How do I start learning electronics?
Before you start you need to consider what you want to achieve, do you want to understand basic electronics and how stuff works or do you want to learn how to build an electronic project, like soldering a kit together for instance? These are two different things to learn.
Of course, you may want to learn how to do both. It’s quite usual for someone to want to build something by following instructions from a kit and then want to know how it works once they’ve got it working. Or you may have learned some of the basics in electronics and now want to have a go soldering something. Either way I hopefully have some of the answers here.
How to get started in electronics?
This is quite a simple answer for me. I took a torch to pieces and realised the metal bits such as the springs and contacting bits were all there to make sure the two sides of the battery, the + and – connected to the two connections of the filament of the bulb. The switch slid to make the on off connection. I could take the battery and bulb out and by holding two wires to the battery and bulb I got it to light. This was my first hand held circuit.
After this I got hold of the book “Learn about simple electronics” from the Ladybird series, which showed how you could use brass screws, screw cups and a piece of wood to connect up components. This was quickly followed up with me getting the similar “Learn about making a transistor radio”, also from the Ladybird series.
The two books that started my interest in electronics.
These books were the first I had ever seen that had electronic components described in them, such as resistors, capacitors and transistors and it was the first time that I had seen that you could use them to make little circuits up with these components yourself at home.
I quickly persuaded my mum to take me into town with my pocket money to get some of these electronic components. I couldn’t wait to get home and start building stuff. I still remember the excitement I was hooked and forty years later I still am.
Safety first
First thing I need to mention is under no circumstances mess around or experiment with mains electricity. It can kill you if you’re unlucky and give you a nasty kick or jolt if you’re lucky. It’s defiantly unpleasant to say the least. You should stick to using batteries while you’re messing around with stuff or experimenting. Failing that use a mains adapter or a bench power supply.
These will give you low voltage DC that basic electronic circuits use. You won’t do a lot of damage if you stick to that. Notice I said you won’t do a lot. It’s still possible to damage components and even have components blow up but importantly it won’t be you getting damaged.
Learn Electronics starter kits
If you first want to dabble there are some excellent starter kits available from Amazon.
The advantages of a starter kit are.
It gives you a taste of what basic electronics is all about without spending too much.
You usually have everything available once you have the kit. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to finish a project and not having all the components.
They are usually quite simple in the way the components link together, and the components and connecting methods are reusable.
You usually get some form of instruction book with simple getting started projects.
Most of the projects will be quick to finish and you won’t be spending too long before you get something working.
The disadvantages of a starter kit are.
Some of the projects aren’t that impressive to start with.
You can quickly outgrow the kit.
Once you’ve fully used the kit you can’t really expand on it.
A lot of them don’t really explain how exactly the circuits you’ve built actually work.
They do however provide an exciting introduction and would prove to be an excellent gift for a child. I admit I’m biased but show me anything else that can provide the same levels of fun, excitement and be educational all at the same time. It’s also a great way to spend time with your kids and you’ll both get to learn something.
One of the first kits I got bought as a present was a learning electronics kit with all the components fixed to a base. It had terminals that were basically springs. You pushed them one way and inserted a tinned wire which was then gripped by the spring making an electrical connection to the component. It was a very quick and easy way to build a circuit and you couldn’t lose components as they were all fixed to one base board.
You can still get these kits. They are now made by Elenco and include the Elenco Electronic Playground and the larger Elenco Electronic Playground 130.
Another particularly good range of kits are the “Snap Circuits” and I can recommend “Snap Circuits Arcade”. There are plenty of projects you can build with this particular kit and the box says for ages 8 to 108. These kits have components and connections mounted on panels that click together on a base board. Most of the Snap Circuits kits are available from Amazon.
One of the constructed circuits from the “Snap Circuits Extreme” kit
If you’ve got more money to spend you could go for the “Snap Circuits Extreme Plus”. This has more components and more projects. A friend of mine bought a “Snap Circuits” kit for his son, which was great and he really enjoyed it but now his son keeps finding more and more “Snap Circuit” kits as they make things like building a remote controlled car and he has now spent quite a bit on them in total. However as he points out he’d prefer him to be building stuff and learning rather than sat in front of a PC playing a game or be on his phone.
Learn electronics Breadboard kits
The next step up are the breadboard project kits.
The electronics breadboard
This is the base for your electronic circuits, its plastic with an arrangement of metal bus bars. You have strips running up and down the side for the supply voltages, these are usually marked with red and blue. There are also ones that run across the breadboard horizontally for the components.
There are also plenty of these kits available from Amazon. You get the breadboard, electronic components, an instruction book and the interconnecting wires.
Because of the way they push into the breadboard you can’t use ordinary stranded wire, you can get single core wire that has one thick “strand” however for use with a breadboard your much better off with these patch cables. They are cheap and reusable and designed just for the job.
The advantages are similarly to the starter kits above. You get everything you need, so you can get started straight away building stuff and start to get a feel for hobby electronics.
The disadvantage is that it’s a little harder to use than the basic learn electronic kits that are aimed at the total beginner. The good news is that it is still a simple way into basic electronics without having to learn how to solder.
However once you have built the various breadboard projects, the stuff you have will still be useful. I and most electronic enthusiasts I know still use the breadboard for experimenting and designing circuits. It’s something that is invaluable for hobby electronics use, even for experienced hobbyists as there’s nothing like it for quickly trying things out.
Once you’ve exhausted the instruction book there are other books and internet articles about building projects on breadboards. Once you understand electronics more you will learn how to lay any circuit out on a breadboard. You can easily expand and buy more components and the breadboards clip together to build bigger circuits. It’s not unusual to see three or more clipped together and some people even fix the breadboards down on a solid board to work on.
The standard solder-less electronic breadboard, known as the MB-102 it has 830 holes to plug components into. You can also clip them together horizontally and vertically to create huge circuits.
How to learn electronics – Arduino starter kits
A while ago the hobbies of electronics and computers combined in an amazing way that has benefited both camps. That was the emergence of the micro controller, such as the Raspberry and Arduino. The Arduino has been particularly well embraced by the hobby electronic people and has become so large it’s almost a separate hobby in its own right.
What’s all the fuss about Arduino and electronics?
First an introduction, Arduino is a little micro controller board, by that I mean it’s a standard that you can program and interface with the outside world by means of electronics in a way that’s all too easy that you become addicted!
For hobby electronic fans, when integrated circuits came along it meant you could actually build really useful and impressive projects with these building blocks. Then Arduino came along with a standard building block that you could program to do almost anything yourself. Arduino starter kits come with everything you’ll need from the breadboard and components for the electronic side to the Arduino unit, programmers, software and much more. You can click here for Arduino kits.
Elegoo make a very reasonable Arduino starter kit that includes everything you need to get started. That includes breadboard, connecting wires, LED’s, switches, displays and programmer. You can go to the Elegoo website to download the documentation to have a look before you buy it.
Once you get into programming the Arduino and using electronics the sky is your limit and there are plenty of books that will take you even further.
Which is better electronics starter kit to begin with?
It depends on what you want to do and what level you are at when you start. I know a lot of people who have started out with the very basic child’s electronic kits and then got a taste and quickly gone down the bread board route. Your hardly going to waste much money if that’s what you do and quickly outgrow the first basic kit.
I don’t actually know anyone who has started off in electronics and bought kits and regretted it. You’ll almost certainly get the bug and launch yourself into a fantastically rewarding and interesting hobby and I know lots of people who have gone on to have a career from hobby electronics, I myself am one.
If you want to check out some excellent products for learning electronics I’ve got an article just here.
Electronic soldering kits for beginners
What about if you just want to build something useful first and you’re not interested in learning how it all works yet.
Just building an electronics kit
One of the many kits that Velleman UK make.
Well there are certainly plenty of kits around aimed at exactly that type of hobbyist too. The main difference is that you will more than likely need to know how to solder. If that’s what you want to learn first I have an article “Learn how to solder – beginners guide” that will teach you everything you need to know along with what else you will need such as tools and accessories.
The disadvantages
You need to learn how to solder and get hold of some other tools.
Once the kits built there nothing left to do, you can’t reuse it for something else.
You’ll probably not learn much about how the actual circuit you’ve built operates.
The advantages
You can build some quite useful projects.
As they are soldered onto circuit boards they are pretty finalised and will work for years.
Once you know how to solder you’ve acquired another skill for life.
Some of the simpler projects won’t take more than a few hours to finish.
When you get more experienced you can modify them to suit your needs exactly. This is something I have done a lot with electronic music projects.
Identifying basic electronic components
There are two types of electronic components, passive and active. Passive one are things like resistors and capacitors and are quite simple, active ones are things like transistors and integrated circuits and can be quite complex.
Passive electronic components
Identifying basic electronic components – the resistor
Resistors are easily identified by coloured bands that indicate their value.
Preset resistors, their values can be altered, the one on the left is a multi turn one for precision settings.
Two different types of variable resistors, also known as potentiometers.
This is one of the most common electronic components that there is it’s also one of the easiest to identify it’s a small tubular shape with coloured bands on it. These coloured bands indicate the value of the resistor. If you want to read more about resistor colour codes click here. A resistor can be connected any way round, electrically it doesn’t make any difference. I was always taught to put the colour codes from left to right to make the values easier to read when fault finding.
Apart from the ordinary fixed resistors, they also come in the variable variety. Nearly everything that has a control knob on it in the world of electronic technology will have a variable resistor on the other end, also pretty simple to identify.
Identifying basic electronic components – the capacitor
This is also pretty easy to identify once you get used to the many different types that there are. They do come in lots of shapes and sizes, unlike resistors that are fairly similar sizes, capacitors vary in size by value, the larger value ones can be quite big and are can shaped. The larger values are also usually polarised which means they have to go the right way round in the circuit. The values are usually printed on the side but the smaller ones sometimes have a number code such as 203.
A capacitor.
Ceramic capacitors.
An electrolytic capacitor, notice how these have positive and negative terminals.
Identifying basic electronic components – the diode
Looks a bit like a resistor but often with flat ends often black and will have a band around one end to mark its polarity.
A rectifying diode.
Identifying basic electronic components – the light emitting diode or LED
A transparent or translucent dome gives this component away, as does the fact that it lights up. Originally available red, orange, yellow and green but then blue and white became available. The blue and white versions can be very bright and white is now replacing bulbs in many lighting applications.
Active electronic components
Identifying basic electronic components – the transistor
They come in two main varieties, NPN and PNP. Easily identifiable because of it three legs. There are a few other shapes that you will eventually come across but for now most are black with three legs protruding from the bottom. The three legs are the base, collector and emitter and they have to be connected correctly, unfortunately there are different pin out connections for different types so you can’t pick any transistor up and know where its collector is. The easiest way to identify the pin out and type is with a component tester like the one mentioned at the bottom of this article. It will tell you not only if the transistor is working but where it’s a NPN or PNP, which leg is which and other data that you will find useful when you become more experienced.
A pair for transistors.
Identifying basic electronic components – the integrated circuit or IC
An integrated circuit is easily identifiable as a black plastic oblong with metal silver legs down either side of its body. The small ones have eight legs but fourteen and sixteen are also common however they can go to forty legs and more. Ages ago they were referred to as silicon chips.
They are complete circuits of transistors, capacitors resistors and diodes all wired together to do a particular thing, miniaturised and etched onto a tiny piece of silicon. There are literally thousands of them all designed to do particular things but you will get used to the popular ones as you use them. They have enabled electronics to become what it is today and you can use them in circuits that would have needed hundreds of transistors.
An 8 pin integrated circuit.
A 16 pin integrated circuit.
Learning electronics for beginners essential items
The multimeter
This was one of the first things I bought after I had got into hobby electronics. I had used simple voltmeters at school during physics lessons so I was aware of how useful being able to measure voltage would be but the multimeter will also let you measure current and resistance too. After you’ve used one you will realise how invaluable they are to the electronics enthusiast. Some of the more advanced ones also incorporate component testing however this function doesn’t go anywhere near competing with the component tester mentioned below.
Component tester
I used to get a lot of components by salvaging them from old televisions and radios. The component tester was essential to make sure they actually worked and also to check that still worked after experimenting.
Luckily the component testers that are available today are fantastic compared to the one I used to have. Now you can very cheaply get a small portable battery operated device that will not only check and measure the values accurately of nearly all types of components, but you can also plug components in and not only will it test and measure it will also tell you what he component is and the pin out connections.
This is pretty amazing compared to what I grew up with and is great even in everyday use for accurately matching and measuring resistors and capacitors but even more useful for transistors. Plug it in and it will tell you if it’s a PNP or NPN and which legs are the base collector and emitter, it will even identify MOSFET transistors and tell you which connections are the drain gate and source, last week I tested and measured a choke. But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here but suffice to say get one of these component testers and you’ll use it for ever.
How to get started In hobby electronics – what next?
Once you start learning there is literally no end to how far you can go. I’m building and modifying stuff that I would never have dreamed of when I started. I’ve also got things for my other hobby, electronic music, that I would never have been able to buy because of the sheer cost. I’m still using some electronic projects that I built thirty years ago. I built an analog sequencer for my analog synthesisers. I wanted it to be sixteen steps then I thought if I built two I could have two channels of sixteen or connect them together to give me thirty two steps. I eventually ended up building four units of sixteen steps. All built on stripboard or veroboard as it’s also know. With sixty four switches and sixty four potentiometers with knobs and flashing LED’s. It looked awesome, I could never have afforded to buy anything like it and I still use it now. That’s hobby electronics for you!