hello

How do you prefer to learn?

• By reading the theory?
• By watching video examples?
• By trying a simple project?
• By asking questions?

There are a series of Essentials articles on this forum and many project examples.

Which ones do you find interesting?

Can you provide some of your back ground knowledge? What do you have for education and/or if you wish to further that education. What is your career today and/or aspirations for the future.

You have thrown your wish penny into a very big pond of experience. You might find with some background there might be people similar.

 Akans here are some books for you, You can download them from my server.  A Textbook of Electrical Technology.pdf, Hands-On Electronics.pdf any questions? Enjoy ~~ Cris H. 

Hi Jacob,

Welcome to element14.

I would suggest an Arduino Kit with lots of sensors and try working through the projects.

You can always ask questions here for suggestions and help.

Hi Jacob, welcome to the wonderful world of electronics! The Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are good starting points, but...

I have a very good book here written by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, the title is The Art Of Electronics. My copy is the 1985 issue, ISBN 0 521 29837 7 in paperback, ISBN 0 521 23151 5 in hardback. The paperback is about 1.5" thick. It starts at the very beginning with a brief description of voltage and current, and finishes with spectrum analysis. In between it covers amplifiers, measuring instruments, counters, A-D and D-A converters, phase-locked-loops,  filters, oscillators, microprocessors, and lots lots more. The book is written in an easy-going manner, almost 'chatty' at times, it's as if you are listening to a very good university lecturer. The authors understand the problems you might encounter and explain how to improve whatever it is you are doing. There are lots of graphs and diagrams. At the end of each section there are exercises for you to try yourself, with solutions at the back complete with explanations.

As it is quite an old book there is no mention of AI in it, no wi-fi, etc. But with plug-and-play you probably don't need to know much about those things yet anyway. I have no idea how much the book costs these days, or even if it is still in print. If it is, then it must be up to about issue 42 by now.

I still use it, and found a suitable method of producing a 60Hz sine-wave from a 50Hz supply. Not something you need every day. It was necessary to use one on this occasion to power an American electric clock designed for 60Hz from our 50Hz supply. This particular clock had no cog-swapping facility or in-built electronic frequency changer, it was 60Hz or nothing if I wanted accurate timekeeping! The 60Hz output was as near as it gets to a true analogue sine wave; no trianges or squares, no 'chopping', no varying pulse widths, etc. There is a 4047 CMOS phase-locked-loop chip in there somewhere...

Good luck, have fun, watch out for high voltages, and don't worry if you blow a chip or two up in the early days - we've all done it at some time! (Don't go near any old record players until you are sure you will recognise what a mains transformer, a valve, and an electric motor look like).

ElectronicBiker

A good book for sure.  If you take a close look at the link provided by Cris aka phoenixcomm you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.