How to learn – Electronics?

Shared by his father – I thought of sharing how it all started for Advay at home. Obviously its just one way to get started, but I thought sharing the journey is probably better than giving a prescription. So here goes:

How we got started with electronics?

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BEGINNINGS: When the washing machine in our house broke, Advay and I spent a few days dismantling the old washing machine. Carefully taking out each component of the machine, cleaning it, wondering what it does, imagining what could be done with each part — all that was an activity in itself.

When we were done disassembling the washing machine, Advay started to show interest in the motherboard of the waching machine. He wanted to know about printed circuit boards, capacitors, potentiometers and so on. But what caught is firm attention was the motor. We took the motor out, connected it to a wire and to the mains. It started rotating. At that time he was interested in carpentry and things from coconut shells, so he used the motor to polish the shells.

I have blogged about it here: https://www.prashanthudupa.com/index.php/pulling-ideas-and-experiences-together-to-make-something-new/

HEY THERE IS A MOTOR IN THAT ELECTRIC CAR TOY!!!

For his birthday, my brother-in-law had gifted a remote control car. After the initial fancy of the car wore out (in like 5-10 days), he pulled apart the car and noticed the existence of motors in it. He took them out, observed the PCB and circuitry in the car also. Initially he would just connect the motor to a battery and see it turn.

For his next birthday, my sister in law gifted a solar robot (https://www.amazon.in/Famous-Quality-Educational-Learning-Robotic/dp/B07F6JGV7N). There was some small circuitry and motor in that also. Between the car and this robot, he observed that toys have motor and some sort of a gear system.

We had bought a mosquito catcher at home (https://www.amazon.in/Creative-Mosquito-Killer-Machine-Radiation/dp/B079DSCWPD/), which fortunately stopped working. He took it apart and noticed that that machine also has motor, PCB with capacitors, LEDs and so on. Recently the motor and fan from that mosquito catcher was used to build a air-cooler using an old mud-pot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQ2weCxFOI).

GOING CRAZY ABOUT DRONE.

We had been to wedding of one of my friends. He had hired photographers who used drone to take videos & pics of the wedding from the top. From that day he has been telling that he wants to build a drone. Upon research, he figured that he must learn about KK2.1 board, ESC, Quadcopter shaft and so on. But the thing that caught his eye was – “soldering.” He wanted to learn how to solder so that he could build circuits.

I spoke with Ratnesh once about this. He suggested me a shop in SP Road where they sell small circuit kits for things like burglar-alarm, water-level-indicator and so on. Advay and I went to that shop and bought two of those kits (costed us 200 Rupees). We came back and attempted to solder the circuits together according to the circuit diagram in the kit. We failed in getting those kits to work.

But Advay noticed the use of circuit diagram. He started to learn what drawing a circuit diagram means. He would draw circuit diagram with made up symbols for a while as a means of explaining what he wants to create. He would draw circuit diagram of submarine and show it to me. Obviously the circuit diagram, as a diagram, wouldn’t make much sense. But he had understood that diagrams help capture a circuit design. Which was all I was observing at that point.

Few days later, I introduced him to a formal circuit simulation software (that I had helped build for IIT Bombay) called Sequel. https://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~sequel/. I taught him how to design circuits using that software. I dont know much about simulating circuits in it, because I never participated in the development of software for the simulator. I only built the GUI.. so I explained him the GUI.

He would build circuits in that show it to me. After this went on for a few weeks, we went to SP road again and this time, we bought a breadboard, some jump wires, resistors, capacitors, diodes, LEDs, switches and a few IC timer chips and a couple of 9V batteries. We then came home and I explained to him how to assemble on the breadboard some of the circuits he designed on the computer. After showing it to him a few times, he then started designing and assembling circuits by himself.

BUILDING THE DRONE. Eventually we bought a quadcopter kit from Amazon, assembled it at home and in the process burned a few parts of the quadcopter. We then went to RC Bazaar (Jayanagar 9th block), took their help to properly build the quadcopter. We got back and he tried to fly it in the field nearby. It did work for a few times, before we overused and burned it again. We carefully replaced the burned parts with new wires and ESC, but that burned again. Then Advay started opening up each component in an effort to understand what has gone wrong.

During all that research, “logic gates” and “transistor” as terms showed up. I explained to him what a transistor is and then how they are used to build logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, XORT etc..). When we were in Shimoga during the lockdown, I prepared a slide deck to explain about logic gates. He got fascinated with making slide decks. He took the deck that I had built, modified it to make it a 55 slides deck on electronics and logic gates. He has since been aspiring to present it to the Aarohi community.

These days he uses Circuit Verse (http://circuitverse.org) to build 8-bit adder, subtractor circuits. He wants to learn about multiplier, divider circuits also. I hope to teach him about flip-flops, multiplexers also so that he can design a full calculator circuit. By then SP road should open, we can bring a larger broadboard and assemble a digital calculator at home.

READ THE BLOG
https://www.prashanthudupa.com/index.php/pulling-ideas-and-experiences-together-to-make-something-new/