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Learn electronics by practice

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Re: Learn electronics by practice

#51

Post by linker3000 »

hospitalJail wrote: post #23

If I learned this way, it would have been off-putting. So much nicer to grab an ardunio, motor, led, some sensors, etc... Then graduate to esp8266/esp32. But maybe I'm thinking embedded and my 2 years as an electrical engineer filled in some of the gaps when calculating things. Eh, just my opinion.

If that's the route you want to take then that's absolutely fine.

That area of electronics is "modular digital electronics" and doesn't take you through the principles of basic passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and then into analogue circuit theory and semiconductors, digital logic and so on.

The only thing that bugs me is when that approach is suggested as a response to 'how do I learn electronics' without any qualification or elaboration.

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#52

Post by aryamaan »

vector_spaces wrote: post #38

I'm a math dropout, now self-taught software engineer who has been spending the summer filling in gaps in my CS education. Programming language implementation finally started to click for me -- bytecode interpreters and compilers are much less intimidating for me than they were several months ago. And now having implemented my own (toy) interpreters, I'm interested for the first time in understanding some of the nitt…

Share more about your journey. These days I am feeling to having an interest rising about such things. Picked Codes book one night and got really hooked up.

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#53

Post by Hunpeter »

tinco wrote: post #48
SanderNL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are plenty clever. This is the equivalent of introducing programming by giving a piece of ARM assembly and stating that it is immediately obvious that we are dealing with a merge sort implementation. I’m not sure why, but I see this often in other domains as well. Math in particular. I guess it’s the curse of knowledge.

Except that when I was in highschool, programming in assembly was not in the curriculum, but designing simple logic circuits was. I am pretty sure we practiced designing a half adder in physics class as part of the electronics chapters. The bad part of the writing is the assumption that all that technical language and knowledge is stil at the top of your memory when you just picked up this book.

I wish we had done anything of that sort in my high school.

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#54

Post by yard2010 »

vector_spaces wrote: post #38

I'm a math dropout, now self-taught software engineer who has been spending the summer filling in gaps in my CS education. Programming language implementation finally started to click for me -- bytecode interpreters and compilers are much less intimidating for me than they were several months ago. And now having implemented my own (toy) interpreters, I'm interested for the first time in understanding some of the nitt…

Nand2tetris[0] is hands down the best course I took in my CS BSc, Nissan and Shocken did such a wonderful job making this great content accessible. It was a fun and rewarding experience in which I built a toy computer bottom-up from scratch.

[0] https://www.nand2tetris.org/

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#55

Post by linker3000 »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #15
teleforce wrote: post #12

Please check this book by Ex-Google, Cisco, Sun engineer and adjunct professor of UC Berkeley,Ed Lipiansky on electronics fundamentals (analog and digital): Electrical, Electronics, and Digital Hardware Essentials for Scientists and Engineers: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Electrical,+Electronics,+and+Dig...

Thanks for sharing! Does this teach one how to design circuits too? Also, someone suggested ‘basic electronics: theory and practice’ by Westcott & Westcott [0] for learning hobby electronics. Could someone familiar with both explain how they compare? 0: https://books.google.com/books/about/Basic_Electronics.html?...

The former is more abstract on individual component theory and dives more deeply into the maths as it goes along. It is best suited to study for an electronics certification (or to supplement a main cert such as electrical engineering) if you want to understand the whole gamut of basic principles because, for example, you will be designing complete analogue and digital circuits from scratch.

The Westcotts' book is more practical and gets stuck in to building things more quickly. It's not a course syllabus type book and is better for the hobbyist/tinkerer working with tried-and tested, classic chips (timers, amplifiers) and platforms (Raspberry Pi, Arduino).

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#56

Post by nottorp »

kaishiro wrote: post #24

I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…

> Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics?

Hmm did you miss the introductory chapter that starts with diodes, transistors and basic logic gates that they told you vaguely about in high school physics?

There's quite a bit of info before getting to using the TTL chips.

Having played a bit with redstone circuits in Minecraft helps too - or knowing about diodes and transistors when doing redstone in Minecraft helps :)

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#57

Post by SanderNL »

tinco wrote: post #48
SanderNL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are plenty clever. This is the equivalent of introducing programming by giving a piece of ARM assembly and stating that it is immediately obvious that we are dealing with a merge sort implementation. I’m not sure why, but I see this often in other domains as well. Math in particular. I guess it’s the curse of knowledge.

Except that when I was in highschool, programming in assembly was not in the curriculum, but designing simple logic circuits was. I am pretty sure we practiced designing a half adder in physics class as part of the electronics chapters. The bad part of the writing is the assumption that all that technical language and knowledge is stil at the top of your memory when you just picked up this book.

I don’t know what high school you were in, but that is not the norm.

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#58

Post by [deleted] »

nottorp wrote: post #56
kaishiro wrote: post #24

I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…

> Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics? Hmm did you miss the introductory chapter that starts with diodes, transistors and basic logic gates that they told you vaguely about in high school physics? There's quite a bit of info before getting to using the TTL chips. Having played a bit with redstone circuits in Minecraft helps too - or knowing about diodes and transistors when doing redstone…

[deleted]

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#59

Post by Mraedis »

kaishiro wrote: post #24

I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…

The real start is on the next pages which goes into _real_ deep intro for Diodes and transistors. I think it was just a matter of giving an intro but overseeing that people don't know what these symbols mean.

For me, an electronics engineer by degree (not by trade), it was so basic I could see the author forgetting this.

Re: Learn electronics by practice

#60

Post by agnosticmantis »

linker3000 wrote: post #55
agnosticmantis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing! Does this teach one how to design circuits too? Also, someone suggested ‘basic electronics: theory and practice’ by Westcott & Westcott [0] for learning hobby electronics. Could someone familiar with both explain how they compare? 0: https://books.google.com/books/about/Basic_Electronics.html?...

The former is more abstract on individual component theory and dives more deeply into the maths as it goes along. It is best suited to study for an electronics certification (or to supplement a main cert such as electrical engineering) if you want to understand the whole gamut of basic principles because, for example, you will be designing complete analogue and digital circuits from scratch. The Westcotts' book is mo…

Thanks for the comparison!
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