71–80 of 117 posts
I've been thinking about trying to build a radio from scratch lately. Any chance a kit like that's in there?
I've not read it, but I've heard good things about it.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Transistor-Radios-High-Per...
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I find SMT assembly somewhat easier than through hole especially with a good temperature controlled iron. My experience level is just fixing up PCBs or adding a few parts while developing firmware at work.
I find there is a curve in learning how to solder SMT. At first it's really difficult because of fear from the small size, sometimes the price of components, and the lack of proper equipment. At some point you learn how your hands work, what techniques work, and how things flow; suddenly then things become easy and through-hole seems like a boring chore. My enlightenment came with a good Hakko iron and the satisfacti…
Stanford EE just set up a maker space, called Lab 64. I'm going to find out what tools they use, and how they teach soldering. Stanford EE labs have big "No Pb" signs; they insist on lead-free soldering.
omgponies... you can now... build electronics at home. using their monthly kits!!!!!! omg....
My issue with learning electronics is that there's a steep gap between "plug this into that" and "plug this into that because x ". I want to learn how to reason about the latter. Most resources I've seen like this don't give you that, they just have a bunch of prefab projects and lead you through them with the former strategy. Fortunately I've been able to learn some of the latter on my own but it would be great to s…
I recommend The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill. I'm an electrical engineer and in my experience most EE courses are very math heavy. This is because the theory behind electronics is very math heavy. Many people don't enjoy doing math problems in their spare time, though. The thing is that after you get past the theory and into the practice, the math mostly drops away as you learn abstractions and little tri…
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-Electronics-Hands-Course...
My issue with learning electronics is that there's a steep gap between "plug this into that" and "plug this into that because x ". I want to learn how to reason about the latter. Most resources I've seen like this don't give you that, they just have a bunch of prefab projects and lead you through them with the former strategy. Fortunately I've been able to learn some of the latter on my own but it would be great to s…
Step 1: Buy Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims, or any other book by him. Step 2: Build all the projects in his books. You'll only need a proto board and a few other cheap components. You'll build up an intuition in electronics by doing all these projects. If you want to throw a microcontroller in the mix, get the cheap TI MSP430 Launchpad- it's about $5, and you can use C or Arduino.
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I find there is a curve in learning how to solder SMT. At first it's really difficult because of fear from the small size, sometimes the price of components, and the lack of proper equipment. At some point you learn how your hands work, what techniques work, and how things flow; suddenly then things become easy and through-hole seems like a boring chore. My enlightenment came with a good Hakko iron and the satisfacti…
Leaded solder, or lead-free? What I've been reading is that at the hobbyist level, most people are still using leaded solder. The tight temperature tolerances of lead-free are hard. I've tried hand-soldering with lead-free solder, but keep getting cold solder joints. Stanford EE just set up a maker space, called Lab 64. I'm going to find out what tools they use, and how they teach soldering. Stanford EE labs have big…
We start by giving the kids hot air and tweezers to harvest some parts from an old board, then have them install them on a scrap proto board no one needs any more
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It won't take too much to feel confident soldering. Watch a few videos, do some intentional practice, and you'll be good in no time. I just kept building projects and I'm fine now.
I can solder. It's just that I have to redo 1/3 of them and most of the times the solder joint is too cold. (I have a Chemistry specialization in secondary school. We learned a bit about electric circuits including soldering, but it's not my specialization.) Anyway, I suspect that non-soldering projects may have a bigger audience.
Do that and you'll never get a cold joint
The weak spot in all three seems to be the curriculum.
So in general I love that this takes the 'get the stuff' problem out of the way. Sure you can buy a book on transistor projects or computer projects, but then you have to source the parts and move from there. The same issue happens with the "starter kits".
Back in the 80's and 90's a number of people made "-in-1" electronic boxes. These usually had the components mounted on a substrate and usually came in two flavors, in the first flavor everything was mounted on the substrate and you just stuck wire between springs to make your circuits[1]. Then they added a breadboard and you could wire up the basic circuit on the breadboard with the knobs and such around it[2]. And then even some compute stuff built in[3].
So what generally makes these things engaging are either they are easy to start and get more interesting as you build on your knowledge, or they culminate into something useful. There was an RCA technician training course where you built all of the components of a color television and then assembled them into the final unit[4]. You got a color TV out of it and a lucrative career in television repair :-).
I'm not trying to be dismissive of this idea, I'm trying to say that these ideas work best when they have an editorial position, a path, start points and end points. Imagine a web design "box" type product where each month you got a box with some aspect of web site design. It would include exercises and text book type material, quizzes and working problems so that at the end of each month you had mastered some part of the web service stack. So perhaps your first month would be about putting up a web server, the second month about getting keys so that it can be secured with SSL, then the third month CSS that helps style the pages, and the fourth month maybe PHP or a JS module. Each month with a digestable bit that assumes you're going to spend perhaps one or two evenings a week on the material. At the end of the year you have a full web app deployed on a droplet or something. But every month you get something that works and something that builds on the overall thing.
Electronics can do that if you pick a specific area of interest, so sensors or computers or radio or audio.
An editorial spin like that could take the box idea and take it to a whole new level I think.
[1] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/9141qwL5XvL...
[2] http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NT...
[3] http://www.elenco.com/product/productdetails/project_labs=NT...
[4] https://books.google.com/books?id=wi0DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA39&lpg=P...
