learn electronics from scratch

How to learn electronics from scratch?

One of the most popular questions on amateur forums. At the same time, those answers that I found when I asked him myself did not help much. So I decided to give mine.

This essay describes a general approach to self-learning, and since it began to receive a lot of views every day, I decided to develop it and make a small guide on self-study of electronics and tell how I do it. Subscribe to the newsletter - it will be interesting!

Creativity and Result

To learn something, you need to love it, burn with interest and exercise regularly. It seems I just voiced common truth ... Nevertheless. In order to study electronics with ease and pleasure, you need to love it and treat it with curiosity and admiration. Now it’s already common for everyone to be able to send a video message to the other end of the earth and instantly receive an answer. And this is one of the achievements of electronics. 100 years of labor by thousands of scientists and engineers.

As we are usually taught

The classical approach that is being preached in schools and universities around the world can be called a bottom-up approach . First they tell you what an electron, atom, charge, current, resistor, capacitor, inductance are, they make you solve hundreds of problems finding currents in resistor circuits, then it’s even more complicated, etc. This approach is similar to climbing a mountain. But climbing a mountain is harder than going down. And many give up without reaching the top. This is true in any business.

But what if you go down the mountain? The main idea is to first get the result, and then analyze in detail why it works that way. Those. This is a classic approach for children’s radio circles. It gives the opportunity to get a sense of victory and success, which in turn stimulate the desire to study electronics further. You see, the very dubious benefit of studying one theory. It is imperative to practice, since not all of the theory 100% falls on practice.

There is such an old engineering joke that says: "Once you are good at math, you need to go to electronics." Typical nonsense. Electronics is creativity, novelty of ideas, practice. And it is not necessary to go into the jungle of theoretical calculations to create electronic devices. You can quite master the necessary knowledge yourself. And you will tighten up mathematics in the process of creativity.

Do you like the device? Assemble, understand why it was made in this way and what ideas are embedded in its design: why exactly these details are used, why are they connected in such a way, what principles are used? Is it possible to improve something or just replace any part?

Design is creativity, but you can learn it. To do this, you just need to perform simple actions: read, repeat other people's devices, think about the result, enjoy the process, be bold and confident.

Mathematics in Electronics

In amateur radio engineering, it is hardly necessary to consider improper integrals, but knowledge of Ohm's law, Kirchhoff rules, current / voltage divider formulas , possession of complex arithmetic and trigonometry can be useful. These are the basics of basics. If you want to be able to do more, love math and physics. This is not only useful, but also extremely entertaining. Of course, this is not necessary. You can make pretty cool devices without knowing anything at all. Only these will be devices invented by someone else.

When I, after a very long break, realized that electronics was calling me again and beckoning me into the ranks of radio hams, it immediately became clear that my knowledge had long since vanished, and the availability of components and technologies became wider. What did I do? There was only one way - to recognize myself as a complete zero and start from nothing: there are no experienced electronic engineers I know, there is no self-study program either, I dropped the forums because they are a dump of information and take a lot of time (you can find out some question there in short, but getting complete knowledge is very difficult - everything is so important that you can burst!)

And then I went in the oldest and easiest way: through books. In good books, topics are discussed most fully and there is no empty talk. Of course, there are errors in the books, and tongue-tied. You just need to know which books to read and in what order. After reading well-written books and the result will be excellent.

My advice is simple but useful - read books and magazines. For example, I want to not only repeat other people's schemes, but be able to design my own. Creating is interesting and fun. That should be my hobby: interesting and entertaining. Yes, and yours too.

What books will help to master electronics

I spent a lot of time looking for suitable books. And I realized that I must say thanks to the USSR. Such an array of useful books left after him! You can blame the USSR, you can praise. Watching for what. So for books and magazines for hams and schoolchildren, we must thank. Mad print runs, selected authors. Until now, you can find books for beginners that will give odds to all modern ones. Therefore, it makes sense to go through the second-hand booksellers and ask around (and you can download everything).

Sedov E.A. - World of Electronics - 1990
Borisov. Encyclopedia of a young radio amateur
Sworen. Electronics. Step by step
Sworen. Transistors Step by step. 1971
Iceberg. Radio? It is very easy!
Iceberg. Transistor? It is very easy!
Klimchevsky Ch. - Alphabet of a radio amateur.
Atanas Shishkov. The first steps in electronics
Amichen. Electronics? There is nothing easier.
B.S. Ivanov. The oscilloscope is your assistant (how to work with the oscilloscope)
V. Novopolsky - Working with an Oscilloscope
Hublowski. I. Electronics in questions and answers
Nikulin, Povny. Encyclopedia of novice amateur radio
Revich. Entertaining Electronics
Sorcerers. Amateur Radio Alphabet
Bumps. The first steps in electronics
Radio Electronics Little by little about everything.
Sorcerers. Amateur Radio Alphabet
Bessonov V.V. Electronics for beginners and more
V. Novopolsky - Working with an Oscilloscope
Tigranyan. Amateur Radio Reader

What else should be done?

Learn to read device diagrams! Learn to analyze the circuit and try to understand how the device works. This skill comes only with training. You need to start with the simplest schemes, gradually increasing complexity. Thanks to this, you will not only learn the designations of radio elements on the diagrams, but also learn how to analyze them, and also remember the running techniques and solutions.

Is it expensive to do electronics

Unfortunately, money will be required! Amateur radio is not the cheapest hobby and some minimum financial is required. attachments. But you can start almost without attachments: books can be taken out by bookcrosing or borrowed in libraries, read in electronic form, devices can be bought for the beginning the simplest, and more advanced ones can be bought when the capabilities of simple devices are lacking.

Now you can buy everything: an oscilloscope, a generator, a power source and other measuring instruments for your home laboratory - all this should be acquired over time (or you can do yourself what you can do at home)

But when you are small and beginner, you can get by with a stick and details from a broken technique that someone throws out or just wallowed at home for a long time without work. The main thing is to have a desire! And the rest will follow.

What to do if it doesn’t work?

Continue! Rarely does something work well the first time. But it so happens that there are no results and no - as if he ran into an invisible barrier. Someone overcomes this barrier in six months or a year, while others only in a few years.

If you encounter difficulties, you don’t have to tear your hair and think about yourself that you are the dumbest person in the world, since Vasya understands what the collector current is, but you still can’t understand why it plays a role. Maybe Vasya just puffs out his cheeks, and not a boom-boom =)

Useful programs

You should definitely familiarize yourself with CAD systems: sketches of circuit diagrams and printed circuit boards, simulators, - useful and convenient programs (Eagele, Sprint Layout, etc.). I highlighted a whole section on the site for them. From time to time there will appear materials on working with programs that I use myself.

And most importantly - experience the joy of creativity from amateur radio! In my opinion, any business should be treated like a game. Then it will be both entertaining and informative.

About practice

Usually, each hobbyist always knows which device he wants to make. But if you have not decided yet, then I will advise you to collect a power source, figure out what is needed and how each part works. Then you can pay attention to the amplifiers. And assemble, for example, an audio amplifier.

You can experiment with the simplest electrical circuits: a voltage divider, a diode rectifier, high-pass / mid-frequency / low-pass filters, a transistor and single-transistor stages, the simplest digital circuits, capacitors, inductances. All this will come in handy in the future, and knowledge of such basic circuits and components will give self-confidence.

When you go step by step from the simplest to the more complex, then the knowledge is superimposed on top of each other and it is easier to master more complex topics. But sometimes it’s not clear from which bricks and how the building should be folded. Therefore, sometimes you should act the other way around: set a goal to assemble some device and master a lot of questions during its assembly.

learn electronics from scratch