I program night and day - have been for 30+ years - but I have literally never handled a breadboard before. I’m working my way through the tutorials, but they seem to assume a certain level of pre-existing competence with hardware.
For instance, in the temperature-sensing beginners project, there is a component set into pin J19 running off the top of the board. What is it? It’s blue in the picture. I got the starter kit from Make magazine and have spent hours reading about what the pieces are, but none of them are blue, and there’s no description of the component in the tutorial.
I know how naive this is, but I’m betting other programmers are also picking up the electronics they’ve programmed for years but never before handled.
Programming in whatever language doesn’t bother me a bit - figuring out which-wire-gets-shoved-where is giving me fits!
Please post here any suggested sites on beginner electronics, and what is that BLUE THING?!
Theo, the blue “thing” is the capacitor referred to in the text as a .1uf or microfarad capacitor. It is commonly used to help filter out high frequency noise which can cause analog signals to read oddly. If a capacitor is included in the starter kit, it may be a small brown disk with two wires, with the number 104 printed on it, indicating it is a 0.1uf capacitor. It is not crucial to the example so don’t worry if you don’t have it.
As for learning electronics, you can start with a great tutorial at instructables to get you started. Perhaps other forum members can point you to other sites.
How many of us started out in electronics! $1 - $2 small notebooks from Radio Shack on electronics by Forrest M. Mims III This book as many of those small notebooks rolled into one.
Learn through doing! Challenge yourself to build something, then learn about each component until you understand how they work… once you do the pieces will come together and you will have built it.
I have a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old so we’ll be doing a lot of these projects together. I’ve always been afraid of hardware (I hate that smell of ozone and burnt plastic… no rebooting a burned-out component :-{( ) but although I’m starting late, I’m starting!
should be easy for beginners and we are here to help when you dont know something.