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by YZF 125 days ago
What is exciting enough for you that you'll be able to sustain your interest? There's a lot of learning.

I'm going to maybe diverge from some advice and say try and start with hardware connected to your laptop. That's how I started way back (during the original IBM-PC era and a Data Acquisition Card from IBM). Learn how sensors, motors and actuators work. If you were near me I'd lend you a kit I have sitting around that I got for my kids but I'm sure there are options to hook up some basic I/O (Analog and digital) to your laptop.

I would decouple the embedded aspect from this for now and really many embedded systems are running "real" large computer systems. You can build a lot on your desk and having a "real" computer will take away some of the additional hassle of dealing with various embedded platforms. Once you gain a better understanding of the components you can always move to some embedded setup.

The Art of Electronics is one book I will recommend. I would say though start with a kit and use AI or Google search to get some basic circuits going.
1 comments
relaxing 125 days ago
The closest thing to an IBM PC and daq is… an Arduino. Simple cpu, simple interface library, go from zero to making stuff move in no time.

A modern PC as a platform is in no way helpful to learning how sensors and actuators work. You’d be spending hundreds more for unnecessary frustration.

The Art of Electronics is not a good choice for a beginner. It’s aimed at good university educated EE’s.

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YZF 124 days ago
I read the Art of Electronics as a beginner. A university educated EE should have had pretty much everything covered in their studies so it would be surprising to me that would be their reference of choice.

I still think the convenience of a laptop or a PC beats the Arduino. That said, I'm not up to date on what sort of I/O you can get (e.g. USB based I/O) and that's the cost. I have to imagine there are options that are not that expensive.

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relaxing 124 days ago
Horowitz and Hill is used for 300 and 400 level university courses. It assumes a lot of prerequisite physics and engineering knowledge. I’m not using that definition of beginner.

> I'm not up to date on what sort of I/O you can get

I have to imagine you know you’re allowed to just not post, right.

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