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Raspberry pi, python and robotics

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  Raspberry pi, python and robotics Nicholas Cannon <nicholascannon1@gmail.com> - 2014-08-30 23:39 -0700
    Re: Raspberry pi, python and robotics Rob Gaddi <rgaddi@technologyhighland.invalid> - 2014-09-02 09:30 -0700
      Re: Raspberry pi, python and robotics Gene Heskett <gheskett@wdtv.com> - 2014-09-02 14:09 -0400
      Re: Raspberry pi, python and robotics Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2014-09-03 19:42 +1200
        Re: Raspberry pi, python and robotics "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-09-05 13:37 +0100

#77342 — Raspberry pi, python and robotics

I really enjoy engineering at school and we make like fighting robots and stuff(simple stuff of course) and i really enjoy it. I have got a raspberry pi and a decent understanding of python and i want to do make stuff like RC cars and drones and stuff. Also I like electronics. Is there any good places to learn all this stuff like down to the basics of electronics because I have looked around and all the books I have seen just throw some electronics together and say yep thats done. I would like to work on my own projects after I get a grip on the basics. Where could I find some good recourses on this stuff.

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#77440

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 23:39:01 -0700 (PDT)
Nicholas Cannon <nicholascannon1@gmail.com> wrote:

> I really enjoy engineering at school and we make like fighting robots and stuff(simple stuff of course) and i really enjoy it. I have got a raspberry pi and a decent understanding of python and i want to do make stuff like RC cars and drones and stuff. Also I like electronics. Is there any good places to learn all this stuff like down to the basics of electronics because I have looked around and all the books I have seen just throw some electronics together and say yep thats done. I would like to work on my own projects after I get a grip on the basics. Where could I find some good recourses on this stuff.

Learn electronics properly, then start thinking about interfacing one
to the other.  I say this as a professional circuit designer who spends
a whole mess of time automating things in Python.  If you don't have a
firm grasp of the underlying basics of electronics as its own thing,
trying to interface will eat you alive with problems that you don't
understand because you can't understand the circuitry.

The best teaching electronics resource I know, hands down, is Horowitz
and Hill's "The Art of Electronics". The second edition is ancient now,
but still will teach you everything you need to know.  Even used copies
are a bit expensive.  That's because it's an excellent book.  It's
worth the money.

Next, to learn electronics you need to do electronics. Theory talks the
walk, molten lead walks the walk. That means copper boards, and a
soldering iron, and parts, and a DVM, and an oscilloscope.  A function
generator is a great thing to have as well, but if desperately
necessary you can live without one. You're still in school, so you
hopefully have an EE lab there. Take advantage of it. If you don't,
find some local hackerspace with some gear, otherwise getting up and
running will cost you a solid $1200 just in gear. LTSpice is a great
free simulator, and the simulator can help you understand what you
should be seeing, but there's no substitute for getting your hands
dirty.

Start by building the simple stuff: resistor dividers, RC low pass
filters, etc.  They're trivial, they're boring, and you already
understand what they should do.  Do them anyhow, you need to get lead
under your fingernails and a feel for how to make a decent solder joint
while you're still working the easy stuff because if your solder's crap
when you start trying to do the more complex stuff you'll never figure
it out.  Work your way through AofE.  Do the problems, build the
circuits.  Plan on it taking a solid year before you become "good" at
it; you're young and have it to spend.

Actually do all that and you'll understand as much about circuits as
anyone they're giving an EE degree to these days.  Then you can start.

-- 
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order.  See above to fix.

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#77446

On Tuesday 02 September 2014 12:30:58 Rob Gaddi did opine
And Gene did reply:
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 23:39:01 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Nicholas Cannon <nicholascannon1@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I really enjoy engineering at school and we make like fighting robots
> > and stuff(simple stuff of course) and i really enjoy it. I have got
> > a raspberry pi and a decent understanding of python and i want to do
> > make stuff like RC cars and drones and stuff. Also I like
> > electronics. Is there any good places to learn all this stuff like
> > down to the basics of electronics because I have looked around and
> > all the books I have seen just throw some electronics together and
> > say yep thats done. I would like to work on my own projects after I
> > get a grip on the basics. Where could I find some good recourses on
> > this stuff.
> 
> Learn electronics properly, then start thinking about interfacing one
> to the other.  I say this as a professional circuit designer who spends
> a whole mess of time automating things in Python.  If you don't have a
> firm grasp of the underlying basics of electronics as its own thing,
> trying to interface will eat you alive with problems that you don't
> understand because you can't understand the circuitry.
> 
> The best teaching electronics resource I know, hands down, is Horowitz
> and Hill's "The Art of Electronics". The second edition is ancient now,
> but still will teach you everything you need to know.  Even used copies
> are a bit expensive.  That's because it's an excellent book.  It's
> worth the money.
> 
> Next, to learn electronics you need to do electronics. Theory talks the
> walk, molten lead walks the walk. That means copper boards, and a
> soldering iron, and parts, and a DVM, and an oscilloscope.  A function
> generator is a great thing to have as well, but if desperately
> necessary you can live without one. You're still in school, so you
> hopefully have an EE lab there. Take advantage of it. If you don't,
> find some local hackerspace with some gear, otherwise getting up and
> running will cost you a solid $1200 just in gear. LTSpice is a great
> free simulator, and the simulator can help you understand what you
> should be seeing, but there's no substitute for getting your hands
> dirty.
> 
> Start by building the simple stuff: resistor dividers, RC low pass
> filters, etc.  They're trivial, they're boring, and you already
> understand what they should do.  Do them anyhow, you need to get lead
> under your fingernails and a feel for how to make a decent solder joint
> while you're still working the easy stuff because if your solder's crap
> when you start trying to do the more complex stuff you'll never figure
> it out.  Work your way through AofE.  Do the problems, build the
> circuits.  Plan on it taking a solid year before you become "good" at
> it; you're young and have it to spend.
> 
> Actually do all that and you'll understand as much about circuits as
> anyone they're giving an EE degree to these days.  Then you can start.

That is some of the best advice I have seen on an email list, and I am on 
a bunch of them.

Generally I will 2nd that, or 3rd it as the case may be.  It simply cannot 
be emphasized enough.  I am a retired (I'll be 80 on 2 months) broadcast 
engineer who got his diploma from the School of Hard Knocks.  And I am 
still getting my hands dirty, they do fit the tools.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS

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#77471

Rob Gaddi wrote:
> otherwise getting up and
> running will cost you a solid $1200 just in gear.

While having fancy gear certainly helps, it's not
*strictly* necessary. When I first started dabbling
in electronics, the most sophisticated piece of
equipment I had was an analog multimeter.

It got me through a lot of projects, including a
couple of homebrew computers. It's surprising how
much you can deduce about what's happening in a
digital circuit by watching a needle bouncing
around!

-- 
Greg

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#77587

"Gregory Ewing" <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:c6nv2hF8q6aU1@mid.individual.net...
> Rob Gaddi wrote:
>> otherwise getting up and
>> running will cost you a solid $1200 just in gear.
>
> While having fancy gear certainly helps, it's not
> *strictly* necessary. When I first started dabbling
> in electronics, the most sophisticated piece of
> equipment I had was an analog multimeter.
>
> It got me through a lot of projects, including a
> couple of homebrew computers. It's surprising how
> much you can deduce about what's happening in a
> digital circuit by watching a needle bouncing
> around!

I also used LEDs (even showing complex signals, as they will dim in
different ways, or you could sometimes view them through a flipped mirror to
show the patterns).

Sometimes I fed a digital output to the video input of my TV (it was 5V to
1V, some care was needed), and the waveform became visible, although
unsynchronised to anything. With one line representing about 50us, you could
get a lot of clues about what was going on. (What I never tried with a TV,
because I later had a scope, was to arrange for the line-sync to trigger
some repeatable event I was trying to monitor. By using it as the /reset
signal of a microprocessor for example.)

Anyway, there were all sorts of tricks. I didn't have a proper knowledge of
(analogue) electronics either, just enough to get by, or picked up what I
needed as I went. (You tended to copy or adapt someone else's circuits.)

Besides, a normal non-storage oscilloscope wasn't directly useful for the
complex non-repeating signals you get with computer boards.

-- 
Bartc 

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