I’m going to commit to the 23rd as the first date in a series of electronics classes aimed at:
No prior experience necessary, but there will be theory (with application via making stuff).
Learning about actual fundamental electronics, like diodes, op-amps, and capacitors and making discrete electronic stuff. No code, really. We can do digital, but it’s much more fun and educational to actually build a register (what’s that? We can discuss that too).*
A month lead time gives me an opportunity to order parts and dig up my resources. I’ll just expected nobody knows much about electronics theory, but that you wish to learn (do you own a calculator? not a phone, a calculator. Well, you’re going to do great. Phone only person can come too, but they’ll wish they had a calculator and scratch paper by the end).
Leading up to this, I’ll plant myself with a few breadboards, some PCBs, etc and offer some informal electronics time.
I taught college electronics for non-majors for years, and it was a blast. More like electronics for makers and awesome, creative people who want to do stuff. This will be fun. Hey, and frying a 10 cent 2n7000 by over-juicing it is preferable to bricking arduinos over and over and over again.
There may be some gentle SMD soldering, but I’m purposefully trying to ease people into it. My eyes aren’t fantastic, and it’s frustrating to jump from through-hole to 0204 all at once…
It will have a fee. I can’t do it without a fee, as parts are needed, consumables, cup of coffee, etc.
Lorin
P.S. I have a thing against arduinos – don’t take it personally, but also know that I do own 2 of them and use them to test ideas before whipping up something purpose built. Maybe, if folks are interested we can do a PIC and / or ARM micro class.
- I may reference arduino since many are familar, but it would go more like this: “okay, now let’s try running that stepper motor with a shift register and a couple transistors”. Or, "your sensor doesn’t suck, you just need hysteresis (schmitt triggers and buffers are amazing things).