In other venues, I’ve lamented the fact that learning how to play with electronics has been one of my intellectual white whales. There are many, many books and web sites out there that exist to help people like me, but most of them fall short. Believe me, this is something on which I can speak with decades of experience in wrestling through instructional literature. Usually, the experience goes something like this: the book starts with a treatment of first principles, such as the nature of electricity, definitions of resistance, Ohm’s Law, the difference between voltage and wattage, and so on. Some of these are better than others. But then, depending on how good the author is (or isn’t) there comes this point where they stop being a teacher and switch to being an engineer. Technical terms pop up without any explanation. The reader is advised to experiment on a “breadboard” with no explanation of what this is or how to use one, leaving the reader vaguely puzzled as to what a wooden cutting board could possibly have to do with DC circuits. Components get described without any clear explanation of their function (It’s amazing how many times I’ve read abut resistors without any mention of what exactly they resist or why one would want to resist whatever it is they resist.) Over the years there have been some improvement in this state of affairs. One of the best books in this field is still Forrest Mims’ Getting Started in Electronics, although it’s not perfect. It could also be that I’m just a bit of a dim bulb when it comes to such things. The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill is also touted as a good book, and I’m sure it is. But it’s not for beginners.
But lately I’ve discovered something called Arduino. It’s actually been around for a while, and could fairly be called the successor to the Parallax BASIC “stamp” microcontrollers. Basically (no pun intended) microcontrollers are computers on a single chip. They can be programmed by hooking them up to a PC using the appropriate hardware and software, and the user then writes programs that get them to do stuff. The microcontroller in turn is wired to electronic components; sensors, lights, stepper motors, or whatever. And this is where the electronics learning actually takes place. Arduino is open source, relatively inexpensive, and boasts a very enthusiastic community of users.
One thing (among many) that has been hard for the beginning electronics hobbyist is that it’s difficult to make a circuit that really gives you feedback that is both informative and interesting. A lot of books recommend you have an oscilloscope handy (with no discussion on how to use it), which was more trouble that it was worth as I have spent most of my life… uh… what’s the word? Oh, yeah… poor.
This is perhaps why the crystal radio was such an ideal first step for many budding electronics engineers. With Arduino, you can use programming to make far more interesting circuits far sooner.
A caveat, however: Arduino is programmed in C++, although ordinary C will also work and is probably more than adequate for most tasks you’ll want the microcontroller to perform, especially when you are starting out. C is not the most intuitive of languages, but neither is it the most obtuse. I had to take a couple of courses in C when I was working as a technical writer, so I have perhaps an unfair advantage, although it has been years since I’ve used it.
The neophyte will benefit from many online tutorials to help get started. One of the very best, in my opinion, are the lessons provided by one Lady Ada, from whom I purchased my first Arduino. When it comes to explaining things, this Lady gets it. The tutorials are superb. Step by step, clearly stated prose with no assumptions that the user has a clue. Which is just as it should be. I would frankly like to see more such tutorials from her on how to use this system.
Visit her online store here: http://www.adafruit.com/
The tutorials begin here: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
Meanwhile, I have advanced a few steps closer to electronic enlightenment.
Yes, I think far too many people have been scared away from electronics (and other fields) because people made it sound far more difficult than it really is.
I hope that Wikibooks (and other wiki) will improve the situation.
As one reads a chapter, at the first stumbling block one can immediately insert a comment.
That way people writing the book don’t have to *guess* what will be a stumbling block, but can deal with the real stumbling blocks.
And once most of the stumbling blocks have been ironed out (leaving only the things that really are conceptually difficult), we will hopefully be left with a book that explains things quickly and clearly to new learners.
And beyond that, I hope that this experiment will help us learn writing styles (and perhaps even visual and multimedia styles) that help explain things quickly and clearly to others — even if I feel a little silly repeating things that are “obvious” (to me) and “don’t sound sophisticated, erudite, and professional”.