Is Arduino a good intro into the electronics world?

Using Arduino General Electronics
1

I had taken an electronics class in college and I LOVED the satisfaction of creating something as simple a blinking LED! I really want to get into creating electronics and I want to learn for myself outside of the colligate surrounding. My only problem is that I have NO CLUE where to start. I've been looking around for a while and I have seen a lot of stuff about Arduino. I'm wondering if it's appropriate for someone with absolutely no background in electronics what so ever?

This is the starter pack I may buy. If there is a better one please let me know! Money is no option at this point!

If anyone has any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please dont be shy.

P.S This is my first post, so if I am violating any standards please understand I'm a complete noobie!

2

starter kits are good,

for cheap motors etc I always point to second hand store where you can buy toys for cheap and dissect them.
You learn how things work and yo get a lot of electronic goodies.

3

You would be a fool to buy it from Amazon. Mouser is selling them for $99.

4

Thank you, but my initial question still stands... Is Arduino a good place to start out in the realm of electronic engineering, or should I dumb it down a little first?

5

I believe it is.

6

Bummer:
Thank you, but my initial question still stands... Is Arduino a good place to start out in the realm of electronic engineering, or should I dumb it down a little first?

Best place to start out is with whatever will keep YOU interested. What are YOUR interests? What are you curious about? Why do you want to learn about electronics?

You can create a lot of things...as simple or complex as you'd like. Just get it, start playing with it, and use this forum (and GOOGLE!) when you run into a problem. You have to get hands on. Go for it.

7

Arduino is good to start in the control electronics.
But electronics is vast and diverse, and the area covered by the Arduino is very small.
You have:

  • analog electronic
  • digital electronic
  • FPGA
  • servo (analog and digital)
  • transport of data over long distances -> even if the data are numericals, transport over long haul is an analog problem
  • coding information
    and so on...........

In fact I agree with :

What are YOUR interests? What are you curious about? Why do you want to learn about electronics?

Nobody can know all electronic domain, we have to choose.

8

Im interested in starting in analog electronics... where would I go to get a solid foundation on that?

9

I don't think arduino is a good starter for analog electronics. Most of the external devices are digital ones, communications devices, sensors devices (OK, sensors are often analog devices) etc... It is great to make digital electronic "more simple" , because the program in the microcontroler will do several tasks, which would have needed a lot of transistors, logical gates etc.... without it. But even BJT transistors are mainly used as switching devices here .
I can't tell you where to find what you are looking for, it depends on your starting level, the level you want to get, the time you can spend on it etc.... There are electronics courses on the net.
You could have a look at some of them, find one with practical examples, and see what you'll need to buy to begin. Some resistors, transistors, diodes, Op amps, capacitors, a solder iron, a multimeter, an oscilloscope (later) ....

edit : I had a quick glance at this site Electronics - Mobile Friendly , could be a good start

10

Thank you, but my initial question still stands... Is Arduino a good place to start out in the realm of electronic engineering, or should I dumb it down a little first?

If you were taking Electronics Engineering in college, you wouldn't get into microprocessors until your 3rd or 4th year. But I have to agree with ChicagoDave, you should focus on what you are interested in.

The nice thing about the Arduino is that you can do quite a bit with very little understanding of electronics or microprocessors/microcontrollers.

Of course, with a microprocessor/microcontroller you also have to program, which is another field entirely. But again, programming the Arduino can be fairly simple and it can be a very-good introduction to programming. Overall, it's a LOT easier to grab an Arduino and write a blink-LED program than it is to grab some components and build a blink-LED circuit in hardware.

Im interested in starting in analog electronics... where would I go to get a solid foundation on that?

Maybe op-amps. Again in a university, you wouldn't typically study op-amps 'till you've got a year or two of basic electronics under your belt. But, you can do a lot with very simple op-amp circuits and it's OK to jump-ahead. (It would be good if you understand resistors, capacitors, and Ohms Law before you try to understand how op-amps and op-amp applications work.)

Overall, you should learn Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's circuit laws. And, basic passive components - Resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, and how they behave in AC & DC circuits. Then, study basic semiconductors - Transistors, FETs, MOSFETs, and diodes.

For digital electronics - Basic gates (AND gates, OR, gates, etc.) and flip-flops.

If you can take more classes, that should help. You can't beat a formal class with sequence, structure, homework, feedback (quizzes & tests), plus an instructor, and fellow students to learn from. The next best way to learn is with books. The Internet is great, but it's not the best way to learn... i.e. There is enough raw information on the Internet to become a doctor but realisticlly, you have to go to medical school if you want to be a brain surgeon.

11

If you were taking Electronics Engineering in college, you wouldn't get into microprocessors until your 3rd or 4th year.

Thankfully that is going away. I dropped out of college initially when I found out I couldn't TOUCH most stuff until Senior year :frowning:

That was 50+ years ago, but I finally got my revenge. This year every entering Computer Science and Engineering student at my OldSkool buys an Arduino-compatible Starter Set at the bookstore and immediately starts hands-on learning of Electronics and Computer Science. With a kit I designed. Over 1000 students at a few Universities will be using those kits their first year.

Maybe my frustration in 1959 led to THIS:

That and having the original designer of the Erector Set give parts to me and my friend Mark when we were 8 or 10 years old.

So, just Started! Get some components. Breadboard stuff. And if you are serious about Analog (or Electronics in general) save up to buy a used oscilloscope. Remember, ELECTRICITY IS INVISIBLE! and you need to learn how to make it visible to you.

Email me a mailing address and I'll send you THIS to start with.

DISCLAIMER: Mentioned stuff from my own shop...

12

If you were taking Electronics Engineering in college, you wouldn't get into microprocessors until your 3rd or 4th year.

Depends on the school - my son just started school as a sophomore, and one of his fall classes was Embededded Microprocessor design, they did a project that was involved with steering a car somehow. Will see him over Thanksgiving break next week to find out more.
Wasn't Arduino based tho, we learned that much from an earlier visit.

Lab time playing is a big help after reading & lectures. It's pretty satisfying seeing something progress from theory to an actual working circuit.

13

Is Arduino a good place to start out in the realm of electronic engineering

No.

Arduino is a reaction to the modern paradox of "it would be a lot easier to program a microcontroller to do that instead of designing an electronic circuit", with a good dose of "and this will help you use the microcontroller without having to learn much about computers or microcontrollers, either."

Arduinos are useful. Arduinos are fun. Arduinos are a great way to get things done, and to build up interest in electronics and programming and computer science. But you can pretty much do amazing things with an arduino without ever learning what passes for "Freshman level" "electrical engineering."

Does that mean that Arduino is useless for learning electronics? No, i don't think so. It's always nice to have something fun, something that represents your educational GOAL, while you're sitting there trying to slog through calculus and quantum wells and Thevenin equivalent circuits. And you CAN learn a lot by using and analyzing the Arduino and Arduino projects. But it's not a good "starting point."

14

Bummer:
Thank you, but my initial question still stands... Is Arduino a good place to start out in the realm of electronic engineering, or should I dumb it down a little first?

It certainly can be but you can't ignore learning the theory too - these days there are
lots of good lecture courses on line, and there are many books including the classic
"Art of Electronics" which are pretty accessible.

15

I started with two things:

  1. An Arduino.
  2. A kit of 7400 logic, specifically this kit: http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_84961_-1

It's also best to have several breadboards and a kit of wire jumpers, a kit of various value 1/4 watt resistors, and a kit of various value capacitors.

I think an introduction to digital electronics outside of microcontrollers is a big help. It was for me, at least. I am not sure if the 74 series kit that I mentioned above is more of a help, or a digital electronics course using programmable logic devices. PLDs can do everything the linked kit can do, and more, and faster than these older chips anyway. But PLDs require more planning and thinking (and programming) than pushing these chips into a breadboard and getting immediate results. The 7400 series chips plus an old TTL data book (e.g. http://www.ebay.com/itm/TTL-Logic-Data-Book-by-Texas-Instruments-Engineering-Staff-1988-Paperback-/301021020525) made it all make sense to me.

I found that this instructor has a good book on digital electronics and his lectures are worthwhile regardless of if you own his book or not:

Lecture 1:

These videos are not well organized on his page. It makes the most sense to go through it in order and it is up to you to look at the unorganized list of videos and put it into order. I used Youtube Downloader to get them all and make sense of the order first.