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Making your own electronics

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metomeya said:
I'm a complete beginner but I really want to get into making my own electronics.

I found this site:
https://www.parallax.com/

Is this a good place to start? It uses PBASIC and JAVA.

Isn't there Linux based chips?

Any magazines or books you guys suggest I read? Like Circuit Celluar?

https://www.circuitcellar.com/magazine/

There are no Linux chips but there are Java chips. I do like circuit cellar :) What aspects of electronics to you want to learn?

D.
 
Parallax is a bad place to start. Overly mainstream and massivly underpowered. Start on wikipedia and doing research on the net on how semi conductors and electronics actually work, both analog and digital.
 
I would mostly like to program things that will work around the house.

For example

(having my windows open at a set time of the day, a temp senor that will open my roof vents in my attic, etc.)
 
Then buy commerical modules that do that.
If you want to learn electronics you have to start at the basics. Resistors capacitors inductors, the true meaning of what AC and DC mean. Transformers, diodes, transistors, opamps etc...
Even basic timers and sensors make people scared when they relize the complexity of the systems required to actually make it work well in a real world situation.
The only 'shortcuts' of understanding in electronics are Integrated circuits and those add an entire other universe of complexity to the situation even aside from the 'basics'
 
Microcontrollers are a simple core that can handle computing tasks of mild to moderate complexity. In fact in many cases they can respond to inputs faster than a much more powerful desktop. However, they carry a relatively simple set of instructions and have limited resources, particularly the stack and available RAM. There is not adequate room for an OS like Windows or Linux, or a virtual machine like Java. And we don't really have a need for such a thing either.

IMHO Parallax and their "Stamps" teach you little about microcontrollers and are way too expensive. The Stamp IS a PIC, but instead of running code directly it's a BASIC virtual machine. You only learn how to write their code and little about how the PIC itself works.
 
Sceadwian said:
Then buy commerical modules that do that.
Ever heard of PLCs?
 
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