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by mrcharles 4667 days ago
I'd kill for an app like this that would help teach you electronics at the same time. I've wanted to start doing some robotics stuff, but haven't found much in terms of useful learning resources outside of just buying a full university textbook and hoping for the best.
2 comments

Funny you should mention that, I've been slowly working on this idea for a circuit-sim that basically teaches you electronics, to be eventually complemented with video-lectures which I keep putting off due to school and a hunger for other projects.

So yeah, the Autodesk news was kinda depressing, but really, that just means I'm going to focus more on the teaching end and in adding my own personal style to it through quirky graphical elements that harken back to the 8-bit era of yore. Autodesk can't sell a product with soul.

You can check it out if you want. Just to warn you though, my html abilities are a work-in-progress, so don't be surprised if you see some awful mistakes in there, or if it renders kinda funny if you have a small screen.

www.bighugebreadboard.com

I actually created it to teach myself electronics, so the biggest hurdle has been learning how various components work, and then adding them to the sim. Also, prior to this, my javascript knowledge was basically acquired through Codecademy.

I'm also putting some of the code on a Github repo, as in I plan to make it open-source. Alas, before I did that I cleaned up some prior amateur's mistakes without thinking of the bugs I would be opening up. I should have them fixed by tomorrow morning.

https://github.com/Bjorkbat/electricjs

That looks awesome, I am definitely going to check it out.
Buy an Arduino/Launchpad/MSP430/other prototyping kit and start plugging things (motors/LEDs/other devices) into it. As long as all of your devices will work at the same voltage -- as long as everything is 5v or 3.3v or whatever -- they plug into breadboards like legos.

It took me 3 months from buying my first Arduino to using an ultrasonic distance sensor to control an RC car motor. http://gilgamech.blogspot.com