Best resources for a developer to learn about electronics?

Question

I've been a developer all my life, and my brain works in ways that make sense to a developer.

I'm interested in creating tangible, physical items using electronic circuits. I'm finding the following problems with much of the material I find:

• I can learn all about the physical nature of capacitors, resistors, etc., but I'm lacking the insightful connections that would let me create my own higher-order device, such as a radio.

• A lot of the things I take for granted as programmer seem difficult in electronics. For example, it's not immediately obvious how I would create a For loop electronically. I don't know how to create a circuit that can create or use a data signal (essentially, a struct. Example: "Current weather: wind=10 knots, temperature=30, humidity=20%"). I want to protect against a remote signal not being detected by a sensor.

What are some great resources for a developer to learn about electronic circuits?

Answer 1

If available in your country, study towards your Amateur Radio License. If in the USA, see http://www.arrl.org for more info.

Answer 2

Take some courses at a community college/votech school. Many of them offer night classes. I started my college career as an electronics guy, so this is just my opinion.

Answer 3

Horowitz and Hill is a great one for hobbyist.

Answer 4

I came the opposite direction, from an EE background I got into programming and went back to school to get a CS degree. I recommend starting out with something that combines the two in order to make the transition a little smoother. There are tons of hobbyist books like Making Things Talk, and Hardware Hacking Projects that make this easier. I also recommend the Evil Genius series of books on electronics and robotics circuits.

Charles Petzold's Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software is another book that does a great job of tying hardware and software concepts together. I can't recommend it highly enough, although it may be taking an opposite approach than you're after. It starts with simple switches and transistors and builds up to show how they're combined to make a programmable circuit.

Answer 5

You might find this a bit more high-level versus "down to the metal" but I've found the whole programmable microcontroller scene to be a great place to make the bridge between programming and hardware.

The Arduino. What can't you do with this thing! http://www.arduino.cc/

Limor aka Lady Ada of AdaFruit has a number of mini-lessons on using the thing that take you beyond the programming world into LED's, resistors and more: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/

My suggestion is to start with kits. The end result of something that works and does something is satisfying and drives you on to tinker more. And then some times things go wrong. The capacitor is in the wrong way, missed a solder point, whatever.

And as we all know, that in programming, when things go wrong is when you really start learning something new!

Answer 6

I have learned a lot from this Java app. It shows you how the electrons (positive holes actually) travel inside of electronics. You can even modify the circuit while it is running.

Answer 7

Maybe good site for you is Electronics Exchange (http://electronics.exchange.com)

Answer 8

http://allaboutcircuits.com/ has online tutorials starting with the basics, advice on what junk to buy to start tinkering hands-on, and they also have a forum for asking beginner questions.