At the start of this year I got bored and took apart my old laptop for fun. I wondered, how does all of that work?
My Story:
I always had thought when I was little that I was going to become either a youtuber or a game developer because I thought those jobs were cool. But I never really learned coding properly due to my lack of motivation. The only tech kind of things I would do are troubleshoot computer issues for my family and friends. It isn't that hard of a job, but I was dedicated to it.
I remember one time my parents installed parental controls on my computer to limit me from playing video games, and I pulled an all-nighter on a school day staying up trying to get rid of it. And after messing around for about 5-7 hours I got it! That didn't end so well when my dad found out but it was still a hella of an experience. Well recently I figured out I can use that dedication that I had to focus and learn new things, eventually leading me to electronics since I always wanted to code and build cool stuff.
What should you start off with?
The hardest part of learning something by yourself is figuring out where to start off. From my past mistakes I have put together this structure for learning electronics. However, I will say remember that over time you learn. You won't be able to learn everything in a week, so do a little each day, and you will be surprised at how much you learned when you look back. It is really easy to burn out if you don't.
1. Electronics Basics
Credit: The Engineering Mindset
By watching the first 1-13 videos, you learn a lot about electricity in general. This is a great way to test if you are even interested in electronics in the first point. If you are still interested, continue on.
Skills Learned: Electronics skills that will help you understand circuits and parts of your future projects
2. Arduino Full Course
Arduino is a great way to start learning electronics since it's easy to learn and has good documentation. Even if you don't have an actual Arduino board, you can take this tutorial using TinkerCad's electronics section online.
Skills Learned: Absolute basics/intro to learning about microcontrollers and the code for them
3. Arduino Starter Kit (Optional) (Recommended)
I heavily recommend this kit, as it helped me a lot to physically understand how to use an Arduino, and you learn a lot by doing labs and applying the skills you have learnt previously. You also get a bunch of components to mess around with if you want to do any future projects, so I heavily recommend it.
Skills Learned: Basic components and their functions, Familiarity with microcontrollers.
4. The Complicated Part
After completing all of these, you get to a point where you understand the fundamentals, but you don't know where to go next. Here I have listed a bunch of branches you can go off and start learning that could help you with any projects in the future.
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CAD Skills (Onshape) (Optional) :
Onshape is an incredibly useful CAD tool that can be helpful if you ever want to 3d print a case, or robot parts for a project. I would heavily recommend learning it. It's completely free and uses a similar system to actual CAD software (Fusion 360, Solidworks)
Skills Developed: Make cases/shells or useful parts for your electronic devices
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Coding Skills (C/C++):
Sololearn has a great platform for learning essentials of C/C++ for beginner and intermediate. I use this and find it helpful because it has practice problems and engages you while learning. I'd stick to the free lessons, you do not really need to pay for their premium, just ignore the premium features and continue on and you will still learn a lot.
Skills Developed: C++ knowledge for any future projects (Helpful for developing algorithms for sensor data)
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Move from Arduino IDE to PIO Home in Vscode:
Moving from Arduino IDE to PIO Home is a big one, however Vscode is no doubt a better IDE than Arduino's one. Vscode's IDE allows for better access to all the files inside a folder, which is very useful when you need to start tinkering with libraries and include files. Once you move, you do not want to go back.
Skills Developed: Supreme code editor lmao
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IOT (Internet of Things) using Adafruit
Adafruit is a great step up from the Arduino starter kit, since they put out good products with good documentations. Learning IOT with them through their products is really helpful for any projects that you want to access and control systems wirelessly. However, most of their projects displayed are in CircuitPython which is not ideal. Although a easy coding language to pick up, Python is slower than C because python is an interpreter. I would recommend just using their products without python. There are still plenty of youtube tutorials and websites showcasing these.
Skills Developed: Remote control of devices through adafruit
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Come up with projects and work on them
By learning through projects, you get the most out of what you have learned. You also learn why you learn certain things and come up with a bunch of new ideas you can turn into projects.
Skills Developed: Picking out parts online, Actual practice for doing projects in the future, a buncha new skills on whatever your project is for
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Further electronics knowledge by learning PCB design
Once you learn how to solder and make permanent connections, there are a bunch of resources on youtube to start learning PCB design. I would suggest searching up for some tutorials and learning a few. I am starting this phase soon, so I can't give too much advice on this, however I will update this when I have.
Skills Developed: Soldering, Basic PCB Design
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