tinkering electronics for mid-life crisis ?

[zzzxtreme]

hello people

would it be a possible for a mid aged person to start learning electronics from ground up ?

if yes, what idiot's book/guide and/or kit do you guys recommend?

I have an empty room and I imagining the room to be filled with soldering tools and stuffs and DOS controlled primitive robots thru serial port.

I'm a programmer, but I'm nostalgic towards the 80s (albeit only started computing on windows 3.1). I remembered always had had fun programming GWBasic on a slow computer

 

[Bluejets]

No worries...you'll do ok.

Try talking electronics...heaps of stuff there.

http://www.talkingelectronics.com/te_interactive_index.html

 

[BobK]

If you liked the simplicity of DOS, you might like microcontrollers even better. Imagine being in control from the first instruction that executes when your processor come up. Imagine it coming up in microseconds instead of minutes. It's an entirely new world. My day job is as a compiler developer, but I love building my own boards and writing every line of code that goes into them.

I would suggest that you start with really basic stuff to learn the nuts and bolts of resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors and perhaps logic ICs. Then learn microcontrollers. Pretty much any electronic project today can be done more easily with microcontrollers than with discrete logic or analog electronics.

Edit: BTW, I am 62 and learned electronics basics when I was in my teens, but did nothing for about 30 years before I restarted my hobby about 5 years ago.

Edit2: And this forum is a great place to get help and advice.

Bob

 

[Gryd3]

As long as you have the drive to want to learn you can.
As BobK mentioned... you will probably fall in love with microcontrollers. They are fast, and powerful.
Be careful to not fall into them first though, as a background (even a slight one) in how the components work will greatly help and prevent you from viewing every possible project/problem as a microcontroller project. (Everything is a nail when you have a hammer.. )

Start with the basics and make yourself some LED toys, then begin to switch them on/off with transistors. You can begin to venture into sensors if you wish to light the LEDs based on light in the room, sound, vibration or temperature. The path you take is entirely up to you. Just make sure you have fun. This is a hobby, and your being self-taught. This is your time to learn at your own pace with your own projects.

(When you can figure out sensors and some basic switching devices, you are pretty much ready to build a robot... it could be an obstacle avoiding robot, or a line following robot... you could even give it a brain with a microcontroller!)

 

[Harald Kapp]

It's never too late to start a new hobby. Electronics can be fascinating. Here's a set of tutorials that can get you started.
You'll find lots more Googling "basic electronics tutorial".

It may also be a good idea to get a beginner's kit or educational kit where a manual guides you through the first steps. As Gryd rightfully says, it is important to get a grasp of the most basic concepts (voltage, current, resistance, inductance, capacity and their relationships, simple components like diodes and transistors etc.) before you dig deeper.

 

[zzzxtreme]

thank you all for the encouragement! those are great sites/guides to get me started.

 

[zzzxtreme]

that http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/ is a good site. just read about resistor, very easy to understand explanation. I couldn't get it when I was in high school