Hobby Engineering

While I am a hobbyist medical doctor, I do not have any formal engineering training. I picked up a couple of electronics books from a yard sale and started buying components off of Digi-Key, but I haven't had much time to do anything more advanced than switch + lightbulb + breadboard wiring.

I do have some advice on how to start with homebrew surgery, however -- and where to find the best "training patients".

Why this obsession everywhere with free resources?

Hate to break it to you, but you're going to have to pony up some dough to buy components and tools. Why not buy a book while you're at it?

Failing that, I hear libraries let you borrow books for free.

CM

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Original post by Tergadare I've been interested in taking up engineering (electrical and otherwise) as a hobby for a long time, but haven't been able to find any free resources on it. Would anybody mind recommending a free tutorial on the basics, as well as a place where I can purchase parts? Any help would be appreciated. ~Tergadare

If you are interested in stuff like robotics or making little devices/widgets that do various things there are some decent tutorials and resources on the net.

If you are looking for the actually parts/hardware to tinker around with, it might take some looking to find stuff. There are basically lots of higher end products out there (all over the net) that have tons of features/options in a huge selection. That can usually be a little difficult to swallow for the beginer.

However, there is somewhat of a market for lowcost, easy to use, flexible products out there that let you do quite a bit without a lot of knowledge. At least, you might not have much when you begin your project, but by the time you finish you'll have much much more than you started with.

It really depends what kind of 'engineering' you are interested in. That could really include anything from building bridges out of popsicle sticks to programming micro controllers and building your own circuits.

You could get one of those beginner electronics kits from radio shack for like $50 to get started with some simple hands on stuff. But if you want to make anything cool, you're going to need some electrical engineering books. Search google for circuits and logic design courses and you can find what books they use. And many times you can find some interesting lecture notes also.

Well, electronic components cost piss-all. Like, nothing. It's the test equipment around it that'll cost ya. The system I have cost me about £1000 - for an oscilloscope, signal generator and powersupply. As for the knowledge of how to put it all together, there's nothing better than a good book on the subject. Nearly every tutorial on the net that I've read has been total toss when it comes to electronic engineering. Either they are just flat out wrong, leave out so much information about what is going on that they can be counted as flat out wrong, or are just horribly badly written.

A few general books that I can see on my shelf that might be of interest:

The Art Of Electronics;
Electronic circuits & Devices;
CMOS Analog Circuit Design (though - not directly applicable as you probably don't have your own fab factory - it does teach you a lot);

There are many many more specialised ones that I can recommend if you like, but those are the general ones.

python_regious: The books you listed will likely be far too heavy for a beginner. I don't have a any good suggestions on that front as I took EE in college and learned it using a variety of textbooks. My experience with online resources with regards to circuits and basic EE resources has been that they are very lacking.


The good news is that engineering as a hobby is very do-able and is a lot of fun! It will take a lot of effort on your part to learn the material properly and EE itself is typically a very abstract field. Virtually no textbooks on the subjects will give you much practical knowledge on building homebrew circuits and treat the material with an emphasis on the mathematics. Nonetheless, I'm sure good books can be found at the beginner level.

Here are some things that the OP should look into now and in the future:

- A large breadboard. Here is a great one. This is the first thing on the list you should buy. In fact, buy 2 of them and maybe an additional jumper wire kit. If you can get a hold of 26 AWG telephone wire, it will work great with breadboards and is much thinner than the 22 AWG wire that is typically used.

- For components, my first stop is Jameco. Fairly good prices for passive components and ICs, with good prices.

- Digikey is a favorite among hobbyists and college students. It has way more stuff than Jameco but their web site isn't quite as convenient.

Good luck!

What about these free books?

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Original post by trzy python_regious: The books you listed will likely be far too heavy for a beginner.

Yeah, possibly. I'm a bit clueless when it comes to how easy electronics books are to learn from for beginners, having done a masters in the subject myself. Ah well, they're good books anyway.

Thank you all. I'm aware of the expenses it will cost to buy the actual hardware, but I have a bit of a frugal streak. I'll look into all of those resources.

Almost all of you have been very helpful.