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Methods of Learning to Build Electronic Circuitry?
Peristaltic asks: "I've seen some cool articles in Instructables detailing how to create various electronic gadgets. A couple of these as well as the odd DIY kit have come to life on my kitchen table. While it's satisfying to see the things work after time spent soldering, I would love to be able to take the next step beyond the basics of component functionality, i.e. a resistor does -this-; a capacitor does -that-. Forest Mimm's books have been helpful towards this end, but it's time to move forward. Every month or so, I read here on Slashdot a plea for help getting started with, or expanding someone's knowledge of programming. OK, I'd like to make that plea for help with electronics theory & circuit building. I've found plenty of references on the web, Amazon, etc., but can someone who's already taken this trip outline what has and hasn't worked for them?"
...Rocky's Boots - my 4 year old knew more about feedback circuits than 1/2 the engineering students in the local college.
I currently have an 8 bit computer breadboarded - Z80 CPU, 32K RAM, 128K flash ROM, PIO, LCD interface and keypad. Breadboarding is practical for any IC you can get in DIL packages. I'm still learning, and there are plenty of fairly complex circuits you can make on breadboard (even if they do look like a rats nest).
0 -Project-Pages/Image4.html
Most things are still available in DIL packages - the Z80 CPU and its peripheral chips are *still manufactured* in that form. Static RAM and flash ROM is easy to get hold of in DIL packages. Of course, there are mountains of 74-series and 4000-series logic and other things like 555 timers made in their tens of millions.
Here is my current rat's nest: http://www.alioth.net/Projects/Z80/Z80-Project/Z8
You probably don't want to start learning and experimenting directly with 100 pin QFPs. It would be an exercise in futility.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I completely agree, there's nothing wrong with simpler chips, there's no real need for 100Mhz+ devices in your projects unless it calls for them. You don't pick some high speed piece of kit and thinking of something to do with it (that's a totally wrong approach IMO). You should be thinking of an application and then build the circuit to fit your application. You need to find a problem and develop a solution, not have a solution and try to find a problem it might fix. Choosing to use simple through hole logic circuits, or microcontrollers as opposed to modern high speed surface mount devices should be a decision you make based on the problem you're trying to solve... and there are quite a few problems that can be solved with simple circuits.
To the OP: As someone who has already gone down that road (from following pre-planed projects to building my own custom stuff)... There is just one simple factor to do...
Decide what you want to do (define your "problem) and then build it (develop the "solution").
Today I basically have an idea for something I want to build, and then I begin figuring how I can accomplish that using the individual part data, usually from simple chips like 74XXX and 555s to more complex chips like Basic STAMP and PIC chips. Most often I choose projects that I feel are just a hair out of my range and I learn some new skills along the way.
I've been working on many little projects but my last BIG project was an adapter that allowed you to use a Sega Saturn controller on an Xbox 360. I had limited microcontroller experience so I learned about them, figured out which one would best suit my needs, and costs, and then I learned the assembly language used to program it. I also learned a lot about multiplexers (and why they wouldn't work for what I was trying to do). But that project like many others weren't following any kind of guide, and they weren't based on something someone else had already done. I find developing a circuit similar to piecing together a puzzle, you have an idea if which pieces might fit where and you might have a few holes in your design and then hunt around for pieces that might fit that you didn't know about, expanding your knowledge along the way.
Basically just learning what the function, capabilities, and limits of number of electronic components do is the first step. Once you have those in your pocket you can start to utilize them for something unique. Like the words of a foreign language... now all you have to do is think of something creative to say. It's not anything you'll learn from a book, because the next step is be creative and think of something to build.
Collector's Edition
The fastest, most intricate wire-wrap board I recall seeing was a prototype of the first Apple PowerPC based computer. I forgot the title of the movie it was in, maybe someone here remembers?. The complexity of it was jaw dropping, I never knew you could do something so complex and fast with wire-wrapping.
This book was based off the one-semester course Physics 123 taught at Harvard. In the course itself, which is taken by people of all majors, you design and build all kinds of things like radio receiver and transmitters, amps, filters, and after maybe 4-5 weeks you actually design and build a circuit to take an audio signal, figure out a way to transmit it via infrared diodes, receive it with infrared photodiodes across the room, and rebuild the audio structure and play back on a speaker. This was satisfactorily done in the class by psychology majors with absolutely no prior electronic or much physics background. If they can do it, you can.
The second half of the book (and the course) is digital electronics, culminating in the building of a 68008 digital computer with a motherboard-based breadboard. People have gone on to add things such as putting two DACs and feeding the output to an oscilloscope to draw pictures, and programming the CPU to make a PacMan game, for example. Really wild stuff.
The book is awsome, it starts with resistors, then capacitors, and goes on to transistors, and then op-amps, going from ideal to real-world structures. And you really only need some high-school level algebra to follow it. The reading is not dry at all, the authors actually make it interesting to read.
The only criticism I ever heard about this book was by a guy with a masters in Electrical Engineering who commented that one of their circuits wouldn't work in the high-Megahertz range and was a faulty design, and said much of their stuff isn't high-end design. This guy has a masters degree, and spent 6 years of education taking advanced EE courses, so if that's his critique of the book then you can bet that for people trying to go from nothing to complicated systems it's a great book.
make world, not war
Uh, yeah. Microcontrollers != electronics. Not even close. Yeah, you can be another guy making magic 8-balls with stamps (they can't really do much more than that). Electronics is much more than that, and it honestly sounds like you don't have much of a clue. There is a lot of fun you can have with analog electronics, FPGAs, real microprocessors, and various application-specific chips. Building a simple op-amp headphone amp and understanding how it works and how to improve it is a much better learning experience.
I would start with "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Jim Williams' book is pretty good reading, too (Art of analog design or something like that). If you like audio amplifiers, Douglas Self's books are absolutely awesome. In my opinion, digital design is a skill while high performance analog is an art (much more interesting and far more difficult). Of course, any engineer or serious hobbyist should be able to do both well.
If you like microcontrollers, get a digital logic textbook and learn what is inside first. Anyone who writes stuff for microcontrollers should have no trouble drawing a detailed block diagram of one. You should be able to learn to program any given 8-bit chip in a couple of days, whether it's a PIC, 8051, AVR, Z80, 68HC11, or your own design. I am pretty sure most basic stamp developers don't even know what a finite state machine is. Hence, their mortal fear of assembly or machine code. Learning electronics with basic stamps is like learning to swim in a bathtub. Not to mention, the whole point of an 8-bit microcontroller is that it's extremely cheap. Even a moderately complicated robot might have dozens of them. Paying $50 a pop defeats the point.