Knowledge is Power

When starting electronics, you will need a few basic tools.  I tried not to go over the top and bought pretty basic ones, almost all from Adafruit Industries, all bundled in Ladyada’s Electronics Toolkit.  The Weller products and storage box were bought from local electronics stores.

Multimeter

I haven’t got to use it yet, but it’s a pretty basic multimeter, able to measure voltage, current and resistance.  I can’t really comment on the build quality, it kind of feel cheap, but it wasn’t really expensive so you get what you pay for!  From what I read, if you’re willing to drop more money go for a Fluke.  Check out the EEVBlog, Dave Jones talks about his Fluke in a few of his posts.

Limor Fried has a great article on how to use a multimeter.

Pliers

In this picture, you have, in yellow, a wire stripper with an adjustable screw to control opening to strip different wire sizes.  On the left there’s a “semi-longnose” pair of pliers, the metalic part next to the handle keeps them constantly opened, so it’s easier to control when you’re trying to grip onto a small component.  Then, on the right, there’s a diagonal cutter that allows cutting wires flat with a surface.  I have yet to try the wire strippers, but so far I’m pleased with the two other.

Soldering Iron

This cheap iron came with the package.  It has a potentiometer on it to control the heat of the tip, but other than the red led, there’s no indication of its temperature.  I did my first solder joints using it, and kind of liked it for what it’s worth.

Here’s the cheap stand that came with it, it “works”, nothing else to say about it!

Soldering Station

When I started, I wanted to stay on the “cheap side of things”.  Electronics being a hobby, I didn’t want to invest much in good tools because I’d only use them rarely.

After spending a day at work wondering if I unplugged the cheap iron after soldering, I decided that burning my appartment down was not worth it, so I bought a Weller WES51 from a local electronics store.  At 99$, it wasn’t that bad, especially since Weller makes good products!  There’s an easy to use on/off switch on the front of the station, a knob to control the temperature in Farenheigt and a nice led that lets you know if it’s still on.

Solder Sucker

This tool is supposed to be able to remove solder.  It’s pretty easy, first you push down the spring loaded plunger, you heat the solder with your iron and when it’s melted, you apply the nose of the solder  sucker on it and press the release button.  That’s in theory… I tried it on one joint and was unable to use it correctly… I guess it takes practice!

Fume Sucker

After buying my soldering station, I left the manual on the table for a while… my girlfriend took a look at it and didn’t like the “toxic fumes” warnings, so I bought a Weller fume sucker.  It’s a fan with a carbon filter that absorbs the fumes when you solder.  Make Magazine has a video tutorial on how to make a mini fume extractor, you should check it out!

Third Hand

When soldering, you want your board to stay steady, so soldering on the top of your desk wouldn’t be so good, at least not with my desk!  Using this neat tool, you simply have to squeeze your board between the jaws and solder away!

Storage

When ordering my kits and components online, I didn’t spend time thinking what I’d do with them when I’d get them.  At first, I left them on the corner of my desk, but it was a real mess, so I decided to get this little box full of trays!  It makes finding out what you’re looking for pretty easy if you separate components per type and store them in different trays.

I love reading new stuff and I’m a self taught programmer.  I thought that would give me the proper tools to be able to learn electronics by myself.  I started by reading a book one of my friend lent me, called “Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics, 3rd Edition”.  I thought the book was pretty good even though I never got to finish reading it.  Instead I read Forrest Mims’ “Getting Started in Electronics”.  At the time I started reading, I was going on a trip to Cuba with my wonderful girlfriend, and carrying a ~1000 pages book seemed a bit too much for me.  Mims’ book on the other hand is only 128 pages of straight to the point information and sample sketches.

After reading it, I was confident enough to start wiring up my own designs, and yup, it worked!

I also bought “The Forrest Mims Circuit Scrapbook, Vol 1″ and “The Forrest Mims Circuit Scrapbook, Vol 2″ to read on the bus on my way to work.  These are collections of articles Forrest published in many magazines over the years.  While I already have concrete plans on what I want to do with electronics, doing small projects on the side will definitely help me grasp all the concepts and learn new techniques to solve problems.

When ordering “Getting Started in Electronics”, I decided to add to my order all the notebooks Mims published on the recommendation of Steve Watkins of Hack a Day:

• Volume I: Timer, Op Amp, and Optoelectronic Circuits & Projects
• Volume II: Science and Communication Circuits & Projects
• Volume III: Electronic Sensor Circuits & Projects
• Volume IV: Electronic Formulas, Symbols & Circuits

I think these books fall in the same category as the “Game Programming Gems” books, they seem to target really specific problems so I guess they’ll come to good use when I’ll do more complex stuff!

Like in programming, I try to diversify my sources of information, but so far Mims’ writing seems pretty decent and from the reviews I’ve read online, it’s top not introductory reading.  If you have recommendations, feel free to post them!

I’ll start this blog by stating my background and what drove me to electronics.

First, I’m a French Canadian… some sentences might sound weird, but hopefully you’ll get the idea behind it!

As a kid, I always liked robots… the Transformers, Short Circuit, Robocop and Terminator made a huge impression on me. I wanted to build robots when I’d grow up. Eventually, I started playing more PC games and learned how to “modify” them and my save games. I think that’s when I decided I’d be a programmer instead. Although I’ve had the opportunity to work on great games, robots were still something I found fascinating… so I specialized in game AI. This way, I’d have the best of both worlds… working on “autonomous entities” while not being constrained by physical space and battery life.

My whole life I tried to educate myself in diversified domains, but I’ve always stayed away from electronics because it seemed complicated, involved parts that I would have to order, that could break, etc… anyway, I decided to get past all these barriers before turning 30, so this is it, I’m learning electronics!

I’m creating this blog in hopes that it might help other programmers who are “afraid” of moving towards the hardware world. I’ll be posting all my “discoveries” and mistakes so most probably, other beginners will be able to learn from this blog. By all means, double check the information you’ll be getting from here, I’m still learning so there might be things I got wrong!

To get started, I first wrote to the guys of Hack a Day for tips.  Steve was kind enough to answer with a ton of information.  Unfortunately most of it was way over my capabilities, but he suggested that I read the Engineers Mini Notebooks written by Forest Mims.  After reading about Forest Mims, I learned that he was the guy responsible of writing sample circuits for Radio Shack so that they could sell more components (interesting projects -> more sales).  He also wrote a ton of books so I got a few of them.  The “Engineers Mini Notebooks” are not really useful for a beginner… they’re more like reference books.  I’d compare them to Bjarne Stroustroup’s “The C++ Programming Language”, while everyone should have it lying somewhere near the computer, it’s not good learning material.  When purchasing Mims’ notebooks from the W5YI Group, I found the book “Getting Started in Electronics”… this seemed like what I needed!  And boy, I was right!  The book is really great, even if at times I was under the impression I was reading a kids book.  Everything is really well explained and sometimes I felt like I was reading my own notes from a EE class.  I definitely recommend it!

Like programming, reading books won’t make you good… practice makes perfect!  So I decided to go simple and modular… I would start with a low complexity project while keeping the door open for additions.  I decided to start with a gym timer.  Since I own a gym and all we have are basic timers, I wanted to have a customizable timer that could handle interval trainings.  To keep the learning curve quite low, I decided to start with an Arduino… most of the logic would be written in C and only when I’d get to more complex features would I require deeper electronics understanding.

More to come on my current setup, the basic tools I got, my projects, etc…

Stay tuned!