How do I jump into hobbyist electronics?

June 18, 2009 10:38 AM

Soon, I'm going to have a nice cash bonus at work and about two weeks of vacation time. I don't have enough money for a travel-vacation, so I figured I'd turn it into a learning-vacation: I'm going to focus on playing guitar, but also, I'd like to learn some 101-DIY electronics projects. I adored Lego Mindstorms as a kid, then kind of gave it up for awhile. Now I'm looking for something similar. More inside!

It all started when I had to do some coding projects at work. It had been years since I touched C or PHP, but I stayed up for a few nights and read a lot of tutorials and asked a lot of dumb questions and, hey!, it felt pretty good. But I kind of wanted to do more with it.

I started to want to make things again. So I poked my nose around and I found a couple of kits like this Arduino kit, the learn to Solder kit, the 101-breadboard kit. So, cool! But I'm still feeling a little. In over my head?

What I'm looking for are your recommendations for books, kits, websites, forums, tools, tips etc etc. on how to jump into this kind of thing. I'm not looking to build a solar powered robot that would squeeze my OJ in the morning, but it'd be great to just have an outlet to, say. Build a little desk sculpture that changed colors?

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This 101 kit looked like it could be a nice intro, especially for a dude with no background in this kind of thing.

SO!: Me- Curious Would-be-Hobbyist with 0 knowledge of electronics and maybe a 201 comp-sci credit. YOU- Super genius robot man welder dude. Tell me where you'd tell me to start.

posted by GilloD to sports, hobbies, & recreation (6 comments total)

Tangent has a great page on getting starting in DIY electronics (focused on audio) and video tutorials.

Limor of ladyada.net also has some neat stuff.
posted by exogenous at 10:56 AM on June 18

Do you play music, especially electric guitar? Music electronics is a good way to get into electronics IME, and it's pretty easy to build circuits that do something using a breadboard, a few dollars in parts, and a 9V battery.

Those multi-kits are kind of nice, and somewhat held my attention as a child, but making something that flashes just to flash is sort of dull as an adult. Or it would be to me. Far better is to make something you want to use. Maybe that's your color changing desk sculpture. Maybe it's a robot. Or maybe an overdrive pedal for your guitar. By the same token don't bite off more than you can chew, because there will be roadblocks along the way. But think about what you really want to make.
posted by 6550 at 12:34 PM on June 18

Dude. DIY music electronics would be 100% up my alley. I'll totally look into that, it hadn't even occurred to me.
posted by GilloD at 3:01 PM on June 18

I'm out of the loop in terms of DIY effects these days (moved on to DIY vacuum tube amps) but GEOFEX always has a lot of good information, ranging from the basic to very advanced projects. runoffgroove is another good one. Small Bear Electronics has a good set of links, as well as being a good place to get parts.

Seriously, effects and similar projects is really a great way to start. It's cheap: the breadboard and wiring is reusable and the components are cheap, too. It's also safe because you've only got 9 volts to play with. You get quick, positive results (Whoa, that does what to my sound?). And you can start with simple things like a boost or distortion box or headphone/practice amp and work up from there.
posted by 6550 at 3:15 PM on June 18

This little guitar amp got me started in the very kind of electronics you are interested in and lead me to the aforementioned runoffgroove. I even asked this question about it here on AskMeFi. DIY Stompboxes as some good stuff that lead me to Beavis Audio and SparkFun, a site full of the kinds of projects you're looking for. Enjoy.
posted by Grundlebug at 3:56 PM on June 18

So: I jumped in! I'd skip the Beginner's Electronics Kit. I was hoping it'd be more informative- My biggest problem so far is that a lot of 101 books say, "Here's a photo of a circuit, replicate it!". Which is great. But WHY am I putting a resistor there? WHY am I putting a capcitator there? WHAT is the ground, anyway?

Even the "Getting Started with Arduino" book was vague- Which is weird considering that once you get past blinking LEDs your really need the know-how to build circuits of your own. For that I turned to the web:http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/index.html was enormously helpful.

Also, I'd suggest the "Making Things Talk" book over "Getting Started...". GS ends when it starts to get good and much of it's content is available on the website. Making Things Talk is much more compelling and offers a wider scope of possibilities.
posted by GilloD at 11:27 AM on July 15