with a cardboard box full of components connected to springs, and a bunch of wires.

So, I had to make do (necessity: the mother of invention) with what I could piece together from salvaged gear. Literally from the local rubbish dump quite often. I always wanted to find out what was happening in circuits and most of what I ended up making was stuff to test other stuff.

So, I became a little obsessed with making test gear. I'm also quite obsessed with accuracy and precision.

Sometimes, I'll actually make something practical or just fun. A 300W subwoofer amplifier, garden control centre (pond pumps and heaters, lights, greenhouse watering, etc), a Christmas-tree LED lights sequencer (before they became common), a remote-controlled power distribution system for my server/network rack in the loft, or a multi-channel timer for the kitchen. But still, my biggest passion is test gear.

At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to actually build a dual DDS signal/sweep generator that I've designed. Home made four-layer boards are not really on (I can do three, provided the middle is just a ground plane) so I'm going to break the circuit down into modules right now that I can build onto a back plane.

The electronics magazines are a good place to start for building stuff. I have often used their designs as a spring-board for my own. Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) is, in my opinion, the best for semi-beginners. It has a good mixture of easy and advanced stuff, and they tend to describe things well. Elektor is more advanced but often uses hard to find or expensive components (I'm biased against them though - I really dislike Elektor's business methods and owners, having once been a loyal subscriber).

So, as I said in my first post - it comes down to what sort of things one finds interesting. It could be electronics for its own sake of course, then anything fits really.

 

[Chipmunk]

....

I find electronics interesting when I'm doing it. Building something, modifying a circuit to to my requirements or designing something from scratch. Reading theory is boring unless it has a specific purpose for me. It sounds to me like you need to get building stuff. That's when the real learning starts.

...

I think this is good advice. When I posted the link to books in #3 I had not really considered that dsaint said he found the usual books boring.

Maybe start with an Arduino ? Most people say its great fun playing with it. Easy to learn, not too expensive and very versatile.

 

[pavans2510]

Hi,
just buy and arduino board. There are millions of tutorials available on net. You can check the link below which has a decently good number of tutorials. Start playing around with arduino.

https://www.youtube.com/course?list=ECA567CE235D39FA84