Correct approach to learn electronics - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: whiskeyjack
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 08:37:05 am
content: I do not have a degree in electronics but I am vary much interested in it. I have tried to gain basic knowledge by reading books and making hobby projects. But I still do not understand what is the best/correct approach to learn professional level electronics. Since professional level electronics is a very vague term, I'd like to portray my current situation and my goal so that you can suggest me what to do.This is where I stand right now: Most complicated project I successfully completed till date is "A circuit and pcb design of a home automation module"The board has ESP-07 for wifi communication and atmega328P-AU (smd) with arduino bootloader. It also features on board SMPS power supply unit. For automation, I have used triacs and opto couplers as well as electromechanical relays in some special cases. Both esp and arduino communicate over i2c. Besides this I have made energy metering circuit which allows you to get real time energy usage of an appliance on your mobile phone. I have done the electronics hardware part. Software side was done by my friend. I am also well familiar with using RTC, EEPROM, shiftout (595) IC and pretty much all these simple stuff. I have started to understand the datasheets a little and with some web search, I am able to prepare the hardware part. I have basic pcb designing skills. I use eagle for the same. I'd like to confess that I was able to pull this off because too much relevant content was readily available on the internet and I just had to do small modifications and reverse engineering in a few cases. For ex - Arduino schematic is already there which I modified to suit my requirements. ESP connections are known.This is where I want to be: I should be able to design something similar to raspberry pi or amazon echo. For this, I think I will have to understand data transfer between RAM and microprocessor, high speed routing for HDMI, camera, USB etc, too many protocols for those data transfers, multilayer PCB design and probably a few other things I don't have a clue about right now. This seems difficult to me because there is no direct content available on the internet. I need to develop everything from scratch and I don't have much idea how and where to even begin.So, what should I do and how long will it take to achieve my goal? Any suggestions are welcome.Thanks

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 09:12:11 am
content: Quote from: whiskeyjack on March 26, 2016, 08:37:05 amWhy?Nobodydevelopseverythingfrom scratch. In fact, nobody developsanythingfrom scratch.Choose what "value you add", choose your "unique selling point". And that means choosing whatnotto do.QuoteIt will take a lifetime of learning theory, validating it in practice, adapting to changes, andchoosingwhatnotto do.

author: danadak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 10:57:40 am
content: A career in electronics does not imply a mastery of the entire field. So tackleit one step at a time. A great deal of design today builds on others prior experience.A good example is USB. Most processor tools today contain prebuilt libraries andexample code base to create USB data transfers. That means you do not have todevelop the library yourself, rather you build on that authors experience. ManyUP vendors, youtube, have training videos on USB and various uses.As far as PCB, there is a ton of training and application notes on PCB layout and design.In short much of a career in almost any profession is reading and study.Regards, Dana.Regards Dana.

author: zal42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 03:14:22 pm
content: My general advice to people who are interested in getting into electronics for the first time is simple: get a book on basic electronics, preferably one that actually has buildable demonstration circuits. Build them. Experiment with them. Make mistakes, release the magic smoke, blow a couple of fuses.If you love doing it, you'll achieve competency faster than you might think. At that point, if it looks like you want to take things in a more formal and/or professional direction, look into schooling. By that time, you may discover that you have a special interest in a particular corner of electronics and it may inform what sort of schooling is best for you.I would also add that working with Arduino is very nice, but don't fall into the trap of sticking only with digital electronics.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 03:33:14 pm
content: Not mentioned in this thread, but a formal training in electronics would begin with a study of fundamental science (especially physics) and of mathematics. If you are aiming to teach yourself you should bear this in mind. Electronics to a large degree is applied physics, and physics to a large degree is applied mathematics. A good grounding in fundamental physics and mathematics will help enormously in the study of practical circuits.Without a good grounding in physics you will often find yourself puzzled about what your circuits are doing, and why they are not working as you expect. You will lack the conceptual ability to visualize what could be going wrong and what to do about it.

author: TheAmmoniacal
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 03:36:39 pm
content: There are two fundamental distinctions you have to make first.1. Do I want to do electronics?2. Do I want to learn electronics?

author: whiskeyjack
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2016, 03:25:24 pm
content: @tggzzz - Your advice really makes sense. I was a fool in thinking that a board like raspberry Pi or beagle bone can be laid out single handedly with small experience. I did some reading and found out that raspberry Pi took seven years in the making and that too by an experienced team.@Dana - I agree with you. However when it comes to putting the pieces together, I do not know where to begin. Let's say I want to make a talking robot - similar to but not exactly same as Amazon Echo(the difference is that I want processing to happen remotely on a PC or a raspberry pi). I need to have a microphone, a speaker, a wifi module and a micro controller so that i can record the audio, send it to a PC over wifi for speech processing, receive the processed result and play it using the speaker. This much I can figure out but I don't know which micro controller to select, how to record the audio, how to transmit it to another device in almost realtime and how to play the received response. So, in order to achieve this level of expertise, how should I proceed?@zal42 and IanB - I already have an engineering degree but not in electronics. However when it comes to these practical work, I have observed that experience has always dominated the theoretical knowledge. I have seen and helped many friends during my college days who were from electronics department (and they had good grades and sound knowledge) but were struggling during a practical implementation of something. I am not trying to say their knowledge is waste or I am more intelligent in this field as compared to them but still I think that when it comes to this practical stuff, that missing knowledge can be acquired relatively quickly but the experience required to get things working is difficult to acquire specially if there is no expert available to guide you. So I wanted to know how to gain the knowledge that I'd otherwise have gotten from an experienced person working in this field.@TheAmmoniacal - I want to do electronics but I don't think it's possible without learning first. And I want to take a short and sure way of learning. What would you suggest in that case?Lastly I want to thank each of you guys who took some time to reply to such a vague post of mine. I really appreciate that.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2016, 06:12:17 pm
content: Quote from: whiskeyjack on March 27, 2016, 03:25:24 pmListening and, where appropriate, changing your mind is a very good start. Too many people are incapable of either.QuoteThere is no subsitute for knowing what is already available so that youdon'thave to do it. When starting out I read the RS catalogue from cover to cover. Of course it was much smaller then!QuoteFind a mentor, possibly via a professional society.QuoteStop now. There is no short and sure way; if there was then everybody would be doing it.The only way to stop learning is to find yourself a small niche and become an acknowledged expert in that niche. (And the niche might disappear in 10 years time).

author: grouchobyte
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2016, 06:53:55 pm
content: Ditto on great advice from @tggzzztake a gander at a video on the blog about Dave Jones early start. I think in one of his earlier videos he talks about his venture in this techno-quagmire of magic smoke and vanashing allowancesWhatever you do, dont be afraid to make mistakes. Steve Jobs said it best in his commencement address to Stanford years ago........ Stay Hungry, Stay FoolishSage advice IMHO.

author: zal42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 02:07:44 am
content: Quote from: grouchobyte on March 27, 2016, 06:53:55 pmIndeed. In fact, I think it pays to embrace and celebrate mistakes. When I look back over my career and how I got into it, I realize that I have consistently learned and gained more from experimentation and mistakes than from schooling or being mentored. I've never learned anything by being right.On the other hand, I am quite certain that people can be rather unique in terms of what works best for them.

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 07:08:15 am
content: Quote from: whiskeyjack on March 27, 2016, 03:25:24 pmMaybe that is true. Present someone with tremendous theoretical knowledge with a problematic complex device, and you'll probably see them struggle to find the cause of the problem. Do the same with someone who's intimately familiar with it, and chances are the problem is found and solved quickly. But that doesn't mean that the experienced person has a lot of theoretical knowledge. A well known cause will be easily solved, even though the mechanics of what the problem actually is aren't throroughly understood.Theoretical persons will also try to theorize how a device works exactly, what all the bits do, and so on. I often see that they will exclude circuits from fault finding (not exlcuding it by probing it, not even just in case!) because "the fault can't be there". My practical experience has taught me that often the fault was there after all, but my theoretical knowledge was flawed, and I didn't know that. A practical person with not too much knowledge usually isn't hampered by that way of thought.QuoteThat's another observation I have also made.Theoretical people tend to focus on the theory and assume that something will work because theory says so. But theory alone doesn't forsee practical issues and challenges. All of a sudden that trace's inductance here or a pacracitic capacitance there wreaks havoc with theory... (or rather shows that some factors weren't taken into account).QuoteExperience cannot be taught, it can only be gained. It's a world of difference being told something or having experienced something. I have made a trip with a hot air balloon and can tell you all about it, but I can't make you experience it. It's like Dave says: "I hope your projects go wrong and you release the magic smoke. There's no better way to learn than find out why your circuit doesn't work."

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 09:36:04 am
content: Quote from: jitter on March 28, 2016, 07:08:15 amWhile there's truth to (most of) that, too many people take the extra step into "cargo cult" engineering. They observe that successful people make mistakes and infer that if they make mistakes they will be successful.To counterbalance your points, I'vefrequentlyobserved "practical people" attempting something that isknownto be impossible. When they fail to findsubtlefailure mechanisms during testing, they incorrectly conclude their solution works. Classic examples are rife in software, especially around reliability of distributed communications, timekeeping, and ACID transactions.There used to be an expression "you can't test quality into a product", but that has beem discarded by the XP/agile devotees.