do you have any recommendations on learning material or youtube channels to get started? its fascinating that you can "program" circuits with logic gates and "import libraries" by simply looking for parts
(That was a newer playlist than the videos I watched, and I think even that playlist is for an older version of KiCAD, but I found that Chris covered the material in a way that resonated with me, without an excessive amount of time-wasting along the way.)
I had taken a digital electronics course in college (I was Mech E, but we could take EE/CS courses if there was space) which is how I got the basics, but that was back when TTL/CMOS and PALs ruled, which isn't exactly the case anymore. Programming circuits in FPGAs is much newer (and by all accounts, easier/nicer).
BUT:
If you're just starting out/don't yet know which part of a soldering iron gets hot, I'd recommend starting with some Arduinos (clones), then probably do some ESP32 using the Arduino IDE (which is awful but easy to get started with), and that will give you more of a grounding (no pun intended) to set you on a good course for figuring out what you want your first PCB to do.
There are a thousand-plus Arduino makers on YouTube. Most are dreadfully slow-paced once you know the basics, but probably OK paced to start. I'd look at Andreas Spiess, the LED content from Dave's Garage, Adafruit's got a bunch of great content out there, Great Scott is good, Dronebot workshop is the Bob Ross of electronics in some ways, or 50 other channels. For more basic EE topics (including things like understanding decoupling caps, etc), Dave Jones at EEVBlog is great (as is the EEVBlog forum).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVhWh3AsXQs&list=PLy2022BX6E...
(That was a newer playlist than the videos I watched, and I think even that playlist is for an older version of KiCAD, but I found that Chris covered the material in a way that resonated with me, without an excessive amount of time-wasting along the way.)
I had taken a digital electronics course in college (I was Mech E, but we could take EE/CS courses if there was space) which is how I got the basics, but that was back when TTL/CMOS and PALs ruled, which isn't exactly the case anymore. Programming circuits in FPGAs is much newer (and by all accounts, easier/nicer).
BUT:
If you're just starting out/don't yet know which part of a soldering iron gets hot, I'd recommend starting with some Arduinos (clones), then probably do some ESP32 using the Arduino IDE (which is awful but easy to get started with), and that will give you more of a grounding (no pun intended) to set you on a good course for figuring out what you want your first PCB to do.
There are a thousand-plus Arduino makers on YouTube. Most are dreadfully slow-paced once you know the basics, but probably OK paced to start. I'd look at Andreas Spiess, the LED content from Dave's Garage, Adafruit's got a bunch of great content out there, Great Scott is good, Dronebot workshop is the Bob Ross of electronics in some ways, or 50 other channels. For more basic EE topics (including things like understanding decoupling caps, etc), Dave Jones at EEVBlog is great (as is the EEVBlog forum).