Electronics

[Lakeland]

I'd like to teach myself electronics! Up to now, I've built quite a few circuits, the one linked below being the most complicated. I find this sort of building ok, but it is all pre prepared and is basically just following instructions which isn't really a skill.

Image link

My aim is to be able to understand electronics to the point where I can design and then make my own circuit.

Are there any good books / video's which go into detail about basic electronics? I know bits and pieces about basic / intermediate level electronics but I don't feel I have a good enough grasp of the basics. I have researched and watched video's on youtube but most of them start at a level which is too advanced.

I'm a mechanical type of person and often find it hard to understand things which I can't see or think of as a moving part. Up to recently, I knew a transistor was a switch / amplifier, but didn't know how it worked. I recently had the theory about the semi conductor explained i.e. npn / pnp and their negative / positive charge, when a voltage is added / subtracted the silicon changes state, and now it makes perfect sense. I understand resistors and why the need for differed values, capacitors and why the need for different values but I don't know why different values are needed for certain parts of a circuit and I don't know when or how to select them. I understand diodes are to allow a current through and not to return, and are used for converting ac to dc? but I wouldn't know how to implement one. I understand, to a degree, IC's, but I can't design a circuit around one.
So to summarise, I know about the different basic components, what I don't know is how to put them together to make a circuit.

Apologies if I have waffled on, any help you could give would be greatly appreciated

 

[Lakeland]

Cheers Feek , nearly done with the build, just the transmitter section to finish. Having trouble getting a correct maximum voltage reading on a variable resistor so no progress has been made for quite a while. I'll get there eventually, It's on hold at the minute until I have spare time to dedicate, I could rush it in with an hour here and there but I want to enjoy building it if I can

 

[Lakeland]

Thanks for the link Mickey ill check it out

No worries Feek, as it happens I'm building a K3 at work with Y9+Y10 radio club students. It's a nice piece of kit but as you say very expensive, even without the optional extra's, ok if you have the money to splash but not really necessary, the gains made from a K3 would be less than making / buying a better aerial. 2m is dead in the lakes, we generally stick to 20/40/80m on a 133' windom aerial hung off a 70' tower block

 

[Lakeland]

I quid like the look of the Arduino, I was going to look into PIC but this looks better from a beginners point of view.

David, many thanks for the notes you have forwarded, they are at points very hard to understand but there is some very good quality notes which will help now and in the future so thank you. Just out of interest, what kind of job would you expect to get at the end of your degree?

I have crocodile clips on my pc at work, it's good for testing circuits, and making explosions but it is kind of limited if you don't know what you're doing. I've downloaded the Yenka program, after a quick look about, it appears to be very good, a mixture of crocodile clips with theory linked in.

My primary interests are audio amplifiers and radio transceivers. I'd like to progress to the stage where I can build my own amplifier, crossovers, morse/radio transceiver with audio filters. It is a big ask for me to get to that level but I will get there eventually.