I’ve been reading a hell of a lot (almost all tutorial on sparkfun as well as other tutorial and books). They all teach you the same basic elements (electricity, ohm’s law, voltage divider, serial/parralel communication and so on), and they tell you you can play with IC/Microcontroller to do amazing stuff.
Although I’m starting to see the big picture, I kinda find it hard to fill the gap between these tutorial and how to actually build something real.
I’m assuming that a voltage divider might be used to give the correct voltage to different items on your circuit (like a IC might require a lower voltage that what powers your entire circuit), but how do we actually glue everything together? I mean how do I know if I should use a capacitor in front of an IC to prevent voltage/current variation that would damage it? Is this the kind of info that’s available on data sheet of a product?
Learn the difference between voltage supply and signal voltage. A divider works well for the latter, not so well for the former. Try also reading about level translators.
Do a search on “bypass capacitor”, or read the datasheet for the IC. Most datasheets will include a statement of required bypass if there is one. I suggest you read and study several datasheets. If you read enough of them, you will get a feel for how the parts are to be used. Don’t just read the prose, that usually comes from the marketing department. Make sure you understand the tables, test & operating conditions, the logic conditions and the graphs, those come from engineering and may or may not agree with the marketing.
Many of us learn better by working to apply the new info to a specific task. Try projects, simple ones at first, to build your skills. SparkFun has many kits and project pieces as do many other vendors (pololu, mouser, jameco, etc). Start with kits, but to keep learning you will eventually need to go beyond them and do your own thing. Wade into the shallow end of the pool by “enhancing” or “hacking” a kit to do something more or different. Or jump into the deep end by doing something from scratch. Either of these can be pursuing somebody else’s idea or one you dream up yourself.