Hello! I'm a student of computer engineering and I'd like to learn electronics to have a better understanding of what's going on inside a computer, I know close to nothing about ejectronics, just to clarify.
I made my research previously by asking people and all of it comes down to get Arduino (Genuino in my case) to "get a hang of programming" which I do have at the moment, but I don't know if buying a Arduino Starter Kit is that worth it for a computer engineering student who wants to learn electronics and maybe to learn to optimize some C programs to run them on Arduino, as it is a bit expensive for me.
I appreciate your future answers and sorry if I posted in the wrong section of the forum, but this seems like the correct place.
Thanks in advance!
A starter kit might be more expensive as it might include components you do not use. On the other hand You know that all components needed for some projects are certainly available and buying single piece components can be relative expensive (or at least take time before they arrive)
What you can do to decrease costs is to go to second hand stores and check cheap electronic gadgets/toys and dissect them. Gives you also insight how other products work.
Finally for a starter I would advise to spend some money on a good soldering iron. And of course a digital multimeter (cheap $5 ones are adequate for most uses).
I would offer that learning requires both the MASS of the thing and the SIGNIFICANCE of the thing.
if you just 'book learn' and you have the ability to truly concerned what is written, you have two great gifts. one is your ability to comprehend and the second is that the writer was clear.
if you get a simple DC motor, something very simple, maybe from an old battery toothbrush, or a baby's toy train.
and get some resistors and some LED's and then some switches and some transistors,
with these, you have the ability to make a motor spin, to see what actions occur when you press a button of move a switch and you can see how an LED lights.
on of the things you learn rather quickly is that if you can light an LED, you can turn on a motor.
so the LED can REPRESENT a motor or some other device.
The beauty of the starter kits are that they have what you need to get started.
that's the lowest-cost option. Email Yourduino and tell them you're a student and they will set up a 10% catalog-wide discount.
Many hundreds of university and high school students start with THIS: somewhat more expensive kit. There is how-to and example code for every item in that kit.
If you're really on the cost edge, email me and I'll make a special price... and throw in some transistors
Arduino is a no brainer start for an engineering student. I am a hobbyist but have a club for some young guys. My engineering student eats it up. We do a lot more practical stuff than he does in his classes. Some naysayers will say that arduino is not serious enough. The truth of the matter is that it is a starting point and you can get as deep as you want. You are actually interfacing with the hardware. Now we buy the chips and build our own boards. You will eventually dump the Arduino software for more direct control using the command-line on linux or a development environment like eclipse. Most all of the knowledge you gain with Arduino will transfer to other programming languages, computer usage, electronics and other micro-controllers. As far as expense goes, you must understand that education is not cheap. If this is for advancing in your education than the 100-200 Euros (of course you don't have to spend that much) is well worth the investment.
