is it possible to learn electronics through self study?

P

Prabu

Guest
Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks
 
I personally believe it is possible to learn electronics through self study,
but it is a lot harder to do so on one's own. I taught myself the
fundamentals while in high school (where there was no electronics course at
he time) and then went to a trade school to get the piece of paper that said
I knew something, and found that having a good teacher gave me a much better
"big picture" view of how it all worked together. For myself, would
recommend Grob's Basic Electronics for the fundamentals, and Electronic
Principles by Malvino for the more advanced topics (like transistor biasing,
etc.) Post your questions, and someone will at least try to answer them for
you. And the net is full of information, you just have to ask the right
questions. Google is your friend there.

Dave

"Prabu" <prabuinet@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:47cfc955-a685-4735-b642-a044da93fb43@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:34:47 -0700 (PDT), Prabu <prabuinet@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!
Click to expand...
Get a copy of "The Art of Electronics" and its companion "Student Manual
for The Art of Electronics." Read the main text, work through the
exercises in the student manual.

You'll need access to some parts and test equipment. You can use SPICE
to simulate some things and as a pseudo test and measurement environment
but you'll need to build some real circuits as well.

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
 
On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:56:43 -0500, "Dave" <db5151@hotmail.com> wrote:

I personally believe it is possible to learn electronics through self study,
but it is a lot harder to do so on one's own. I taught myself the
fundamentals while in high school (where there was no electronics course at
he time) and then went to a trade school to get the piece of paper that said
I knew something, and found that having a good teacher gave me a much better
"big picture" view of how it all worked together. For myself, would
recommend Grob's Basic Electronics for the fundamentals, and Electronic
Principles by Malvino for the more advanced topics (like transistor biasing,
etc.) Post your questions, and someone will at least try to answer them for
you. And the net is full of information, you just have to ask the right
questions. Google is your friend there.
Click to expand...
---
Google is also your friend WRT to USENET posting conventions.

From:

http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12348&topic=250

"Summarize what you're following up.

When you click "Reply" under "show options" to follow up an existing
article, Google Groups includes the full article in quotes, with the
cursor at the top of the article. Tempting though it is to just start
typing your message, please STOP and do two things first.
Look at the quoted text and remove parts that are irrelevant.
Then, go to the BOTTOM of the article and start typing there.
Doing this makes it much easier for your readers to get through your
post. They'll have a reminder of the relevant text before your
comment, but won't have to re-read the entire article.
And if your reply appears on a site before the original article does,
they'll get the gist of what you're talking about."


In short, don't top post.

JF
 
Prabu wrote:
Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks
Click to expand...
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/

Try this url, let us know what you think. I don't remember who
originally posted that link - but whoever it is should get the
thanks.

Ed
 
"John Fields" <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message
news:gqkcs4175ep3p2k6tlgclc2qtnobk2oa15@4ax.com...
snip

---
Google is also your friend WRT to USENET posting conventions.

From:

http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12348&topic=250

"Summarize what you're following up.

When you click "Reply" under "show options" to follow up an existing
article, Google Groups includes the full article in quotes, with the
cursor at the top of the article. Tempting though it is to just start
typing your message, please STOP and do two things first.
Look at the quoted text and remove parts that are irrelevant.
Then, go to the BOTTOM of the article and start typing there.
Doing this makes it much easier for your readers to get through your
post. They'll have a reminder of the relevant text before your
comment, but won't have to re-read the entire article.
And if your reply appears on a site before the original article does,
they'll get the gist of what you're talking about."


In short, don't top post.

JF
Click to expand...
Apologies. Will try to remember, and not repeat.

Hope this is better...

Thanks.

Dave
 
Prabu <prabuinet@gmail.com> wrote in news:47cfc955-a685-4735-b642-
a044da93fb43@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com:

Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks
Click to expand...
FWIW, that's what I've been trying to do.

In th eend, it mainyl depends upon one's aptitude. My strong aptitudes are
mostly right-brain/conceptual-analytical/visual, whereas my weakest point has
always been Math and related linear-logical subjects.

There are entire books on-line - I also bought a couple - "Practical
Electronics for Inventors" is IMO great! I still needed to fill in a bit
with other references, including my old Physics text from University (yup, I
took 101 and 102 - but stank at it) but the latter was because PEfI was
confusing re: Capacitors.

One of the most confusing thing is that different book use different symbols
for some things - most common seems to be "E" versus "V" for Volts, but the
more egregious IMO is C sometimes meaning "capacitance" and sometimes meaning
"charge".

You also have to keep track, in the formulae, of those pesky prefixes, such
as micro-, milli-, mega-, and so on.


I've been finding it useful to write up my own "book" or notes, collecting
all the various formulae, because the books don't necessarily do a great job
of relating one section with another and explaining how it all fits together.

OTOH, unilke me!, people with an aptitude for electronics can "see" in their
heads how it all fits together. So if you are like that, self-teaching
shouldn't be at all bad.

In case you're wondering, I'm teaching myself becuase i have one specific
thing I want to do - I'm very "goal-oriented" in that I tend to learn what I
need to so as to do something sepcific, make a specific item/project. THat
probalby also makes it more difficult, because I don't have the patience to
"start from the beginning and learn it all through". If you have a
generalized interest in electronics itself, that, like natural aptitude for
math-related topics, will also make it easier.



In the meantime, try the links below as a starting-point.

HTH!

- Kris


Best:
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/l_sitemap.html
Alternately, you can start here (the links seem to work better for me)
D:\ELECTRONICS_4_Solar\Volume I - DC All About Circuits.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Electronic_circuits
(Wikipedia also has links and references that you can follow)


More decent links:
http://ebtx.com/mech/ampvolt.htm
http://www.engineersedge.com/instrumentation/instrumentation_table_content.ht
m
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
http://www.discovercircuits.com/
http://www.theledlight.com/lumens.html
http://www.kemet.com ((you can DL a pdf called "What is a Capacitor?", and
IIRC, some other stuff as well))

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Dq8blTmSA&feature=related (a videotaped
lecture - there are links to subsequent lectures in the YouTube "related
vids" column to the lower right)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=MIT+6.002&aq=f More
videotaped lectures - this time, from MIT
http://www.doctronics.co.uk/design.htm


Also, Google is your friend: Google the following:

"Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" - you can downloasd the
PDF file

"Electricity and Magnetism" by Benjamin Crowell (another PDF)
 
Kris Krieger <me@dowmuff.in> wrote in
news:Xns9BD787DDC75ACmeadowmuffin@216.168.3.70:

ERROR:
in the lins at the end, where I said "Alternately...", I linked to the
pages I'd saved, not to the online site! OOPS! But the first link works
;)

- Kris


Prabu <prabuinet@gmail.com> wrote in news:47cfc955-a685-4735-b642-
a044da93fb43@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com:

Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks

FWIW, that's what I've been trying to do.

In th eend, it mainyl depends upon one's aptitude. My strong aptitudes
are mostly right-brain/conceptual-analytical/visual, whereas my weakest
point has always been Math and related linear-logical subjects.

There are entire books on-line - I also bought a couple - "Practical
Electronics for Inventors" is IMO great! I still needed to fill in a
bit with other references, including my old Physics text from University
(yup, I took 101 and 102 - but stank at it) but the latter was because
PEfI was confusing re: Capacitors.

One of the most confusing thing is that different book use different
symbols for some things - most common seems to be "E" versus "V" for
Volts, but the more egregious IMO is C sometimes meaning "capacitance"
and sometimes meaning "charge".

You also have to keep track, in the formulae, of those pesky prefixes,
such as micro-, milli-, mega-, and so on.


I've been finding it useful to write up my own "book" or notes,
collecting all the various formulae, because the books don't necessarily
do a great job of relating one section with another and explaining how
it all fits together.

OTOH, unilke me!, people with an aptitude for electronics can "see" in
their heads how it all fits together. So if you are like that,
self-teaching shouldn't be at all bad.

In case you're wondering, I'm teaching myself becuase i have one
specific thing I want to do - I'm very "goal-oriented" in that I tend to
learn what I need to so as to do something sepcific, make a specific
item/project. THat probalby also makes it more difficult, because I
don't have the patience to "start from the beginning and learn it all
through". If you have a generalized interest in electronics itself,
that, like natural aptitude for math-related topics, will also make it
easier.



In the meantime, try the links below as a starting-point.

HTH!

- Kris


Best:
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/l_sitemap.html
Alternately, you can start here (the links seem to work better for
me) D:\ELECTRONICS_4_Solar\Volume I - DC All About Circuits.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Electronic_circuits
(Wikipedia also has links and references that you can follow)


More decent links:
http://ebtx.com/mech/ampvolt.htm
http://www.engineersedge.com/instrumentation/instrumentation_table_conten
t.ht m
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
http://www.discovercircuits.com/
http://www.theledlight.com/lumens.html
http://www.kemet.com ((you can DL a pdf called "What is a Capacitor?",
and IIRC, some other stuff as well))

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Dq8blTmSA&feature=related (a videotaped
lecture - there are links to subsequent lectures in the YouTube "related
vids" column to the lower right)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=MIT+6.002&aq=f
More videotaped lectures - this time, from MIT
http://www.doctronics.co.uk/design.htm


Also, Google is your friend: Google the following:

"Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" - you can downloasd
the PDF file

"Electricity and Magnetism" by Benjamin Crowell (another PDF)
Click to expand...
 
On Mar 23, 12:21 pm, Kris Krieger <m...@dowmuff.in> wrote:
Prabu <prabui...@gmail.com> wrote in news:47cfc955-a685-4735-b642-
a044da93f...@u9g2000pre.googlegroups.com:

Hi,

Can anyone advice me regarding learning electronics through self
study!

I'm a computer science graduate. I would like to learn electronics to
play with robotics.

Any resources available in net for self study?

Thanks

FWIW, that's what I've been trying to do.  

In th eend, it mainyl depends upon one's aptitude.  My strong aptitudes are
mostly right-brain/conceptual-analytical/visual, whereas my weakest point has
always been Math and related linear-logical subjects.
Click to expand...

Sometimes you really do need to take a class. I was fine at C
programming (self taught from books, after taking a Pascal class) but
I just couldn't understand C++ from books. Then I took a class. An
analogy: C is like walking into a jewelry store, taking what you
like, and leaving the cash on the counter. C++ is like walking into a
jewelry store, asking the clerk for a ring, the clerk takes the ring
out of the locked case, then you pay for it. Slower, less efficient,
but more security. Ah! Now I get it.


There are entire books on-line - I also bought a couple - "Practical
Electronics for Inventors" is IMO great!  I still needed to fill in a bit
with other references, including my old Physics text from University (yup, I
took 101 and 102 - but stank at it) but the latter was because PEfI was
confusing re: Capacitors.  

One of the most confusing thing is that different book use different symbols
for some things - most common seems to be "E" versus "V" for Volts, but the
more egregious IMO is C sometimes meaning "capacitance" and sometimes meaning
"charge".  
Click to expand...

I thought the convention for charge was "Q".

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html


You also have to keep track, in the formulae, of those pesky prefixes, such
as micro-, milli-, mega-, and so on.  

I've been finding it useful to write up my own "book" or notes, collecting
all the various formulae, because the books don't necessarily do a great job
of relating one section with another and explaining how it all fits together.
Click to expand...

So true. I did the exact same thing when studying for my licensing
exam (not in electronics).


OTOH, unilke me!, people with an aptitude for electronics can "see" in their
heads how it all fits together.  So if you are like that, self-teaching
shouldn't be at all bad.  

In case you're wondering, I'm teaching myself becuase i have one specific
thing I want to do - I'm very "goal-oriented" in that I tend to learn what I
need to so as to do something sepcific, make a specific item/project.  THat
probalby also makes it more difficult, because I don't have the patience to
"start from the beginning and learn it all through".  If you have a
generalized interest in electronics itself, that, like natural aptitude for
math-related topics, will also make it easier.

In the meantime, try the links below as a starting-point.

HTH!

- Kris
Click to expand...

Regards,

Michael
 
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