Asklemmy

43885 readers

847 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What are the best resources for getting started with hands-on electronics and robotics? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by overcast5348 to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Background: I took some 100 and 200-level courses on electronics in college over a decade ago. I still remember some stuff (Ohm's law, Kirchoff's law), and I can recognise the basic parts in a circuit diagram.

I am also happy to pick up a beginner friendly text book and go through the theory by myself, if there are any recommendations.

However, I've never even held a soldering gun. I am a blank slate when it comes to any practical applications. I get overwhelmed trying to figure out what kit to order on Amazon.

So, is there a course/tutorial you'd recommend for learning the hands on parts of it? I'd prefer as much handholding as possible. Ex -- if someone sells all the components to finish the projects in the course that would be the course I pick.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Robotics can be dangerous, don't jump into the deep end of robotics without learning how to use electronics first. Definitely start with electronics and move up to robotics once you have a lot of electronic failures under your belt. I would suggest that you keep robotics in mind as you learn.

Many people provided you with great places to start with electronics. Start there, because robotics are electronics with motion and that's more dangerous. Motion can hurt someone or start a fire. Especially for as a hobby I'd be most concerned about accidentally starting a fire because of bad code and poor failure planning.

If you pick this up and get some experience with electronics, you'll begin to understand a lot of the things that can go wrong with robotics before they start a fire. Also this can get very expensive, you will destroy components. It's inevitable. I may be speaking from experience.

[–] overcast5348 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, fire safety concerns have definitely played a major role in why I haven't actually started building stuff. I'll keep this in mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not as big a risk as this person is making out. If you're playing with low current microcontroller stuff, there's virtually no risk. At most you're gonna let the magic smoke out of a chip, not start a fire.

If you start getting into stepper motors and things like that, sure, but that's a long ways from where you are today.

[–] overcast5348 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Where does something like "use a DC motor to build a tiny little fan" stand, in terms of safety?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very safe unless you attach razor blades to the blades.

Most small DC motors don't have enough power to break the skin

[–] overcast5348 2 points 2 months ago

Awesome, thanks!