this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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I guess my question to you would be what are your goals? Do you have a project in mind? Do you have a technology, Analog, RF, MCU, FPGA, embedded design? I tend to learn a new thing better when I have an end goal or project to work towards. Depending on where your starting from, a pi might be a good place to start too. You still have most of the I/O and busses of an Arduino, but you can program everything in python, and you have the resources of a full OS too.
Probably stuff like microcontrollers/embedded applications! (I’d like to think) I already know much of the higher-level concepts of computers and how they work, I’ve messed around with programming in Rust or C#, I’ve been daily-driving linux for a few years, I’ve wrote software to do basic tasks for me, but my end goal is to apply my experiences to the physical world. I know very little about the basics of electronics, the physics of it, why PCBs are designed the way they are, etc.
I guess I’d like resources for the lowest-of-the-low-level stuff? Like “How electricity in general works”, “Use-cases for resistors”, “Why you sometimes see capacitors in weird places”, etc.
I’m just now realizing how vague my original question was? i’m sorry about that haha.
I don’t have a particular goal in mind though, i just think this stuff is cool, and I’d like to at some point be able to sit down and make something wacky or useful with KiCad/similar.
I'll start off with your questions are a outside of what I know well. In general to do stuff with electronics, you don't need to know the physics behind it, but the equations that pop out. Mainly V=IR, Almost everything goes back to that. Behind the scenes are lots and lots and lots of differential equations. Alpha Pheonix has a few good visualizations for resistance. He has a water based demo to visualize voltage and resistance, and a maze demo showing how electricity "finds" the path of least resistance. ElectroBoom probably won't teach you too much, but can show some interesting things you can do. EEVblog has some good lectures. For specific applications Digikey and Texas Instruments have some basics, and there are many lectures online available.
I think the questions you asked are a little more on the physics side than the electrical side, and the specifics I think of as a dark art that comes with experience. In general most capacitors you see are blocking DC on an AC circuit, coupling capacitors that are smoothing the power circuit, or capacitors to control/tune something specific. Those control values would be given in a datasheet. Resistors are often going to be current limiting, voltage dividing, or "pulling" a high impedance signal. To design something you often just need the rule of thumb, and not necessarily a deep understanding of "why".
EEVblog looks great! lots of material there! glibg10b mentioned the book "The Art of Electronics", is this a good source too?
That is an excellent source.
Great Scott has a series of videos about basic electronics concepts and components. Highly recommended: Electronics basics