On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 23:39:01 -0700 (PDT) Nicholas Cannon <nicholascann...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I really enjoy engineering at school and we make like fighting robots and > stuff(simple stuff of course) and i really enjoy it. I have got a raspberry > pi and a decent understanding of python and i want to do make stuff like RC > cars and drones and stuff. Also I like electronics. Is there any good places > to learn all this stuff like down to the basics of electronics because I have > looked around and all the books I have seen just throw some electronics > together and say yep thats done. I would like to work on my own projects > after I get a grip on the basics. Where could I find some good recourses on > this stuff. Learn electronics properly, then start thinking about interfacing one to the other. I say this as a professional circuit designer who spends a whole mess of time automating things in Python. If you don't have a firm grasp of the underlying basics of electronics as its own thing, trying to interface will eat you alive with problems that you don't understand because you can't understand the circuitry. The best teaching electronics resource I know, hands down, is Horowitz and Hill's "The Art of Electronics". The second edition is ancient now, but still will teach you everything you need to know. Even used copies are a bit expensive. That's because it's an excellent book. It's worth the money. Next, to learn electronics you need to do electronics. Theory talks the walk, molten lead walks the walk. That means copper boards, and a soldering iron, and parts, and a DVM, and an oscilloscope. A function generator is a great thing to have as well, but if desperately necessary you can live without one. You're still in school, so you hopefully have an EE lab there. Take advantage of it. If you don't, find some local hackerspace with some gear, otherwise getting up and running will cost you a solid $1200 just in gear. LTSpice is a great free simulator, and the simulator can help you understand what you should be seeing, but there's no substitute for getting your hands dirty. Start by building the simple stuff: resistor dividers, RC low pass filters, etc. They're trivial, they're boring, and you already understand what they should do. Do them anyhow, you need to get lead under your fingernails and a feel for how to make a decent solder joint while you're still working the easy stuff because if your solder's crap when you start trying to do the more complex stuff you'll never figure it out. Work your way through AofE. Do the problems, build the circuits. Plan on it taking a solid year before you become "good" at it; you're young and have it to spend. Actually do all that and you'll understand as much about circuits as anyone they're giving an EE degree to these days. Then you can start. -- Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com Email address domain is currently out of order. See above to fix. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
