Maybe it’s different in other parts of the country, but “no one” " I’ve ever met in Kentucky knows sh#t about electronics… Including myself!
It’s not to say I’m uninterested. Would someone mind suggesting to me a relatively detailed roadmap of how to get from zero to being articulate on a forum like this.
Keep in mind, formal school isn’t probable, and I have no exposure to this material day in and day out.
Example:
Study “xyz” and “####”
for 2 hours per day, and in about 3 years you might know whats up"
(note: ultimately I’d like to build ‘D.I.Y. GPS applications’)
Well it would be a good start to learn microcontrollers, they will get you somewhere with electronics, programming and how everything fits together.
Sparkfun carry a range of picaxe products, they are a ‘higher level’ product which will give you a relativley easy aproach to electronics and basic circuits. Also check out http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/ as there are some good tutorials on how to get simple bits interfaced (switches, LED’s, motors etc.). Also the programming language is an easy starting point, altough bear in mind that in electonics the higher you go the less functionaility you get, so a picaxe is very limiting if you want to start processing data.
Once you have an LED blinking and perhaps a little tic-tac-toe going on then look at proper microcontrollers. You will be surprised at how easy the electronics are for ‘digital’ circuits, for example a GPS logger requires a voltage regulator, a microcontroller, a gps unit and possibly some storeage. You then look at datasheets, or just look at other peoples circuits! Most interfacing is connecting the pins, the hard bit is the code
Anyhow, have a look at the picaxe 18X experimenters pack, looks to be quite useful.
Getting a good background of the hows and whys of electronics will be helpful as you work towards your GPS enabled projects. For an introduction to microcomputers, I agree that the PICAXE would be a good choice. Revolution (the makers of the PICAXE) have a produced a line of products and documentation that work very well for educators (even self-educators like yourself).
Before that, however, you might want to start at a more fundamental level (voltage, current, etc.). Radio Shack has a very nice electronics lab (catalog 28-280) that covers both analog and digital theory. You get lots of parts and a nice prototyping area that you can use for other projects. You can find them on eBay (that’s where I bought the one for my son). If you go the eBay route, be sure you ask about the condition of the unit as there are lots of parts and you would want to make sure you get as close to the complete set as possible.
Consider studying the materials that are used to prepare for an amateur radio license. That is how I got my start many years ago. There might be a local amateur radio club in your area and you can certainly take advantage of the materials available on the net. I especially liked the old Ameco amateur radio theory books as they presented the material in a way that was easier for me to grasp. If you can find any of them, I think that you will find them helpful. Check eBay. I haven’t seen any of their newer materials, but here is the link to the [Ameco site. The [American Radio Relay League also has a number of resources.](http://www.arrl.org)](Ameco)
I started taking apart everything I could get my teeth on since I remember. There wasn’t one thing untouched in the house when I grew up. I took apart everything. Usually I could put things back together, but when I couldn’t, I made other things with the parts. The library back then was my favorite hang out, because the internet didn’t exist. Those books helped me learn new ways to hook up parts, because smoke gets old quick. I eventually got my electrical engineering degree, but haven’t got an amateur radio license yet. Those amateur radio books were the wealthiest sources of electronics I have enjoyed over the years.
I agree with Andrew02E. If you don’t know Ohm’s Law and Watt’s Law, you really can’t do much.
I started with a “HeathKit Jr. 36” when I was a kid, it was like a RadioShack lab, with parts you could put together different ways and instructions for circuits to assemble. I had lots of fun putting stuff together and learned some stuff, but never got beyond building the projects that it gave instructions for. Then I took about a year and a half of electronics in high school, which is where I learned more about how to put stuff together without relying on someone else’s design. We got up through DC, AC, and a fair amount of stuff using tubes (this was back in the 70’s). I switched to computer programming about the time we were starting to cover semiconductors. I can figure out how to use an FET because that’s just like a triode tube, but regular transistors still give me problems. Since then I haven’t done any formal studying, other than learning what I needed to know for a given hobby project (“I need to know USB for this project? Ok, I guess I’ll learn USB.”).
That (and my computer programming experience since then) gave me enough knowledge that I can read a datasheet and figure out how stuff needs to go together. The vast majority of what I’ve needed/wanted to do has been mostly digital logic and mcu stuff, which is largely “connect the pins” once you have a proper voltage supply. I haven’t had to touch a discrete transistor in years. I draw upon my programming experience as much as my electronics experience, since a lot of the real work gets done in the firmware.
But without Ohm’s Law, how would I know what resistor to use to limit the current to an LED connected to 12V?
Then start from the little bits and work up, I think it might be a bit unhelpful to dive straight into microcontrollers without discovering some of the curves that the real world has a nasty habit of throwing at you.
I started by buying some assortments of resistors, capacitors, transistors and LEDs, and worked through some simple circuits on plug in breadboard - oscillators, logic gates etc. Then moved on to using discrete logic ICs, such as the 74 series and 4000 series (started with 4000 since it is less fussy about supply voltage), culminating in building an RS232 driven digital display with not a microcontroller in sight. This taught me about the importance of decoupling, timing, glitches and how to get rid of them.
Then onto microprocessors and microcontrollers - the venerable Z80 for the microprocessor, and the AVR for microcontrollers.
If you want one great source for learning electronics, go no further than here:
Book: AOE - Art of Electronics
by
Horowitz and Hill
Worth many times it’s price.
The advice of all the others who replied is excellent as well
The time has come where you can learn nearly anything by just surfing the web. But to really get to know it, you need to tinker. Build simple circuits, check them out and see why they work or why they don’t work. In this realm, there is no failure: there is only “learn”.
Also, expect to WORK for your knowledge. No one is born knowing this stuff; you have to work to get ahead.
Phattie Mcgee:
But what if you have no programming background and have tried to learn C and sucked at it? is there still hope for people like us?
What did you find challenging about learning to program in C? Was it C specific or the programming concepts themselves? Although C (arguably) isn’t the easiest language to start with, it is powerful and concise. From my experience, pointers seem to throw a lot of people in the beginning. If your difficulties lie in the concepts themselves, you will probably have problems with any computer language. However, if you take a granular approach and learn things a little bit at a time, you will amaze yourself in time.
PICAXE looks easy but how much can you really do with it?
Quite a lot and probably everything a beginning enthusiast will ever need to do as they learn about micro controllers. True, you don’t have the power to get real close to the silicon, but you’re getting a proven, easy-to-use, and inexpensive platform (check out the flow chart option in the PICAXE IDE). And the concepts you learn will be applicable for almost any controller platform.
AVR looks to be robust enough to handle most anything but you need to know C to take advantage of it.
Yes, the AVR is a very nice chip family. C isn’t the only language available on that platform. There are several dialects of BASIC as well as assembler.
I went and found the book, its the 2nd edition and while I was at it I picked up Wiley - Electronics for Dummies… The dummies books are great for lite reading. So im going to start reading those and hopefully soon start building something, its hard for me to make something if it doesn’t have a practical use, just to learn isn’t enough it must DO something (even a blinkie is almost to little) but thanks a lot for your post!
Riden:
I think it may of been the whole way I was being taught when I go back and look at it, The teacher was from the advanced C coarse because the normal guy wasn’t there for some reason… Maybe I’ll look into it again, any suggestions on books or online stuff?
Can a PIC use a CMOS camera? maybe that’s a weird question, but I am unsure of what all they can do :?
Can a PIC use a CMOS camera? maybe that’s a weird question, but I am unsure of what all they can do Confused
No, PIC’s don’t have eyes so they can’t see the photo!
Just kidding! Yes, you can control a CMOS camera with a PIC. But most cameras will produce a larger image than can be held in memory at one time for a PIC. A PIC can pump the image data out a comm port to some other device such as MMC/SD cards or to a local RAM chip, or send out to a radio link, etc.
You could probably do some very elementary image analysis to use one to guide a robot but it would be an interesting task! Probably throw away 9 lines out of 10 and look for brightness changes or something…
Cameras look like shift registers more or less so the data gets clocked out and then it’s up to you to figure out what to do with pixels that come flying at you.
Just thought of one more resource that I think all beginners should know about. A often heard lament is “I can’t afford to buy lab equipment so experimenting is impossible”. :roll:
And since I feel experimenting is almost more valuable than learning, not quite but almost, whats a beginner to do? Get SPICE! In particular, download Switchercad spice program from Linear Technology
What does this do? It lets you draw schematics on the screen of electronic circuits. Start with simple resistors and capacitors. Add a voltage source. Run the sim, see voltage and current waveforms. Change part values, run again, see new waveforms. Add transistors, inductors, diodes; make a super whammydyne biphasic transmogulator. See it work before your eyes.
It takes the place of oscilloscopes and dvms and function generators while you learn. Yes, it can give bogus results if used in a bogus fashion. But if you first setup circuits as shown in your text book and verify that you get the same results, then you have a reality check.
Plus they have libraries of their IC’s so you can really get cool stuff up and running. We use this at work to do preliminary design on switching power supplies. Very useful indeed.
You’ve gotten a lot of good advice so far. I second the use of switchercad though, it’s much more fun to let the smoke out of various devices…
One thing that has helped me to pick up things fast is to read read read. Read everything you can get your hands on. I even read the ads in electronics magazines. Read the various forums. Books, of course. Get device datasheets and pour over them. The manufacturers also have things called application notes which show practical use of the devices they make. Get’m and read’m. Even if you don’t understand it completely, seeing 17 different takes on the same thing - eventually something will gel. Just being familiar with the terminology will help. And, perhaps the most important thing to read are the device datasheets. when I first started out, I think I got maybe 10% of what they were saying but the exposure was important.
Jack: Thanks so much, im sure this thread will be a great help to whoever else is in need of guidance from experienced people as yourself!
What I wanted to do with the camera was setup a snap shot of people that get to close to my car/house/front door/my wife’s cat getting to close to the sofa… building a robot would be WAY to much for me right and would most likely discourage me, which I don’t want (very cool idea though)
I downloaded that switchercad and it looks awesome, now I just need to figure it out! but how cool is that, you can make circuits and then test them without spending a dime! truly awesome! Thanks Jack!
Philba: Thank you for recommending the datasheet reading, there is ALOT of information in those, I just need to learn to understand it and how it all comes together… in time I guess I will though
Did either of you goto school? what did you take? I’m a Apprentice Electrician so I understand Ohms law, but not all the fancy words like I2C, FIFO, etc. Is there a website (other than google) which explains what the terms mean in a mundane kinda way?
Phattie Mcgee:
I’m a Apprentice Electrician so I understand Ohms law, but not all the fancy words like I2C, FIFO, etc. Is there a website (other than google) which explains what the terms mean in a mundane kinda way?
Wikipedia is often pretty good for that sort of thing.
I took a few classes in college. But I tinkered with this stuff as a kid and kept on tinkering after college. Back in the day, (yes, there was a day before the internet), IC companies published data books (on paper) with all the data sheets. The best companies published ap-notes. I collected the best data books and read and Read and READ those ap-notes until I nearly memorized them. Soon, I could open a new schematic and spot all the stuff stage by stage… here’s an inverting summing amp, this is a precision rectifier, here’s the digital mux and there’s the memory chips, etc. Just by looking. Once you see real world examples of the stuff in the books, it all gels quickly.
Those ap-notes are still mostly available on the net. Who has good ones?
National Semi, Linear Technology, Maxim, Analog Devices, TI, Zetex, and so on. A few of many good writers: Bob Pease, Jim Williams, Don Lancaster, Walter Jung, and many more I have forgotten. Google knows. And last but not least are forums like Sparkfun. Ask and ye shall receive. Do your homework, study and learn. Easy, right?
If you’re concerned about learning C as well as knowledge of registers, etc the ARMmite from Coridium runs a 32 bit ARM at 60 MHz, programmable with their free Basic (10 million lines of codes/sec ) (or C) via USB for $50.
Since then I haven’t done any formal studying, other than learning what I needed to know for a given hobby project (“I need to know USB for this project? Ok, I guess I’ll learn USB.”).
I look forward to hearing from everyone
