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Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#101

Post by fuzztester »

fuzztester wrote: post #67

by first learning practical electronics. you have to know how to make it before you can break it or repair it. jk, but dammit, man, sometimes I wish that I had learned practical electronics in my school and college days. in fact, iirc, there was a book by that exact name, practical electronics, by an author named bernard grob. it was in our school library. I just googled. the book is still around. https://www.amazon.…

Wow. I had said "it might have had" into my mic, but Google voice typing changed it to:

>it my day had

that's speech recognition for you. some of the mistakes it makes are even funnier, particularly when a non English speaker is speaking into the mic, like me.

for example it automatically changed the "some of the" to samudra, which is Hindi and Sanskrit for sea or ocean. I've seen many more such errors in that category.

but I have to say that there are huge amounts of improvement in the quality of the recognition over the last some years, since I first started using a phone which had that feature.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#103

Post by pyb »

kazinator wrote: post #63

To debug electronics effectively, you cannot underestimate how much EE knowledge is needed. Start with something like The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Winfield. An example of the kinds of EE stuff you don't heave to know to be an effective troubleshooter of basic issues, might be, oh, say, what it means for the poles of a transfer function lie in the left half of the s-plane.

Agree that a foundation in EE is needed, however AoE is not a beginner book.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#104

Post by moepstar »

BigCatStuff wrote: post #29
ryandrake wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube videos are great -if- the problem you're having is exactly the same as the problem the YouTuber is solving. For example, I was able to replace the HDMI capacitors on my A/V receiver because I lucked upon a YT video where the problem I was having was identical to the problem the YouTuber was solving. So it was basically, buy these capacitors, replace them, and off you go. Repair usually just requires basic sol…

I agree that the diagnosis and visual inspection is the most important skill in fixing random items. In the channels that I suggested, all of them go into the repair not knowing what the fault actually is. They take the viewer through the whole diagnosis, and they (with the exception of Electronics Repair School) are not electronics technicians. Once a person has seen enough different ways of diagnosing items (by wat…

What _i'm_ missing from those videos is - while they do go through the steps finding the fault - usually don't really explain their reasoning why they suspect component a, b, c to be faulty and how exactly a good (or bad) component would behave...

Might not be the case for all the vids of course, but for those i watched i never had that "ah, that's how it works" gotcha moment...

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#105

Post by lsharkey602 »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #93
atonse wrote: post #24

Louis Rossmann’s electronics guide was the first time these concepts truly clicked for me: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbIsAWN2ltOWmriIdOc5Cti... Apart from that, just fix broken stuff. Practice like any other skill, like others have said. Like decide what skills to learn based on what’s broken. Need to solder something together? Buy the soldering iron. Need to figure out which capacitor you need to replace…

I loved Rossman's explanation of the transistor. Transistor is just a controllable resistor. So simple. No one told me this. I could have saved years!

I'll just say, "thank you".

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#106

Post by kazinator »

pyb wrote: post #103
kazinator wrote: post #63

To debug electronics effectively, you cannot underestimate how much EE knowledge is needed. Start with something like The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Winfield. An example of the kinds of EE stuff you don't heave to know to be an effective troubleshooter of basic issues, might be, oh, say, what it means for the poles of a transfer function lie in the left half of the s-plane.

Agree that a foundation in EE is needed, however AoE is not a beginner book.

AoE is probably a good book for that kind of "beginner" who has a degree in a STEM discipline (or in the middle of getting one), but doesn't know electronics.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#108

Post by HocusLocus »

I recommend highly Mend It Mark ( https://www.youtube.com/MendItMark ) ... his techniques are solid and over time he has fixed one of everything. Important is the focus on standard attacks on the problem. Even his occasional mistakes and changes of tactics are well explained and make valuable lessons of their own.

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#109

Post by mrheosuper »

luxcem wrote: post #81
mrheosuper wrote: post #75

I believe the best way to learn is getting your hand dirty. Take thing apart, try to understand how it works. Start with simple thing: A heater, a drill, etc. You won't learn much if you take apart complex gadget like smartphone. Also learn common failure mode: MLCC usually short itself, or old devices usually have dried out capacitor. For repairing equipment, you dont need high-end equipment from fluke or keysight.…

For someone that try to learn electronics this comments is really hard to understand. What's "common failure mode", "MLCC", "DMM"? What does "old devices usually have dried out capacitor" means?

Sorry for that, i saw other replies has explained, so feel free to reference to it

Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?

#110

Post by Terretta »

CommenterPerson wrote: post #20

"Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims, if you don't know basic electronics. It's a delightful hand drawn book, even if you do. Also some basic tools. Then, all you need is a broken gadget. If you search for the symptoms, and the name / brand of the gadget, you'll find the most likely causes. Open it up and check for the simplest / most probable cause, and work through them. My most recent fix was on a wash…

This is a great suggestion.

Although, I'm not sure you should start writing software by debugging code that doesn't work, or electronics by fixing something broken.

I think assembling some parts to make a basic thing that works is better.

So first, this book, and then find an equivalent of the 70s and 80s Radio Shack (US) or Tandy (EU) electronic breadboard and parts "build anything electronic" kits.

Then build stuff. Not Arduino stuff, more basic. The things those kits suggest making. Understand why they are the parts they are, in the wiring circuits they are.

Then tweak those to "make your own" to see if you know what the parts are and do and how they combine.

THEN start seeing if you can debug what's broken (and maybe tap into the nothing-but-YouTube suggestions here when it gets to specific things to fix, where seeing can be helpful).

RadioShack/Tandy used to have a series of handbooks like the "Getting Started in Electronics" book but focused more narrowly on classes of things you'd want to repair with both theory (how it works) and practice (therefore what to debug). They were blue covers and quite plain, if I recall.

You don't need courses, but readable/absorbable references to theory and practice for beginner tradespersons are actually great.

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