Help With Learning Electronics

What is the best way to get hands-on experience with troubleshooting electronics? I am trying to find some hands on projects to help me learn more about electronics. Any suggestions? Thanks

Find a piece of broken electronics and try to find out what's wrong with it.....
Hands on means hands on! It does however help when you're starting if someone can explain to you what's wrong better than 'it doesn't work'

Find something that isn't working properly (not working is harder to start with) and post the device and it's symptoms here along with your thoughts about it.

That's one way, and it's a good one.

Another way is to start building simple little projects, such as you'll find here and all over the web. Pick something that looks interesting, doesn't require too many parts (or expensive parts), build it an learn from your mistakes.

I would invest in a breadboard, a flat panel with lots of connections you can use to build temporary circuits to experiment with them without having to solder wires or etch a circuit board. You can build lots of stuff this way.

I learned tons just from opening up electronics components and seeing how they were built, mind you don't start this way with something you care about broken ones work just as well =) It takes a bit of time disassembling to learn out to reasemble. Ask questions, look up chip numbers. Dive in =) As far a simple first steps basic LED circuits are always a good bet, you can use 555's to make them blink or change brightness and you learn more as you try to add things you want.

There are numerous electronic learning kits that can help you understand circuits. These typically include instructions, parts, a solder-less breadboard, and some have a meter or readout to build many different circuits. I recommend one of them as a good place to start.

If the kit doesn't have a meter and you don't have one then I recommend buying a low cost multimeter. You need one of those for even minimal work in electronics. Even one of these $5 units will work for the basics.

While I agree strongly with Sceadwian and carbonzit I may as well add my own few cents worth. To effectively troubleshoot is not much different than troubleshooting anything else. The ability to troubleshoot anything requires a good working knowledge of how it works. On a simple scale if a toilet fails to stop filling after being flushed you need to know the cause. The failure to stop filling is a symptom, knowing the root cause is what it is all about. You need an understanding of how the toilet works if you hope to diagnose the problem and repair it.

If I open up and look at an electronic circuit to see a charred and burned resistor what I am likely seeing is a symptom. I need to know what the circuit does and how it does what it does. The odds are if I replace that charred and burned resistor in short time I will have two charred and burned resistors.

The failed resistor in this case is only a symptom. The cause is what I am after.

So in a few words, gain an understanding of how things work if you want to effectively troubleshoot stuff, know how stuff works.

Ron

Yes, a multimeter. I have one of them Harbor Fright units, and it's fine for starting out.

Here's my idea of a starting kit you could put together yourself:

• Solderless breadboard, big enough for a good-sized project
• A power supply: either batteries, a wall-wart supplying 9-12 volts DC, or a real power supply (you should build one for yourself once you know how)
• A meter, or better yet two or three. At least one analog (non-digital) meter is nice if you can find one.
• Lots and lots of parts. Resistors, for sure. Vellemann sells a 480-resistor assortment that has several of each value. You'll want a bunch of LEDs and transistors (2N2222, 2N3904, etc.). Other parts (capacitors, chips) as needed.
• Wire for hooking up your breadboard. I was lucky enough to find a huge stash of telephone wire, perfect for making jumpers, wiring small circuits, etc.
• Basic tools (this may be for Phase II, when you actually start building more permanent projects): wire cutter, pliers, wire stripper, screwdrivers.

You don't absolutely need all this stuff, but it's nice to have ...

Very good advice Ron, carbonzit is giving a good shopping list too, but you don't have to buy things to learn. You can do pretty much anything you want with components you scavenge cause they were free so there's not cost if you smoke them, mind you it's harder to design a circuit or do something useful with only what you have as opposed to what you should be using. No matter the source, the bigger a pile of stuff you have as a resource the better.

Thank you, Scad, for mentioning the Junk Pile. How could I have forgotten that? I've made it a habit to field-strip every piece of discarded electronics that comes my way, resulting in a great big heap of all kinds of useful stuff. Some of my projects are about 75% reclaimed parts. All you need is a screwdriver, a soldering iron and determination.

carbonzit, you'd be surprised what you can get off a board with a high temp heat gun and some skill.