Hi everyone,

I've always wanted to know how to learn electronics with a hands on approach. I graduated with an electrical engineering degree about 10 years ago and never worked in industry. We studied very little hands on practical electronics - mostly math and theory. I have plenty of books from college and tech school already. I know what is basically covered in each course and even if I retook all of these courses over again, I still wouldn't be able to troubleshoot and design electronics with only this knowledge.

My question is: Does anyone know of an electronics mentor/tutor/designer in the NJ area that I could gladly pay to help teach me (first analog and then digital)electronics along with doing some self study just to get a jump start on it. I work full time and don't have hours and hours to experiment doing the wrong things when an experienced person could steer me onto the right track and clear up problems that I may have much quicker and efficiently.


Thanks,

John

 

Why not use this forum as your mentor

 

Hello,

You can read the eBook, wich you can find in the blue tabs at the top of each page.
You can download the books as PDF's using the PDF sign on the right top edge of each index page.

If you have any questions, the members of this forum will gladly try to clear things up.

Bertus

 

I work full time and don't have hours and hours to experiment doing the wrong things ...

Unfortunately that's a big part of the learning process.

But anyway, I think you need to be more specific about what skills you want to learn, and what fields interest you. Design? Repair? Communications? Power handling? Computing? These fields are just too vast to learn them all at a practical level.

I humbly suggest asking your employer what they might pay for. Maybe there are some things that interest you - and them.

 

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your advice. I'll begin by reading the ebooks and give that a shot. Then when I stumble across something that I have difficulty in, I'll ask you guys if you could please enlighten me.

Thanks to all of you who responded so quickly to my post.

Regards,

John

 

Get a protoboard, the few components involved in every exercise and test them practically.

You will climb the ladder faster. As a self taught person I strongly suggest it!

 

Get a protoboard, the few components involved in every exercise and test them practically. You will climb the ladder faster.

True. You must get your fingers involved. Book learnin' only goes so far. We have full grown engineers come here because they can't figure out which leg of a transistor is the collector.

 

Get a protoboard...

+1
There's a great satisfaction in something so simple as lighting an LED, making it flash or dim. Learning is so much deeper when it's driven by motivation, requires you to actually DO something, and produces fun as the outcome.

 

Good point, wayneh. On that note, do you have anything you'd like to build? We could get you started on a useful circuit that will be used in a variety of electronics. Name anything you'd like to build.

 

Hi everyone,

I've always wanted to know how to learn electronics with a hands on approach. I graduated with an electrical engineering degree about 10 years ago and never worked in industry. We studied very little hands on practical electronics - mostly math and theory. I have plenty of books from college and tech school already. I know what is basically covered in each course and even if I retook all of these courses over again, I still wouldn't be able to troubleshoot and design electronics with only this knowledge.

My question is: Does anyone know of an electronics mentor/tutor/designer in the NJ area that I could gladly pay to help teach me (first analog and then digital)electronics along with doing some self study just to get a jump start on it. I work full time and don't have hours and hours to experiment doing the wrong things when an experienced person could steer me onto the right track and clear up problems that I may have much quicker and efficiently.


Thanks,

John

John,if you have an Electrical Engineering Degree,you are unlikely to do the wrong things very often.
All you need is "hands on" experience.
Go back to your books,& this time,apply them to the practical stuff around you.
Have a look at a piece of commercially made equipment,get an idea of how things are done,try to trace signal paths,& if something looks weird,work out why the designer did it that way.

It's a bit like having a Degree in Literature,but never having read a book.
In that case,you would need to read a lot of books to make up for the lack.
It's the same with Electronics,look at a lot of equipment,circuit diagrams on the Net,projects in magazines,etc.

 

And you're not a proper electronics engineer until you have burnt your fingers with the soldering iron and destroyed a few transistors! The more expensive - the better!

 

I have a BSEE and a ME degree, and the unique knowledge I have was gained in the lab not in school. School only teaches what everybody else knows, while hardware teaches the hard truth. After spending many long lab hours figuring why something did not conform to theory I ususlly learned something very few people knew. Later in my career I made a really lucrative living by sharing that knowledge with engineers in seminars and writings. If you want to pick up some of this knowledge the easy way, Google EDN and search for the analog angle column or Ron Mancini.