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  • Author Author: dixonselvan
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What is your best method or place to learn electronics?

This poll is to know how Element14 community members gained most of their knowledge in electronics. I personally prefer practical learning which is now getting implemented as STEM learning over theoretical learning. Cast your votes if you have your opinion listed, else please leave a comment.

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  • Looking back over the last 8 years of my interest in mech electronics, I found that inspiration has come from YouTube - mainly the Ben Heck show. 

     

    I just realized that my actual learning is typically a side effect of trying to beat a personal challenge.  In the quest to do so, I often turn to a google search on the current thing I'm trying to do.  I buy the parts and then bread board it.

     

    Funny, even though my son and I spend a lot of time producing how-to videos, I personally don't learn that way.  I prefer quickly skimming a blog or Instructable for just what I'm looking for.

     

    Here's my unintentional ways of solving design challenges:

     

    • Often when I web search, I bump into an Instructable on the topic that gives me what I need.  That's pretty much how I learned to use the ESP8266, for example.
    • For Arduino, I typically start with example code for what I'm trying and cobble code from there.
    • For the trinket, I used the Adafruit site's startup guides.
    • I won't mention their name, but one of your competitors has a Google search result on the first page on how to use Eagle to build a PCB.  That taught me how to build a PCB.
    • When I hit a very specific road block, I do a Google search and find that someone asked it in some stray forum somewhere in the world.
    • For trickey circuits (to me) such as power latches and H bridges, I google search and typically find some stray blog on the topic.
    • When it comes to learning software to enable my projects, YouTube tutorials are definitely what have taught me (Blender, Autodesk Fusion, KiCad)

     

    -Sean

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  • Looking back over the last 8 years of my interest in mech electronics, I found that inspiration has come from YouTube - mainly the Ben Heck show. 

     

    I just realized that my actual learning is typically a side effect of trying to beat a personal challenge.  In the quest to do so, I often turn to a google search on the current thing I'm trying to do.  I buy the parts and then bread board it.

     

    Funny, even though my son and I spend a lot of time producing how-to videos, I personally don't learn that way.  I prefer quickly skimming a blog or Instructable for just what I'm looking for.

     

    Here's my unintentional ways of solving design challenges:

     

    • Often when I web search, I bump into an Instructable on the topic that gives me what I need.  That's pretty much how I learned to use the ESP8266, for example.
    • For Arduino, I typically start with example code for what I'm trying and cobble code from there.
    • For the trinket, I used the Adafruit site's startup guides.
    • I won't mention their name, but one of your competitors has a Google search result on the first page on how to use Eagle to build a PCB.  That taught me how to build a PCB.
    • When I hit a very specific road block, I do a Google search and find that someone asked it in some stray forum somewhere in the world.
    • For trickey circuits (to me) such as power latches and H bridges, I google search and typically find some stray blog on the topic.
    • When it comes to learning software to enable my projects, YouTube tutorials are definitely what have taught me (Blender, Autodesk Fusion, KiCad)

     

    -Sean

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