Ask HN: How to self-learn electronics? - sidyapa
======
coreyp_1
YouTube University. Seriously: watch 30, 50, or a 100 videos. You will develop
an intuition for what is happening. _THEN_ read books (some good ones already
suggested in other comments) and you will learn the concrete theory.

I want to emphasize the importance of developing the intuition behind the
theory. It's vital, and the lack of intuition is why so many people find a
complex, theoretical topic difficult. If they had spent time developing their
intuition, then they would not struggle so much to understand and remember the
theory.

Last, you have to build stuff (this also helps with the intuition). Decide
that you are going to spend $300, and start buying parts. Don't go to Radio
Shack, because you will (in my experience) pay an order of magnitude more for
the same part. Shop on Aliexpress (or sometimes Amazon or Ebay). Who cares if
you have to wait 6 weeks for the part to come in... do it today and it will be
here about the time that you are ready for it. Never buy just one of anything.
You can usually buy 10 or 20 for the same price that you can buy 2 or 3.

Most importantly: DO SOMETHING! Anything. Watch videos. Buy parts. Put things
together, and then try to figure out why it's not working! Whatever you do,
just don't stop. You will learn if you keep at it. At this stage for you,
though, the most important thing is that you actually start.

~~~
coreyp_1
Good video series (in no particular order):

Electricity videos. Audio can be annoying, but the visualizations (although
corny at times) are outstanding for developing intuition.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHVe8U5PhU&list=PLkyBCj4JhH...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHVe8U5PhU&list=PLkyBCj4JhHt9dIWsO7GaTU149BkIFbo5y)

GreatScott! - building projects

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mIxFTvXkWQVEHPsEdflzQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mIxFTvXkWQVEHPsEdflzQ)

bigclivedotcom - does A LOT of teardowns, and you learn A LOT by seeing what
designers have done wrong.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA)

EEVblog - Dave talks (sometimes a bit long-winded, but I like him anyway)
about various electronics topics. His explanations are outstanding.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DjFE7Xf11URZqWBigcVOQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DjFE7Xf11URZqWBigcVOQ)

Afrotechmods - Both good for explanations as well as building stuff

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosnWgi3eorc1klEQ8pIgJQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosnWgi3eorc1klEQ8pIgJQ)

~~~
malthuswaswrong
Also AvE.

Not sure you learn a lot, but he's a knowledgeable guy having fun ripping shit
apart in his garage with an adorable Canadian accent.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil](https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil)

~~~
ninjakeyboard
We have accents up here??? Why did my mother never tell me this?!? I thought
you guys had accents!

------
kazinator
I self-learned enough electronics a few years ago to get to 16.5K karma on the
Electronics StackExchange.

I was motivated by doing some audio projects. Projects have real requirements,
and so they force you to iterate on the design until you hit all your
requirements: power supply logistics, signal purity, enclosure, ...

Get a good textbook like Horowitz _The Art of Electronics_.

Learn how to use a CAD-based circuit simulator program like LTSpice. Build the
circuits you read about in the simulator, and run them: apply signals, and
look at how the voltages behave at various nodes in the circuit, as a function
of time.

Read schematics.

Read schematics for equipment that you know. If you're into vintage audio,
that is not hard to come by.

Recently I was looking at the schematics for a "Furman PQ-3" parametric
equalizer (Google for it). I blinked twice and did a "double take" and then
immediately recognized that its filter bank consists of "state variable
filters":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_variable_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_variable_filter)

Bam! Didn't even know what that was some four, five years ago.

Here is one copy of the schem:
[https://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/so-much-gear-
so-...](https://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/so-much-gear-so-little-
time/564390d1465327647-furman-pq-3-greenface-schematic-needed-broken-help-
furman_pq3_small.jpg)

Check out the power supply: the output of the transformer goes to a dual-
voltage regulator. That feeds the chips. The unregulated voltage is also
tapped and that is used for an emitter-follower output-stage on the upper
left.

This is completely pointless. The op-amp IC's have such stages inside them
too; why do they get regulated power and this one doesn't? On a dual supply,
op-amp chips don't really need regulation.

If I built a clone of the device, I'd completely leave out this discrete
component output stage; it is pointless. You're not going to drive speakers
with this thing, but relatively high-impedance inputs (the next device in the
chain, possibly a power amp).

So you can see what I'm doing here; critically looking at (the electronic
aspect of) a complete product. Doing that requires some learning, but it also
produces learning bit by bit.

You ask questions: why is that stage here? Why did they include this
component? What is this transistor/resistor/diode doing here? Is there a
pattern to this, and where have I seen it before? Is it really the same
pattern and is it justified in this context? And so on.

~~~
tibbon
Every time i've tried to use some combination of a Spice program and something
like EagleCad I get really lost quickly. It's clearly software written for
people who already know what they are doing.

Do you have any good resources on learning such conceptually?

~~~
cheschire
I use CircuitLab, which is very helpful from a testing standpoint. As a coder,
one of the things that really stresses me about electronics engineering is how
untestable everything else, and CircuitLab gives me the ability to mock up
simple unit-test-like circuits and see what the expected values should be,
including when a power source fluctuates.

It costs a little, if that's a concern.

[https://circuitlab.com](https://circuitlab.com)

~~~
compumike
(CircuitLab dev here) Thanks for the link. I've also been writing an online
electronics textbook with simulations built in
[https://www.circuitlab.com/textbook/](https://www.circuitlab.com/textbook/)
which should be relevant.

~~~
cheschire
Post a new topic about it as you make updates man! People here would eat that
up.

------
paulgerhardt
Avoid first principles (to start with), instead focus on a domain you're
interested in and buy a DIY kit from a vendor in that domain to solve a niche
application. Repeat 3-10 times. Start dabbling in other domains. If you have a
question, youtube it.

The way a lot of people get into electronics, as a hobby, is wanting a piece
of hardware for a simple application, seeing existing solutions are very
expensive, and discovering a community of people building their own solutions.

The way a lot of people get out of electronics, as a hobby, is loosing
interest. Seeing something you built come to life is a great way to maintain
interest, getting stuck in theory and first principals may delay that
gratification long enough to loose interest. Later on it's fantastic for
building something new from scratch that no one has seen before (even more
gratifying.)

For every generation this is different so depending how old the person you're
asking you'll likely get a different 'stock answer' about how _they_ got into
it.

In the 50's it was radio equipment. In the 60' was home built hi-fi. In the
70's it was kit computers. In the 80's it was a lot of radio controlled
aircraft. In the 90's a lot of car tuning. In the 2000's it was modchips for
video game consoles. In the 2010's a lot of stuff with Arduinos for smarthome,
smart clothing, art projects. The details and exact time periods may vary a
bit but the general idea is you get something tailored to your needs better
and cheaper than buying off the shelf.

A good place to start is find a project someone else has done and written up,
recreate it, modify it, then publish your twist on it. Repeat. For instance,
here is a good starting point to add custom mood-lighting to your home:
[https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-
uberguide](https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide)

Keep a journal of things you have open questions about as you're going through
these projects on dropbox paper (for instance) and fill them in with knowledge
by asking on forums, stack exchanges, youtube, here and elsewhere.

------
kabdib
I really like the 3rd edition of _The Art of Electronics_. The text is a fun
read, and the student manual is a great extension of the main text, with a
bunch of practical insight and discussion that puts it beyond mere exercises.

Caveat: I'm a software guy. I burn myself when I solder. I make smoke come out
of components. I might not be the right person to listen to :-)

With the exception of an oscilloscope, you can put together a simple bench for
a few hundred dollars. I've had mixed luck stocking components (for instanced,
either my circuits are clueless crap, or the 10Mhz crystals I bought off of
eBay are just empty cans -- in any event, a circuit that should oscillate just
sits there). I found a used Tektronix scope and couldn't be happier, it really
makes a difference when you're debugging something.

~~~
Humdeee
> I burn myself when I solder.

There are excellent stock images out there to make your soldering experience
even more memorable:

[https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2016/03/stockphotowoman...](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2016/03/stockphotowoman-500.jpg)

[https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/man-soldering-repairing-
prin...](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/man-soldering-repairing-printed-
circuit-board-forced-air-iron-44099087.jpg)

~~~
jacquesm
Ouch. You have to hope they weren't plugged in. If they were I don't want to
play poker against either of those models.

------
jeffreyrogers
There are a few recommendations for _The Art of Electronics_. It's a great
reference, but probably hard to approach as a beginner unless you're very
motivated and comfortable being confused at points.

Electronics covers a huge field and many people specialize in just one area.
Here are some of the main areas that are accessible to hobbyists (roughly in
increasing order of difficulty):

\- Digital electronics. Using microcontrollers to do things in the physical
environment.

\- Audio electronics. This is a fun area of electronics because the quality of
what you build is directly reflected in how it sounds.

\- Amateur radio electronics. Lets you talk to other people around the world.
Harder than basic audio circuits because you need to know about antennas and
radio operates at higher frequencies. Also requires passing an exam to get
licensed, but studying for the exam helps with learning some of the theory.

\- FPGAs. These are sexy, but not many applications that are that compelling
for a hobbyist unless you have something very specific in mind. Plus you have
to learn Verilog or another HDL and the way of thinking is very different than
normal programming (since you're effectively describing the hardware you want
rather than an algorithm).

My advice is to first figure out which field you're interested in, then find a
project to work on related to that field. Having something practical to refer
to makes understanding the theory (like what you'd learn in _The Art of
Electronics_ ) easier.

------
ChuckMcM
These days it is a lot easier to get a good grounding in electronics. I would
recommend you get a copy of _The Art of Electronics_ by Horowitz and Hill, and
ideally the teacher's manual (which has answers for many of the exercises).

Then get a simple "combo" tool (oscilloscope, signal generator, power supply,
digital multimeter) like the _OpenScope MZ_ [1] or the Espotek _Labrador_ [2].
Add a handful of components, a wireless breadboard and some jumpers and you've
got enough to do most of the labwork that the first few years of an
undergraduate EE program can do.

If you can find an old Maxitronic "n00 in 1 electronics projects" kit[3] they
give you a pretty solid platform for building different circuits that you
could analyze fairly completely with the USB attached lab instruments.

Depending on how it goes (if you're doing circuits from the all in one kit or
building them out of the Art of Electronics book) you can look at how things
interact and get a solid feel for things.

[1] [https://store.digilentinc.com/openscope-mz-open-source-
all-i...](https://store.digilentinc.com/openscope-mz-open-source-all-in-one-
instrumentation/)

[2]
[https://www.crowdsupply.com/espotek/labrador](https://www.crowdsupply.com/espotek/labrador)

[3] I picked up one of these when I was teaching electronics to kids
([https://www.elenco.com/product/300-in-1-electronic-
project-l...](https://www.elenco.com/product/300-in-1-electronic-project-
lab/)) and got one of the 500 in one versions at a garage sale.

------
meesterdude
FWIW, this is like saying "how do I self-learn programming?" \- in that there
is some common underlying theory, and then specific branches you travel down.
it helps to have a goal or project, so it anchors you down one of those roads.

I was schooled in electronics for 5 years - I have the fundamentals down
enough that I can reason about things. I can draw the schematic for a power
supply, but I couldn't tell you what sort of capacitive or inductive circuitry
specifications would be needed.

On the other hand, i'm building a MTG card sorting machine; and while i've
never controlled relays and stepper motors before with software, I know enough
that I can fill-in-the-blanks and what sort of issues to be mindful of.

So projects helps a lot - always be tinkering with something or somethings.
Watching youtube channels (like aVe) that are tinker-focused and do
experiments and explore electronics theory and applications - that can help a
lot too.

Also, checkout a hamfest if there's any near you coming up. You see all sorts
of crazy stuff there that can inspire all sorts of projects. Just don't go
with too much money or room in your car.

------
asteli
Build stuff. Modify things. Be stubborn when they don't work. Take things
apart and figure out why they _do_ work.

Here are some fun project ideas, drawn from stuff I actually did when I was
growing up/learning electronics. For reference, I almost completely skipped
college, and am a hardware engineer at a company you've heard of (I can't
believe it either).

-Lego car with electric motor scavenged from a floppy drive + 9V battery (grade school first project)

-High voltage generator (10kV?) using CRT flyback transformer and 2n3055 transistor circuit.

-Pocket audio amplifier using an OPAMP circuit. (search: mint tin amplifier)

-Countdown timer that can set off fireworks (don't end up on a list please).

-Worm robot using ATMEGA328, hobby servos, cardboard and masking tape.

-Disassembled hard drives and built a laser-scanning XY galvo system from the parts, fed by an amplified audio stereo pair (easy, fun and psychedelic)

~~~
cmonfeat
This was also my method, and the way that works best for me for learning
things in general (i.e. a new programming language, etc).

I would also add fix stuff to that list. You can learn a ton by fixing broken
electronics (or trying to) as it forces you to learn how they work.

------
pmorici
Speaking as someone who got a degree in CS / software and then taught myself
electronics after I got out of school. I relied heavily on Sparkfun.com to get
started. Adafruit.com is also a strong competitor these days. They each have a
ton of really great tutorial material for beginners. There are a lot of links
here that people are listing that are great content but not for beginners.
Along the same lines I would explicitly avoid reading any books on the topic
cover to cover. I bought the Art of Electronics because it is billed as a
bible for the field. It is, but I never use it.

As for tools and supplies. I would avoid buying very many things upfront*
instead buy them as you need them to complete a project. The only general
tools I would buy are a multi-meter (Fluke 115), bread board, jumper wires,
resistor kit [0], solder iron (Weller WE1010NA), and maybe oscilloscope /
digital logic analyzer combo like the Saleae Logic 8. You can get all these
things, name brand top quality tools, for about $800 total. I would stay away
from super cheap import type stuff to start. Some of it is fine but it isn't
worth the frustration for a beginner when it doesn't work. The more expensive
stuff will also grow with you as you get more advanced where as you will
quickly out grow the cheapo stuff.

As far as formal equations you need to know the only ones I ever really use
are V=IR (Ohm's law) and P=IV. If you paid attention in high school physics
you probably already know these.

*The problem with buying a lot of stuff up front is that you end up with a bunch of less expensive stuff that doesn't really grow with you or a pile of parts that are a pain to keep organized and are obsolete by time you get around to using them or that you can't find datasheets on.

[0]
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10969](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10969)

~~~
linuxlizard
Ditto. Also software wonk who landed in embedded. Followed a lot of the
tutorials on Adafruit and Sparkfun. Bought a lot of equipment and parts from
both. Have done a lot of fun little digital circuit problems. Halloween is
definitely more fun these days.

------
nerfhammer
It sort of depends on what you're interested in. Audio? Radio? Basic robotics?
Cool digital sensors? Something that tweets every time you open your
refrigerator door? Simplest answer buy an arduino intro kit with breadboard
and some pre-made jumper wires.

There's lots of advice geeking out about special high-quality soldering gear,
my advice is don't even worry about that yet. You're mostly going to be doing
breadboarding at first anyway. And besides a cheap iron is fine. (Everyone,
please stop glaring at me.)

Only other piece of equipment you might want is a cheap multimeter. You can
get these off amazon for $9. Sure it's not going to be accurate in some edge
case you can find but 97% of the time you only ever use the continuity tester
and after that the voltage tester, which are pretty hard to get wrong. No, you
will not need an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer or a special high quality
multimeter or anything like that.

Save the big purchases for when you know you really care about it. Front-
loading the cost of a bunch of special gear before you even know why you might
need it and may never is a hobby anti-pattern. You can just buy cheap beginner
kits.

There are some good youtube channel suggestions. One to add is Eugene K's
visualizations of the physics of voltages and electronic components:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkyBCj4JhHt8DFH9QysGW...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkyBCj4JhHt8DFH9QysGWm4h_DOxT93fb)

Otherwise, and arguably sort of ruining the fun, are circuit simulators. A
good one is falstad.com/circuit/ . It's much faster to draw up a simulation
than to put together a breadboard circuit, you can add instrumentation and
swap values ad nauseam, and you are less likely to make an inscrutable wiring
mistake that contributes to small declines in your mental health than you are
with a physical prototype. I use this for small analog circuits all the time
to double check myself.

Have fun.

~~~
sshanky
Agreed 100%. This is a great way to get into electronics while also getting
some coding experience. The Arduino intro kit has lots of great experiments
and corresponding lessons. It comes with a breadboard, special wires that
press right in, resistors, LEDs, switches, and more.

------
gamedna
[https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-
Fourt...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourth-
Scherz/dp/1259587541)

Going to throw another book in the ring. I generally recommend this book for
people getting started, because it teaches them how to solve specific problems
with real examples. The theoretical side of electronics can be quite daunting
because of the sheer number of concepts and understanding of mathematics that
are required.

Practical Electronics for Inventors covers a large number of important
circuit/electronic concepts but grounds them in real world application.
Perfect for getting your hands dirty while learning the most pragmatic aspects
of electronic theory.

~~~
jcrabtr
Seconded. While Art of Electronics is the classic text, this one is a bit more
accessible. It has less depth but more breadth, and is less intimidating
because of it.

------
kartD
One solution would to be to buy this: [https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-
Electronics-Hands-Course...](https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-Electronics-
Hands-Course/dp/0521177235)

And this [https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/edu/harvard-lab-
kit](https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/edu/harvard-lab-kit) (BOM's with all
the components needed by the book)

------
marshray
Here's a really nice entry-level soldering station that's not hundreds of
dollars: [https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D-23BY-Digital-
Soldering-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D-23BY-Digital-Soldering-
Station/dp/B00ANZRT4M/)

Also, get a Soldapullt.

This is a plenty good enough multimeter:
[https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-101-Multimeter-Equipment-
Indust...](https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-101-Multimeter-Equipment-
Industrial/dp/B00JT5RUUU/)

Most importantly: Your first oscilloscope should be analog.

You don't need fancy test equipment with a zillion features, but it's
especially important for a beginner to have well-made and properly-functioning
test equipment. You need to be able to trust the readings even if you do
something silly with it.

~~~
mulmen
I don't have a multimeter even though I desperately need one. I'm always
paralyzed by the choices. I just placed an order for this one and I think it
will serve me very well considering I mostly need it for mechanical work.
Thank you for making a recommendation.

I look forward to falling further down the rabbit hole.

You should consider setting up a referral link :)

~~~
jononor
Any multimeter is much better than none when debugging. 95% of needs are
covered with basic voltage,current,resistance/continouity. Go with something
cheap. Make sure both amp meters are fused though, you _will_ have it set to
amps and measure a low-impedance source in parallel at some point.

Also, you are likely to want two multimeters at some point: Having one wired
in somewhere and another for measuring around, or measuring current+voltage.
So having a cheap one when starting and then a more expensive when needed is
not a problem.

~~~
marshray
The problem is that cheap meters will give bad readings. For example, reading
AC on top of a DC offset voltage can produce incorrect results on a cheap
meter. Or it can just be broken.

An experienced tech can spot the errors and work around these limitations. But
for someone trying to learn electronics bad test equipment readings can
present a real obstacle.

~~~
jononor
If debugging anything but plain AC power from the wall, use an oscilloscope.
Even an expensive multimeter is a bad tool for such jobs.

------
keerthiko
Buy a bunch of cheap battery operated toys (<$10, no remote control), the
simpler the better. Take them apart. Try to put them back together, or put
just parts of it back together. Start increasing the complexity of the toys
you take apart.

People say basics are resistors, capacitors, inductors. Only for theory. If
you want to build stuff, start with understanding power, switches, circuits --
not ICs, just making closed loops, series vs parallel, etc.

After your first few toy autopsies, get yourself a collection of LEDs, motors,
copper wire, batteries, and perf-boards and paper clips. Make some switchy
circuits doing various things. Make a car that can go straight. Make a car
that will change directions when it hits a wall. Think about adding a
microcontroller. Think about adding a USB interface, or a BT remote control.
Add an LED display showing random numbers. If you spend the time on it and
some loose change, you can learn a lot up to building real products from
simple electronic toys. You'll learn about resistors and capacitors just from
following the instructions of how to install these more advanced things into
your existing circuits.

------
jstanley
I've tried 3 times to teach myself electronics to the point where I can
reliably make simple stuff work, and finally got it to start to click about 9
months ago. I'm still very much a newbie, but I am just slightly ahead of
where it sounds like you are.

I recommend these YouTube channels:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/greatscottlab](https://www.youtube.com/user/greatscottlab)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog](https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog)

Not all of the videos are useful, but if you browse through the "Most
popular", you might find some interesting stuff. I did. There's also a long
tail of other channels that post the odd interesting beginner-electronics
video. Type in search terms for things you're confused by, and you'll find
tens of people trying their best to explain it to you in a way you can
understand. Don't understand one? Try the next person.

I bought an "Arduino starter kit" off eBay for about £35. It came with an
Arduino Uno, a breadboard, some bits of jumper wire, resistors, a few
capacitors, a relay, a servo, some LEDs, an LCD display, etc. Just a basic
bunch of stuff to start playing with. (I think I paid more than the
constituent parts were actually worth, but if they weren't all bundled
together for me I wouldn't have known what to get at all, so I got plenty of
value from it anyway.)

Then just start playing with it. In the process of trying to make stuff work
you'll accidentally learn about pull-up and pull-down resistors, switch
debouncing, filtering capacitors, using transistors to switch larger loads,
SPI, I2C, and it'll all start fitting together in your mind. Every time you
learn a new thing it opens up a bunch more avenues of stuff to research.

The resources available on YouTube are so much better than they were even 3
years ago. I think that's what has helped me "succeed" this time.

Good luck!

~~~
programbreeding
The biggest issue I've found is finding projects to work on that are actually
useful. Of course you have to start with the basics, but not many people have
a use for a simple blinking LED in their life.

Finding projects that you can make that can actually do something that
interests you makes a world of difference.

It's like learning programming/OOP through the typical animal examples versus
making an app that is something you would actually use or fills a need that
you have.

~~~
mulmen
Like the "learn scrum by cleaning your apartment" example? Give me a real
world example of this working please. If it's worthwhile there must be a case
study to build from.

~~~
jononor
Not sure _useful_ is a good metric, most useful things can be had more easily
by buying it. And if its something you really need, then its better to avoid
the stress of having to build it right and on time. But go for something
_interesting_, something _you want_.

A music instrument maybe? Automate the blinds in your apartment? Track the
motion of earth for long-exposure photography? A multicopter for flying FPV?

------
osoba
You can take the MIT sequence of courses on edX (taught by, I believe the CEO
of edX, so, in a sense, this is the original flagship edX course)
[https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-
circ...](https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circuit-
mitx-6-002-1x-0) [https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-2-amplificat...](https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-2-amplification-mitx-6-002-2x-0)
[https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-3-applicatio...](https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-3-applications-mitx-6-002-3x-0)

------
DanBC
A while ago I would have recommended you get _The Art of Electronics_ , and
_The Student Manual_ for this, and then some cheap tools and components, and
then just work your way through the student manual doing all the experiments
and then reading the main book to learn the theory.

That's still a good choice, but you'll notice it's getting a bit outdated.

For learning the hobbyist end and some skills and techniques I recommend this
guy:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g)

He has some tutorials for simple surface mount soldering, and some useful
reviews of equipment. He uses mostly correct soldering techniques too.

~~~
slig
Thanks! I love recommendations of small channels, as I already follow all the
bigger ones.

------
kwindla
I'm a big fan of Adafruit, which is a great place to buy electronic components
that all have projects, tutorials, active forums, etc.

Here's the "learn" page on the Adafruit web site:
[https://learn.adafruit.com/](https://learn.adafruit.com/)

And the Adafruit Youtube channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/adafruit](https://www.youtube.com/adafruit)

And it's definitely worth just dipping in and out of -- and eventually reading
all the way through -- "The Art of Electronics." It's a terrific book, and
manages to be both readable and super in-depth about every topic you could
possibly want to know about when you're trying to figure out what's what.

There are also a number of inspiring blogs by electrical engineers who are
also great writers. Which ones to follow sort of depend on what specialties
you are most interested in, but Bunnie Huang's is a great one to start with:
[https://www.bunniestudios.com/](https://www.bunniestudios.com/)

------
howard941
Take up amateur radio and you'll be rewarded with a license and a lifetime of
fun for the learning investment. Here are some resources:

[http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio](http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio)

[https://www.qrz.com/i/ham-radio-howto.html](https://www.qrz.com/i/ham-radio-
howto.html)

[http://www.ncarc.net/?q=node/57](http://www.ncarc.net/?q=node/57)

edit for form

~~~
marshray
I got my ham license because I loved electronics. I went to a local meeting,
got a transceiver, and joined a local net. Then I realized I didn't really
have anything to say over the radio to these people.

But the ARRL handbook is definitely a masterpiece.

~~~
howard941
Agreed on the Handbook. The Operating Manual and Antenna (handbook?) are also
really good.

If I'm at home I get on the air for traffic nets or QRP and there the topics
are thankfully pre-defined because I'm a lousy conversationalist. I found
clubs to be a hit and miss kind of thing. Some of them have active homebrewing
groups where you can exercise your love of electronics but they're not as
common as smaller clubs that tend more towards operating (emergency comms,
repeater installations, stuff like that) rather than building things. 73

------
hxtk
I started with EEVBlog, especially "Fundamentals Friday" and the series where
he designs things. Next, I turned to the textbook at AllAboutCircuits.

Next thing I did was design and build a DC lab. I bought my meters and scopes
outright, but designed and built my own DC load and power supply. Since I'd
already watched Dave's videos about them on EEVBlog, they were obviously
influenced by his design, but I made a couple of non-trivial changes to the
spec so that I'd have to make my own design decisions. I found this
electronics stackexchange post very helpful for heat dissipation calculations
[0]. Also, while it's very simple and not suitable for complex or precise
work, Falstad's circuit simulator was very helpful for experimenting [1].

My next step was fixing things. This gave me an opportunity to do a bunch of
things:

* Become familiar with ICs. At first I always had to look up the number on every IC I saw to figure out how it was supposed to behave before I could test if its actual behavior matched, but over time you'll start recognizing those numbers and understanding why it was chosen over another component that does the same job.

* Drawing schematics. Debugging is really hard without a schematic, so on anything remotely complex, my first step was often searching for a schematic. This search often came up empty, so my second step would be following all the traces and looking up all the chips so that I could draw a circuit diagram and figure out roughly what I should expect.

* Soldering. This should be fairly self-explanatory.

Frankly, I haven't gotten past here yet. I'm not terribly good with AC theory
or RF stuff. I came to this thread looking for recommendations on that part,
but I don't think there's any reason my methods so far wouldn't work; I just
haven't had the time.

[0]:
[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/55513/can-a-...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/55513/can-
a-soapbox-sized-device-dissipate-10-15w-of-heat-if-yes-how)

[1]: [http://www.falstad.com/circuit/](http://www.falstad.com/circuit/)

------
aidos
So I'm not really the right person to answer this question however.....

When I was younger I used to tinker with tiny electrical projects (from NZ so
we had "Dick Smith" kits). I understood the very basics, but nothing
complicated. As a fairly proficient software developer, real electronics has
always felt alien to me.

Then recently I got an Arduino, and it's opened a whole new world. It's the
perfect mix of feeling like you _want_ to glue stuff to it, and feeling like
you _can_ glue stuff to it. That one device is already full of so much
interesting circuitry (with the timers and the uart and little pins waiting to
ground them to make stuff happen). But the docs and libraries will guide you
through it. It's like training wheels for electrical circuits.

~~~
sowbug
Another vote for Arduino, especially if you're coming from the world of
software.

Your first project will be to make an LED blink, but to do that properly you
need to use Ohm's Law (or else you'll forget the resistor and burn something
up).

Then you'll make the LED change state based on a button press, which will
teach you about pull-up resistors.

Eventually you'll add a modern version of a 7400 IC or two. You'll try
powering too many components (likely more LEDs), and you'll discover why
decoupling capacitors matter. You might even mess with a MOSFET.

By this point you're a competent novice in digital electronics, and you're
likely ready to start learning some of the fundamentals of analog electronics.
But along the way it felt like you were just doing a bit more with software,
so it was a really easy learning curve.

------
squozzer
I'm channeling Einstein's (aprocryphal) statement of adopting a child's
mindset when learning things for the first time.

In the 1970s RS and presumably others used to sell those "100-in-1" project
kits with various analog components mounted on a single board, connected with
jumper wires using springs. It was kinda cool, especially the project with the
"bomb dropping" sound (1000 uF.)

That's my recommendation, assuming your skill level is "training wheels
needed."

The spring-and-jumper style seems to have fallen by the wayside, but on eBay I
see a few kits that use breadborads, and another called Snap Circuits that
looks interesting. And some vintage spring-and-jumper kits which probably need
a bit of cleanup.

None of these suggestions will teach you how to solder though.

~~~
itomato
I wish I was half as good with a breadboard as I am with a soldering iron.

------
erjjones
Sparkfun.com is a great spot to buy and learn. They have several YouTube
channels, one in particular "According To Pete" is a great set of videos to
learn the ins and outs
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EF3C374FD903ACE](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EF3C374FD903ACE)

~~~
nixpulvis
I can't say enough about how much I like according to Pete! Came here hoping
someone mentioned him.

------
atarian
I highly recommend checking out the Make: Electronics series. You can also buy
kits for each book on Amazon if you don't feel like going out and finding all
the parts yourself at RadioShack.

~~~
cowbellemoo
This is what I've started with, too. Make: Electronics, Make: More
Electronics, and the 3-volume Encyclopedia of electronic components by Charles
Platt are really great.

The 8-Bit Computer video series by Ben Eater (reshared on HN recently,
[https://eater.net/8bit/](https://eater.net/8bit/)) was the first thing I saw
which ignited a passion for understanding the hardware underpinnings of
computing.

ElectroBoom, GreatScott, EEVBlog, Julian Ilett, and Adafruit YouTube channels
are really great, too.

------
lmilcin
It will very much depend on your background, available funds and whether you
are interested as a hobbyist only or you have some more serious plans for it.

What I have found is that having a dedicated space for your hobby is probably
the best way to help.

Having a dedicated desk it means that all my stuff is immediately ready when I
have few minutes of time to do something, test an idea, etc. No amount of
hardware will help you if you will have to set it up on your desk and then
clean up every day. At least that's what is working for me.

~~~
mulmen
I live in an apartment but I rent a garage from a friend. it really is
liberating to have a dedicated space for projects instead of trying to make it
work in a 20 x 30 box.

------
analog31
I learned electronics 35 years ago. After dabbling in high school, I took a
college course that was part of the physics major curriculum. Beyond that
point I'm self taught.

I think there are some things that have made it easier, others that have made
it harder. The availability of parts, data, software tools, and knowledge,
have of course exploded. You no longer have to call an IC maker on the phone
and beg for a data book, though they were usually generous to students. There
are some great videos and blogs. I like the stuff at the Adafruit site. I also
like Teensy, a lot.

On the other hand the proliferation of stuff seems forbidding. My first Digi-
Key catalog was less than a quarter inch thick! The last paper catalog I saw
was over an inch thick, and lists only a fraction of their offerings.

It's too much.

For this reason I suggest choosing a small chunk of the field. If you're at HN
because you're a computerist, maybe playing with Arduino would be a way to
break in. Build a few kits, or just duplicate someone's published project.
Gradually build up a little mental library of parts that are useful for your
particular interest area.

A community college course that covers basic electronic measurement and
technician work might be a good start. They will have all of the tools so you
don't have to choose what to invest in right away.

~~~
gyrgtyn
my community college electronics professor was probably the best professor i
had. Some of the text books were actually good too (unlike the ones the
university used).

Pretty worth it (if you can find a good?) for the lab. The lab is really
convenient and you something you would't know how to set up.

------
ChrisGammell
Electronics is a big broad subject. So yeah, take it slow and take it easy on
yourself as you're learning. It's more akin to asking, "How to self-learn
programming?". There are many methods, resources and STRONG opinions, mine
included. Here's my usual suggestions:

1.) Get into the culture of it all. Weird, right? But like lots of people are
pointing out, YouTube has a bounty of electronics channels, one more niche
than the next. There are also audio podcasts like Macrofab Engineering,
Embedded.fm and The Amp Hour (disclaimer: this is my and EEVblog's audio
podcast)

2.) This is probably the most important -- once you're a bit into the culture,
you need something to shoot for. If the first part is figuring out WHY you
want to build, then this part is figuring out WHAT you want to build. I would
recommend starting with either a simple project (555 timer is a simple
starting point) or slightly modifying someone else's existing project. There
are no new electronics circuits, so lean into kits from adafruit, sparkfun and
the sellers on Tindie. This is a wonderful time for all of the kits in the
world. Electronics are cheap and plentiful and simply following someone else's
instructions and getting the "muscle memory" for electronics is a good start.

3.) The last step is the HOW of electronics. This is going to be where
peoples' opinions crop up the most. Some say start from the bottom up and
learn semiconductors first. Others say you should start with firmware and
arduinos and slowly learn what each piece is doing as you get into it more. To
quote a familiar TV program, the right answer is probably "middle out". This
is also a practical answer, since there are always lower level concepts you
can learn and higher level concepts you can learn.

I usually do not suggest The Art of Electronics to people getting started.
Instead, I think they should use a project idea of what they want to build and
Google. Again, a shitty answer, but this is the best method I've found. Most
books start with "What is Ohm's Law" and other math based operations and I
think that's not the right move for most people. It lost me when I was getting
started and I've been doing hardware for 15 years.

If you're unsure of where to start, make something blink. I have a short
tutorial on how to build a circuit board, solder it up and blink it with a
Rasbperry Pi. It sounds dumb, but it's important to get the dopamine flowing.
Check it out here: [https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/shine-on-you-
crazy...](https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/shine-on-you-crazy-kicad/)

------
blt
I'm sure all the information sources I know about have already been mentioned.
I will instead share a few simple things I wish somebody had told me:

1\. Don't stock up on components at the beginning. Only buy components that
you need to build a chosen/designed circuit. Passive assortments contain
useless stuff like many slightly different values of nanofarad capacitors.
They will waste space in your parts storage. 1.1 Always keep your parts
organized!

2\. Surface mount (components sit on top of circuit board) is not hard. For
any thru-hole circuit (components have wires that pass through holes in the
circuit board), the surface mount equivalent will be easy to solder. Only the
surface mount chips with tons of pins, like 32-bit CPUs, are tricky. Those
don't exist in thru-hole. Plus, if you start making PCBs, you won't have to
drill holes in them.

3\. Classic op amps like the 741 and 358 suck. There are newer cheap op-amps
that behave closer to the ideal model.

4\. If you want to get into repair, practice desoldering before you desolder
anything from an expensive board. It's easy to damage components and board by
overheating when struggling to desolder.

~~~
blt
Oh there is one YouTube channel I like that is not listed yet: w2aew. Here is
very skilled at designing circuits and using the oscilloscope to demonstrate
fundamental (not exclusively beginner) ideas.

~~~
setquk
w2aew (Alan Wolke) is one of the few youtubers who produces videos with
substance and quality. Definitely agree.

------
linker3000
Stop by and say hi to us sometime:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/beginners](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/beginners)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/education](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/education)

------
rmrm
I learned electronics outside of school, but as part of a job (which has
turned into a 20 year career of hardware design). I remember learning by
needing to decipher schematics and repair broken circuits, which is what I was
first asked to do, before I knew electronics. I would read the datasheets of
the devices and try to understand. I would research what I didnt understand
until I did to get to the next step.

For me this worked very well - I need a goal, a purpose. Designing things is
good, but I think repairing things is perhaps even better for learning and
getting started. Particularly if you have one working example and one broken
example, and you can compare circuits.

So my advice - if you have one of something that works and has a circuit
board, and you can find a schematic for it...go buy a broken one, and fix it.
Then you can sell the newly working one, and do it again with something else.
You'll learn a lot, and it will be very practical stuff to have learned. The
art of hardware troubleshooting is its own wonderful talent to have.

------
snarfy
To get started, here is what I'd recommend:

\- bench power supply

\- multimeter

\- oscilloscope

\- soldering iron

\- wireless breadboard and jumper wire kit

\- protoboard

\- common resistor pack

\- common capacitor pack

\- Some basic components like 555 timers, flip flops, op amps, leds, variable
resistors/knobs, small speaker, etc.

For books, I highly recommend Getting Started in Electronics, Forrest Mims -
[1]

Spend some money and get a good power supply, soldering iron, and multimeter.
You need an oscilloscope as well but you don't need to break the bank. You can
get started without it but you won't get very far once things get complicated.
The multimeter is like using print statements to debug your program. The
oscilloscope is like using a debugger.

Next is to figure out what you want to make. Things like induction heaters and
tesla coils are surprisingly simple to make. You can make a tiny tesla coil
known as a slayer exciter using a transistor, resistor, led, and some wire.

[1][pdf] -
[https://theeshadow.com/files/Forrest%20M.%20Mims%20III%20-%2...](https://theeshadow.com/files/Forrest%20M.%20Mims%20III%20-%20Getting%20started%20in%20electronics.pdf)

------
scarecrowbob
It's such a wide topic.

I keep coming back to it, though I only tinker. I've recently gotten into
modular synths, and that's neat becasue there are plenty of kits to build
wihtout having to know a lot about hot the stuff works.

In the last month I've built a pretty complicated VCO and an Oscilloscope.

The stuff is cheap.

I've had a pretty good informal education as a nerdy musician and computer guy
over the last 2 decades.

IMO the good thing is to keep in mind that a) for low voltage stuff you can
mess around a lot and not hurt yourself (the devices can be another matter)
and b) a lot of this stuff is just within 10% tolerance... like you can do a
lot with minimal knowledge.

I got a lot out of a series of youtube videos that were tied to a company
selling kits of resistors, breadboards, etc:

[http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/](http://www.pyroelectro.com/edu/)

And then it's like learning to code (if you know how to do that): find a
project that seems like you more or less understand the broad strokes and try
to implement it.

------
gabythenerd
I'm studying Electronics Engineering and have found this course to be a good
summary of the theory essentials: [https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-1-basic-circ...](https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-
electronics-1-basic-circuit-mitx-6-002-1x-0)

For the practical side of things buy a protoboard, a multimeter and some
components (resistors, capacitors, etc) and start mounting simple circuits.
Learn how to solder and start fixing stuff and doing fun projects. You'll
eventually need more stuff to learn, having an oscilloscope to see the signals
is needed to understand what is going on with AC circuits, but you could
probably simulate it instead with software like Multisim
[https://www.multisim.com/create/](https://www.multisim.com/create/)

Learn about Microcontrollers too, they give you the ability to do the really
cool stuff, like robotic projects.

------
klaushougesen1
“Practical electronics for inventors” is a great book for getting started -
and most importantly : nobody builds from scratch anymore - it usually a waste
if time - there’s bound to be a platform/devkit out there that does more or
less what you want it to

------
segmondy
Buy "The art of electronics" and work through it.

Buy a PCB board some components and start putting things together. Supplement
with youtube, blogs.

~~~
davrosthedalek
This. "The art of electronics" is the best text book I ever had the chance to
read.

------
ninjakeyboard
I'm trying to learn right now. I'm probably doing this backwards but:

I'm starting by soldering together kits for modular synthesis. That's teaching
me all of the technical skills and ensuring I have the right tools. Some
friends to help correct my shitty habits have given me the right skills and
equipment to build.

Then I know how to assemble things, so now I'm trying to build my own very
simple circuits. Once I can breadboard them, my friend can help show me the
ropes to get PCBs printed and then I can manufacture my own things.

Finally, the troubleshooting exposes you to a bit as you have to understand
what's going on.

Learning and watching on the side take the basic exposure and distill
knowledge from that.

------
slantyyz
I don't think they're very popular today, but when I was a kid, I had a Radio
Shack Electronic Project Kit [1], and I learned so much from it. Looks like
you can still buy them though. [2]

[1]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/samwibatt/773052449](https://www.flickr.com/photos/samwibatt/773052449)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Maxitronix-200-in-One-Electronic-
Proj...](https://www.amazon.com/Maxitronix-200-in-One-Electronic-Project-
Lab/dp/B0002AHR04/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523043020&sr=8-2&keywords=electronic+project+kit)

------
8bitsrule
If starting from scratch, first decide -what kind- of electronics you want to
learn (analog, digital, audio, radio...) Maybe get a book of simple circuits
you can build on a breadboard to help you decide what might be useful.

-Take it easy- and don't get in too deep. You want to learn, not get frustrated. (A mentor can be -very- helpful.)

I'd suggest breadboarding to 'learn electronics', while avoiding 'learning
construction' at the same time. Also find out where you'll be getting the
parts you need. As a beginner, you might want to start with a parts kit. Get a
good book and learn what each kind of part is and the basics of what it does.

------
lurquer
If you can find them, Forrest Mims electronics books (once sold at
RadioShack).

~~~
ken
I had a million of those when I was a kid, and they were fun, but I can't say
I learned much from them. They're great for "follow these simple instructions
and you can build a device that does X", but I couldn't tell you why he picked
a PNP or NPN transistor if my life depended on it.

~~~
cr0sh
The mini engineer notebooks is probably what you're thinking of; and you're
right on your assessment.

But he wrote other books published through Radio Shack (and maybe TAB
publications?) that did address things for learning and such.

His website has a complete listing of his works:

[http://www.forrestmims.org/publications.html](http://www.forrestmims.org/publications.html)

In fact, the first book on that page is called "Getting Started in
Electronics" (he's actually a prolific author); between that book, the mini-
notebooks, and AOE - that would be a great set for an electronics education.

------
anigbrowl
Videos are great. Also, modular synthesizer software. Get a copy of VCV and
play. Listening to the behavior of circuit interactions will teach you a lot.
Get one of those electronics in a box or breadboard kits.

Book wise, start with something from Forrest Mims III, who provides graduated
and clear examples of basic circuits and theory. When you're ready for the
hard stuff, the _The Art of Electronics_ by Horowitz and Hill.

You'll never be as good as someone with a reasonably current EE degree, but
developing your intuition will enable you to have meaningful conversations
with them.

------
hoosieree
I got into electronics because I was too poor to afford the guitar effects
pedals I wanted, so I set out to build my own. My intro book was Craig
Anderton's "Electronics Projects for Musicians".

From there, an indespensible resource in my education was
diystompboxes.com/smfforum (DIY electronics forum). Focus is on guitar
effects, but there are people making amps, guitars, hi-fi, and digital gear as
well. The community there has an excellent core of helpful veteran DIYers and
engineers, and a strong culture of sharing and teaching.

The humble Fuzz Face is generally a "beginner" level project which you can get
working in an afternoon, yet if you drill down into _why_ it works you've got
enough to chew on to fill 2 or 3 college courses (at least 1 of those being a
"weed out" level course). This pedal was a staple of Jimi Hendrix, but he had
a good ear and legend says he'd sort through boxes of them to find the good
ones, because they varied a lot. The _reason_ they varied is because they were
built around germanium transistors, which were low tolerance parts. And the
circuit itself is really high gain and temperature sensitive and has all sorts
of caveats around it.

So if you covet that Jimi Hendrix-quality Fuzz Face sound, you need to deep
dive into things like measuring hFE and keeping wiring clean around high-gain
circuits to keep from turning it into an oscillator (or a radio). There are
numerous rabbit holes to explore, like "do old school resistors sound better?"
or "what if I want to power it from a normal +9V power supply instead of a
battery?"

Then you realize that turning the guitar's volume knob down causes the Fuzz
Face to totally change character from racous fuzz into something like a Brian
May-esque treble boost, and why the heck does that happen? It's because the
input to the Fuzz is a low impedance relative to the guitar, and causes the
(mostly inductive) guitar pickup to be heavily loaded at high frequencies,
making the distortion smoother than it would otherwise be. So the guitar
itself is part of the circuit, and inserting an active circuit (like another
pedal) between the guitar and the Fuzz Face ruins everything!

So I guess my point is don't go into it with the generic goal of "learn
electronics", instead have a specific goal like "make the best Hi-Fi system
possible for my living room, for under $2000" or "make a quadcopter from
scratch". Eventually you'll accumulate a ton of depth in a specific domain
that you really care about, and you'll pick up general concepts along the way.

~~~
fuzzfactor
For guitar and musician's hobbyist efforts when you're ready to move up to the
higher voltages of vacuum tubes there's AX84:

[http://www.ax84.com](http://www.ax84.com)

Read their high voltage warning.

Remember at one time almost everything was high voltage compared to today.

------
cjbprime
Circuit Classics! [https://www.crowdsupply.com/star-simpson/circuit-
classics](https://www.crowdsupply.com/star-simpson/circuit-classics)

------
Chirono
I can't recommend the Every Circuit app enough
([http://everycircuit.com](http://everycircuit.com)). It's an interactive,
real time circuit simulator. I've been using it for the past couple of years
to teach myself electronics. I'd read about how, for example, opamps worked,
but it wasn't until I could play around with them and try them in virtual
circuits that I really understood how to use them. Honestly, for learning, it
the best resource I've come across.

------
pitaj
If you're interested in Digital Logic / FPGA / VHDL then I'd recommend this
book [1] and this collection of Youtube videos [2]

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Circuits-Design-
VH...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Circuits-Design-
VHDL/dp/3319341944/) [2]:
[http://www.montana.edu/blameres/book_content_vhdl.html](http://www.montana.edu/blameres/book_content_vhdl.html)

------
pretty_dumm_guy
Step 1: Start with simple circuits. And implement them on bread boards. Don't
go for the printed circuit boards yet. There are many circuits out there for
beginners. Choose one and implement it. Vary the elements in the circuit. For
example if the circuit asks you to use 10k ohm resister use a 100 ohm resister
and see what happens. In this case there might be drop in voltage(I believe,
my memory is quite vague). To measure this you use multimeter. Learn how to do
that. It is fundamental for any one wanting to play with electronics stuff.
(P.S: If you are from India there is a magazine named "Electronics for you".
If you have the money buy it. It is quite amazing. I haven't read it 6 years
though so I don't know if the quality is still good)

Step 2: Start reading the datasheets of different Integrated Circuits that you
might use in your circuit. Its not that hard. Once you understand what Vcc,
ground etc., are it becomes really easy.

Step 3: Try and solder the the elements that you used on a board. Soldering is
a basic skill that many engineers I know lack. It is good to know it. I have
fixed many broken radios and other electronic items using this skill.

Step 4: Start designing printed circuit boards on a software and send it to a
company and print it(there are other means to do this too).

Once you cover this, you can do a lot of really cool stuff with electronics. I
hope this helps.

Note: This makes you an amateur. Now if you want to learn about FPGAs and
other stuff, then its gets a little tricky. You might need a book for that.

------
dreamcompiler
Are you more interested in digital or analog? Do you want to build computers
or audio amplifiers? Although the underlying physics is identical, you need to
build stuff (as others have pointed out) and you can arguably build more
successful stuff that encourages you to keep going if you start with digital.
Analog is more difficult until you have a good grasp of the theory. After
that, they're both easy (until you get into RF, and then it all becomes black
magic again).

------
j45
I grew up with Electronics Magazine, Radio Shack (the Source).

Today, in addition to this there are monthly electronic subscription kits that
can be pretty cool.

The way I'd do it today is find projects online that I can order the parts
myself from AliExpress/eBay to come from China and have a project a month to
do. Things take 4-6 weeks to arrive, and you can order the next project while
working on the current one.

------
ixtli
It's times like these that I'd like to be able to bookmark HN conversations.

~~~
ixtli
update: TIL, favorites.

------
neltnerb
I find the best way to learn anything is to come up with a thing I want to
make or do, start searching for similar things, and copy/modify/analyze until
I can do it. But for hands on skills you should go find an in person class
about it, stuff like how to solder I mean.

Without the motivation of a thing to do it's very hard to learn much useful
for me. So much is interesting or important in theory but rarely used, and
without a target goal it's hard to tell the difference.

Like, newton's law for circuit analysis was really great for lots of
interesting problems -- I just never have to solve those problems in real life
ever. It's important, but is harder when you're self-teaching. When I self-
teach I want to be getting pulled into a rabbit hole and pick up deeper
knowledge there. I want to know what questions I need to answer.

And when you get more sophisticated, read many, many datasheets very closely.
It's the only way to really get a feel for the wealth of options available as
an electronics designer.

------
kasbah
Bit late to the party, a lot of great answers already and I can't add much
more but this list of resources I maintain will probably be useful to you,
especially the learning and video section.

[https://github.com/monostable/awesome-
electronics](https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics)

------
delbel
This book influenced me the most: Bebop to the Boolean Boogie

[https://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Third-
Unconventi...](https://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Third-
Unconventional/dp/1856175073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523039646&sr=8-1&keywords=bebop+to+the+boolean)

------
kwhitefoot
Think of a project that you would like to complete. Something simple to start
with. Now search the web for pages, videos, how tos, related to it.

Electronics is a big subject. Some of it can be approached like Lego but
others, especially high frequency work needs a more holistic and mathematical
approach.

So I think you need to state your goal a bit more precisely.

------
winrid
First I would ask why you want to learn. Electronics is a broad field. Is
there a certain area you have interest in?

Me - grew up with it as a hobby/passion. I just learned what I had to to
accomplish my goals. So my advice would be to come up with some projects/goals
and figure out what is needed to accomplish those.

------
zatkin
I got into amateur radio recently and felt that my fundamental knowledge of
electronics was lacking, so I picked up the Handbook for Radio Communications
textbook and read through the first few chapters to solidify my understanding.
Learning electronics without context for me is quite boring, and it's better
to have something more concrete that you can use the electronics for that will
motivate you to want to push yourself to learn more as the applicability of
your understanding shows some real results.

One downside to this is that your electronics understanding will only be
focused on a concrete usage of it, so you might not get the depth on certain
areas of electronics that the application doesn't cover, e.g. you won't learn
how a solid-state drive works in the context of electronics if you focus on
radio technology.

------
darzu
Check out Adafruit:
[https://www.learn.adafruit.com/](https://www.learn.adafruit.com/) they have
fantastic projects and learning material. I recommend just picking something
that looks cool and build it! You'll learn by doing. And every part you buy
from Adafruit has tutorials with it.

Also a plug for MakeCode: [https://makecode.com/](https://makecode.com/) It's
the friendliest electronics programming environment I know of, and you can
program Adafruit boards with it. You can program with blocks or Static
Typescript. (Disclaimer: I worked at MakeCode as an intern, specifically I
made the breadboard system for
[https://maker.makecode.com](https://maker.makecode.com))

------
chrisa
There's a really good, single page webpage called "Concise electronics for
geeks":
[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/)

It's a good read if you're trying to learn the fundamentals.

------
baybal2
It will be hard without solid high school physics, which looks to be the case
with most US secondaries.

Functioning of electronics was more or less clear for me by the time I
finished high school in Russia, the only way up was to learn real electronics
engineering.

So, begin with dusting off your school textbooks.

------
agumonkey
I somehow did so for a few monthes.

Note that: 1) I never understood electricity or even electronics, no matter
the level (<HS, HS, College).

2) as a computer guy I had the fetish to actually know what the hell was going
on. And since my first laptop, I have an itch to mod boards.

yet nothing happened for a decade, until .. maybe the rpi came out. You can
find boards for 10$... so now I have a bunch. Then I bought other stuff
(wires, multimeter). Then a soldering iron. Then I started to scrap old
electronics and parts from stuff that people threw away.

But that doesn't teach you anything. I guess a blend of youtube videos
(greatscott, electroboom, AvE) helped getting a tiny bit of theory. Then
actually powering dc motors and esp8266 boards. Then trying to read proper
text books. (just google 'best electronics books'). Oh also /r/electronics and
#electronics on freenode <= an amazing bunch of people here, very
knowledgeable, 99% helpful, even for idiots like me.

Also it depends on your brain. Some people will crave rigorous mathematics,
some will want to solder stuff and light things up. I needed a blend so I went
my own way.

One thing, for low voltage circuits, you can maybe assemble anything you want.
Just get a pair of gloves and plastic goggles and you'll never injure yourself
and plug things together without fearing capacitors blowing. Stay away from
power electronics at first, actual safety is required unless you plan to
either cry or visit nurses in the ER.

I find the topic quite fascinating.. that sophisticated green planar with
lines everywhere and components.. is just an abstraction layer above waves of
f/a and mathematical relationships between them. Even the clock of your
circuit is most probably a crystal which material order waves.

Also, it's so damn tangible... it's not pure ideal like code. It's matter that
you touch, that heats up. It connects to chemistry (you can make a resistor
with a graphite rod, a pencil, and variate the resistance based on the length
before the other terminal).

------
timothyb
Gibilisco's Teach Yourself electricity and electronics is pretty decent:

[https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Electricity-
Electronic...](https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Electricity-
Electronics-5th/dp/0071741356)

------
_eLRIC
You may want to start with a DIY kit on an electronic subject that matters to
you

Advantage of the kit is that you'll have a working product in the end, and
you'll learn soldering (and other things) on the way. You may not understand
all the underlying principles of the kit at first but Rome wasn't built in a
day :)

As an example, I started with guitar pedals from techniguitare.com (allowed me
to practice basic soldering + refresh opamp theory), then progressively moved
to more complex projects. My experience with communities that build these kits
is that they are generally very friendly and helpful when you want to learn.

Then, projects like led cubes (i.e. you'll learn matrix multiplexing) or
esp8266 based IOT are easy and usually rewarding

------
ravenstine
I learned by building really simple circuits. People assume when you want to
learn electronics that you should immediately begin with microcontrollers, and
I think this is a mistake. Sure, learning with Arduino is a good next step to
take, but if you don't understand the fundamentals then you'll end up a one-
person cargo cult of electronics.

Make a light blink. (without 555 timer)

Make two lights blink at different intervals.

Make a light that only comes on when it's dark out.

Make a light that comes on in the presence of an electrostatic field.

Make a crystal radio.

Make a transistor radio.

Make a radio transmitter that your transistor/crystal radio can receive.

Make your transmitter send and receive morse code between computers.

Make your transmitter send and receive data with FSK.

Make an Arduino control your transmitter.

\--------------------

Congratulations! You're off to a great start!

------
chicob
As there are already 21 mentions of Horowitz's and Hill's 'The Art of
Electronics'[1], here I add another one. It's a great book.

[1] [https://artofelectronics.net/](https://artofelectronics.net/)

------
squarefoot
We learn through mistakes, releasing magic smoke can teach a lot, so the first
suggestion is to be prepared for failures: don't let them discourage you but
rather use them to learn more.

Stay away as much as you can from microcontrollers and ICs, at least until you
have grasped enough knowledge and handling/soldering capabilities. I'm very
serious, stay away from Arduinos, Raspberries and everything like that. There
will be a time for them. Opamps and logic ICs also are a vital part of
electronics, but starting with them would do more harm than good. Get a book
for basic electronics (No, The Art of Electronics although wonderful is not a
good choice now).

Start with simple stuff to get an idea of what the Ohm Law means, that is,
some resistors, a battery and some multimeters. While for serious stuff a
Fluke is worth more than a billion cheap Chinese multimeters, having 3 or 4 of
the latter will be immensely more useful than a single top brand one because
seeing in real time the battery voltage and what develops around a voltage
divider when you change the resistors ratio has no price. Same for
instrumentation: an oscilloscope is worth the information you get by using it,
so you have first to know what it does measure, otherwise it's not even worth
a 5 bucks Chinese multimeter.

[https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/voltage-
dividers](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/voltage-dividers)

Try the voltage divider with a 9V battery and measure everything, the total
current the battery voltage and both voltages on resistors wires. Change
resistors and take note of what changes and try to find out why. Use from very
low value resistors to very high ones maintaining their ratio and watch what
happens to current and voltage.

Now swap a resistor with a led. Does it light or not? Was it inserted the
right way? If yes why doesn't it work? If not why it still doesn't work?
What's the resistor value and how much current is flowing through the led?
Measure voltage and current, choose the wrong resistor and burn some leds ->
learn more.

Put a high value capacitor in parallel to the led, why the led turns on and
off slowly when connecting/disconnecting the battery? Again measure voltage
and current: why current increases before voltage when battery is connected?

Build a solenoid by winding from tens to a hundred turns of enameled copper
wire around a big iron nail, then connect the battery with some iron small
screws or iron powder near the nail head, what does happen and why? When you
remove the battery do you see a small spark? Why?

All those experiments though can be performed with very little money will put
you on the right track.

------
peter303
When I was in junior high school we had a monthly mail order kit from American
Basic Science. I made things like an amplidier, radio receiver, ham radio
transmitter. It cost $5 a month for a year, much of the pay from my paper
route.

[http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-
stories/americ...](http://www.quickreference.info/small-business-
stories/american-basic-science-club-case-history-of-a-successful-small-
business/)

An equivalent today might be a the add on kits for Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
Plus the high school robot competition clubs.

Must have worked because I later attended MIT ;-)

------
keithnz
A lot of good advice on here....

Just as an aside, if you have kids especially, the "BrainBox" kits are really
cool for playing around. For instance
[http://www.cambridgebrainbox.com/Explorer2.html](http://www.cambridgebrainbox.com/Explorer2.html)
they come with a bunch of passive / active components to play with. I found I
could demo a lot of principles to my son and we could play around with ideas.
It's probably not going to last you more than a week in terms of learning
electronics, but it makes playing with simple circuits super easy.

------
oneplane
One aspect is the physical thing, try some soldering kits where you do simple
through-hole components on a single-layer PCB. While this is more part of the
manufacturing and less of the designing and theory, it does give you a great
sense of accomplishment when you make your first few circuits work.

While there are many ways to connect components like breadboards and
stripboard, and many modern and digital versions of circuits, getting some
experience with basics, even something as simple as a low-component flip-flop
to flash one or two lights, will help you translate thought and theory into
knowledge and experience.

------
YZF
I would say find a mentor. The most important learning is from other people's
experience, watching how they work. There was one "old timer" electrical
engineer I worked with closely as a firmware developer who mentored me to the
point I was comfortable doing my own design work. You'll still want to read
AoE, understand theory etc. but the practice of electrical engineering is a
lot more than that.

EDIT: Also, not sure if this is still the case today, but I learnt tons from
reading Application Notes. I guzzled application notes books from all the
semiconductor manufacturers.

------
mosselman
I got myself a nodemcu (rather 10) on aliexpress, some relay boards, wires,
resistors (haven't really needed them yet), some USB chargers, breadboards,
LEDs, RFID readers, more wires, more nodemcu's (esp32 by now), more relays,
etc, etc. and I just started hacking around with them. You learn quite a lot
by having to solve 'how do I turn on this lamp?', 'how do I read RFID chips?'

My own and my neighbours garden lights are controlled by the nodemcu unit that
I put together and I am working on a RFID project at the moment. Great fun.

------
written
I sort of learnt it from books I got in the bookstore and school library. I
will not name them, because they're not in English.

At the same time I spent 8 years learning it day in day out in high school and
university, so it's hard to tell how far you'll get with just self-learning.

It also depends on what you want to do with the knowledge. Perhaps just go
book browsing to a library that has a good set of books about electronics, to
find what you mind be the most interested in. Libraries associated with
electotechnical schools typically have plenty of these books.

------
sslnx
Make: Electronics is a good starter.

[https://www.makershed.com/products/make-
electronics-2ed](https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed)

------
9wzYQbTYsAIc
Echoing others that have mentioned Adafruit - you can’t neglect the practical
side of electronics and Adafruit has some of the best, most practical
tutorials, walkthroughs, and resources for much of the digital electronics
space. Learn by doing with an Arduino, some lights, and maybe an Ethernet add-
on or a sensor add-on.

Pick up the theory and math of EE along the way, and you should be good to go.
There’s all sorts of neat things to learn in the analog space or in the op-amp
space for those that come from a CS background.

------
beamatronic
Are we talking about digital or analog electronics? AC or DC power? For me, a
DC powered circuit with a clock and chips made sense but I never understood
how analog circuits worked until I was introduced to the concept of the LRC
circuit. It has a resistor, a capacitor and a inductor. As a software guy I am
trained to think in terms of discreet components. Then I realized that when
you put those 3 discrete components together that things really start to
happen.

------
0xf8
I much prefer reading to videos. My suggested online resource:
[http://lcmtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/](http://lcmtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/)

Print: The Art of Electronics [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-
Horowitz/dp/0521...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-
Horowitz/dp/0521809266/ref=dp_ob_image_bk)

------
raintrees
I will sometimes check the local college's course on a given subject and
obtain some/all of the required book list - I do quite a bit of private study.

------
johnsonjo
I honestly don’t know much about electronics, but there is a bundle on humble
bundle right now about hardware and electronics [1]. It might be worth
checking out. If anyone has read any of these feel free to comment which ones
are worth a read.

[1]: [https://www.humblebundle.com/books/makerspace-
books](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/makerspace-books)

------
thinnerlizzy
I second many of the tips here but also if you just want to make things happen
while you’re learning, look at modules on Adafruit and Sparkfun. Like software
libraries, they abstract away the complexity, and like software libraries you
wire them up, write a little glue code, and focus on the application. This
approach can get pricey but you will make things happen and get used to being
in the space.

------
thedirt0115
How in depth are you wanting to learn, and how do you like to learn?

You can build some cool stuff without having much in depth knowledge (there
are tons of step-by-step projects for Arduino/RaspberryPi just a Google away).

If you're the type that doesn't mind hunkering down and reading textbooks, I'd
suggest Electric Circuits (Nilsson and Riedel) paired with Fundamentals of
Microelectronics (Razavi).

~~~
rb808
Yeah I'm surprised others haven't mentioned raspberry pi.

Electronics is hard - esp building good quality electronics is hard - but its
disappearing as software eats the world. If you're on HN you can probably code
already, rpi is a great way to start with software and gradually add more
eletronics for robots or sensors etc.

------
twtw
Many universities have lab materials for introductory electronics courses
available publicly online.

For example, here are the labs for Berkeley's EE105:
[http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee105/fa15/labs.html](http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee105/fa15/labs.html)

I believe MIT OCW has several electronics courses with lab materials.

------
ausjke
I do hardware and software in parallel.

These days many electronic parts are from China, we will see the how the trade
war impacts the price at aliexpress.

------
etrautmann
1) for Analog: build yourself an audio amplifier, starting from simple
circuits in The Art of Electronics and building up to more complex amps.
Having an oscilloscope is necessary

2) For digital: arduino projects to start with microcontrollers. After that,
try an AVR dev kit if you want to go low level assembly/etc. or just move to
RPi if you want to stay at a higher level

------
blowski
That’s a bit of a wide topic. There are some good courses on Udemy and
Coursera. Is there are anything more specific you want to study?

~~~
sidyapa
It's more like I want to start with the basics and move on to building complex
things like in electronic products in the market.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
"Electronics" is a very wide field. The basics are resistors, capacitors,
inductors and active components.

But that doesn't matter if all you want to do is low-speed digital electronics
like Arduino and microcontrollers. I think the problem is that you don't know
what you don't know.

So, practical basics. Understand the concepts of Voltage and Current. Learn
what resistors and capacitors are: find a site that has basic linear circuit
theory (Ohm's law, Kirchoff's voltage & current laws). Understanding those two
components and wiring is basic to everything else. There's a lot of
misinformation out there and knowing the basics will help you avoid being
trapped by it. You don't need to know the depths of circuit theory: a good
overview will get you on more solid footing than most of the "makers" out
there.

Want to learn to build audio circuits, or RF or precision instrumentation?
Move on to active circuits: transistors, diodes, op-amps. Read _everything_
you can on proper grounding.

Want to blink LEDs and do more "real-world" interfacing & control stuff: find
a site on microcontrollers (the Adafruit learning series for Arduino is pretty
good), learn about interrupts, analog to digital conversion, digital to analog
conversion, sensors, etc.

------
jacquesm
Depending on where you are (Europe or the United States) Velleman in Europe or
Heathkit in the United States will sell you all kinds of electronics in kit
form. Get some practice with that, try to figure out how what you have just
built works (and in debugging you will learn a lot) and then later move on to
your own designs or modifications of existing designs.

~~~
dfox
One issue I have with Velleman kits is that most of them that do something
useful are built around some magic Velleman chip (ie. preprogrammed
microcontroller) and examining the construction will not teach you much.

~~~
jacquesm
Hm, that doesn't help. I guess that's their way of trying to avoid knock-offs
of their kits but it definitely takes the fun out of trying to figure out how
things work if that part is pushed into some kind of black box.

But it is also a sign of the times, rather than having a bunch of logic the
quickest way to get some project off the ground is to tie the i/o to a
microcontroller and solve the remainder of the problem in software.

------
cellularmitosis
I’ll put in a vote for Chris Gammel’s Contextual Electronics course. Well
worth the money. The emphasis on learning to make your own PCB’s early on
definitely added to the sense of reward which boosted my motivation. Something
about making a permanent circuit on a PCB is Michael more satisfying than
temporarily making something on a breadboard.

------
artsnail
I found a specific project that I really wanted to build, and copied online
tutorials. After a few cycles of that (involving different sub-systems of the
same large project) I developed increasing knowledge as a result of both the
process itself and the information I found myself naturally encountering and
reading along the way.

------
KaiserPro
Adafruit is a brilliant starting point:
[https://www.adafruit.com/category/117](https://www.adafruit.com/category/117)
a kit or two will give you the basics of _building_ and has the advantage that
its wonderfully explained.

------
jadeydi
We are collecting books from Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Here are books from
past year. I think you can read it, and post something, discuss with others.

[https://toptalkedbooks.com/topics/17](https://toptalkedbooks.com/topics/17)

------
dharma1
What's the best way to learn how to debug faults in electronics? Audio
circuits in particular?

------
NicoJuicy
Okay, I never knew I wanted to know the answer to this question untill it was
asked.

I know a lot about development and architecture. Yet, I suck at electronics.
Tried it a few ( short) times but not enough to grasp it.

Will follow up, the humble bundle deals about electrics is wasted money for
now :p

------
Koshkin
Two online resources come to mind:

[http://www.learningelectronics.net/](http://www.learningelectronics.net/)

[http://learnabout-electronics.org/](http://learnabout-electronics.org/)

Both are pretty good.

------
krcz
I have a related question, so I'll piggyback: does anyone know a book or some
materials on electronics for people with mathematics background? Where not
only methods of computations and formulas are given, but also
explanations/derivations of these.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I don't know of such a reference. It sounds like you're looking for an
electromagnetism textbook. In practice most circuit designers don't use very
much math, since it is easier to design using common circuit blocks and
heuristics.

~~~
krcz
But still there are parts where mathematics is in use, as analogue filter
design. I'd love to see something focused on that parts, but I'm afraid that
there might be nothing like that.

------
pete_b
Guitologist channel on YouTube is great for walkthrough amp repairs and
conversions

------
murkle
Start here
[http://www.technoblogy.com/show?NMX](http://www.technoblogy.com/show?NMX) and
then check out (especially) the posts tagged ATtiny85

I've made/adapted quite a few.

------
lsllc
Dave Jones' EEvblog:

[https://www.eevblog.com](https://www.eevblog.com)

Lots of really useful stuff, entertaining too. You'll have to pick through the
videos, but it's all there.

------
itomato
Starting from what level of understanding?

The old Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kits are informative and easy to use.

They're designed to teach the fundamentals; capacitance, resistance, logic
(74-series) gates, volts/amps...

------
sunstone
The Context

Electronics is a complex topic but doable with the right strategy. Suppose
instead of electronics I wanted to learn "how does my mind move my finger?".
As a person with a mind and a finger the answer is quite simple: my mind
creates the command and the finger moves. While this is true, under the covers
though the actual details are a lot more complex. The good news is that
electronics is a lot simpler than moving your finger. The trick is to learn
the simpler ideas that allow you do actual things without getting lost in the
details.

Another problem is that once someone understands an area of learning they tend
to want to teach it from a top down perspective. In the case of electronics
it's "well here's Maxwell's equations and it's all you really need". But
people tend to learn better working from the bottom up. Understanding various
simple things and building up the abstract structure as they go.

So here's my recommendation for a hierarchy of learning for electronics.
Understand that at each step you're never getting "the complete truth" but
also you're not getting actual lies.

First electronics is divided into to types of things. Passive components and
active components. A resistor is a type of passive component and a transistor
is a type of active component.

It's best to get solid foundation in passive components before moving on to
active components even though "proper electronics" is about active components.
That's because most of the time active components are actually thought of as a
kind of combination of passive components.

So start with a battery and a resistor and the equation V=IR. While this seems
way too simple it's actually the idea that used in a lot of electronics so
it's good to understand it pretty well. And it's conceptually pretty clear.

Once you feel you have a good solid, unshakeable under standing of one
resistor and a voltage supply move on to two resistors in series and then two
resistors in parallel. Calculate the voltage and current for each one.

Next keep adding resistors in arbitrary combinations up to say a dozen
resistors and become confident that you can calculate the voltage and current
regardless of any combination that is given to you.

At this point it's very helpful to think of current in terms of water flow and
voltage in terms of water pressure. (The resistor is analogous to the size of
the pipe that the water is flowing through) This analogy, with some
refinements, goes a long way in electronics so it's good to start thinking
like this.

The next step is to take a look at a circuit of a resistor and a capacitor in
series. This is the classic RC circuit that is used a lot. A capacitor can
store energy and so its characteristics can be quite different than those of
resistors. However, with a little mathematical sleight of hand capacitors can
be treated "just as if they were resistors" in many circumstances and this
makes calculations (and thought processes) quite a lot easier.

Learn the mathematical techniques of analyzing circuits made of resistors and
capacitors driven by both an AC voltage and a DC voltage for some very simple
circuits. One resistor and one capacitor is plenty for starting.

Note that these circuits have both a 'transient phase' and a 'steady state'
phase. You can think of this in terms of picking a ball up from the floor and
then dropping it. The time during which the ball is bouncing is the
'transient' stage and after the ball stops bouncing that's the 'steady state'
phase. For the most part electronics concerns itself with the 'steady state'
phase. However, a circuit driven by a steady AC (sinusoidal) voltage (or
current) and be analyzed in a steady state manner even though the values are
varying with time.

The other standard passive component is the inductor. Don't worry about it
until you get quite confident in your understanding of capacitors since
inductors are intuitively harder to figure out and mathematically both
components are treated very similarly.

Active Components While there are quite a few 'semiconductor' based active
components simplify by studying the three main types first. These are diodes,
bipolar transistors(npn, pnp) and field effect transistors (FET's). The theory
of how these devices actually work is very complicated and not really worth
effort. The diodes are quite simple to understand so start with those.

The transistors are trickier. They operate in two modes, non-liner and linear.
Non-linear is messy and best left to later. The linear regime is where these
are mostly used and is conceptually not too difficult. In fact they operate in
a manner not much different than the knob that controls water flow (there's
that metaphor again) in your shower. A transistor had three terminals one of
the terminals is used to change the resistance value between the other two
terminals.

In the case of bipolar transistors the controlling input is a current. With
FET transistors the controlling input is a voltage.

And that's it really. There are more complicated things like phase locked
loops and more niche type devices like SCR's but these are the basics.

Once you start to actually put circuits together do yourself the favor of
learning to solder and wirewrap rather than using bread boards. For a tiny bit
of extra effort you'll likely save yourself hours of frustration because your
circuit connections will be much more reliable.

------
taneq
Build stuff. Blow it up. Figure out why it blew up. Repeat.

------
hugs
Buy an Arduino-based starter kit that includes a breadboard and a bunch of
small parts like LEDs and resistors. Adafruit or Sparkfun have some good kits.

------
neverminder
[https://www.allaboutcircuits.com](https://www.allaboutcircuits.com)

~~~
dmayle
Seconded. I studied EE in university, and wanted some refresher material when
I stumbled across this resource. Excellent site!

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danimal88
growing up, this was one of my favorite books

[https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-
electronics-...](https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-
book-ever-written/)

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crtlaltdel
i did this before youtube was a thing by purchasing a book covering analog
circuits and digital circuits. from there it was a matter of doing the work.

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patrickg_zill
IF you can, find a maker space and visit it.

There are guys with 30years' of experience in some of them and they can set
you on the right path. Take their soldering class or intro class, and try to
get some hands-on help with volt meters and oscilloscopes.

