tomateosoup

I've been tinkering with electronics for about 30 years. Can do some cool stuff like assembling a power supply from scratch or an amplfier, can also put together projects with arduinos, raspberries, etc. I still fry components once in a while. But it's fun! If you are a programmer one hour of your time is worth a lot more than the cost of the components of many fun projects.

A few tips: - Do not touch anything you cannot afford to lose. - Buy at least twice as many components as needed for a project, if this is too expensive, that's a good sign you might want to get more experience with more simple projects before taking on this one. - Avoid soldering as much as possible, at least at the beginning. - If you want to learn how to solder do it with very simple circuits like those that only include LEDs and resistors. Practice a lot and then use your skills on a project you like. - If possible, measure components before installing, do not trust your knowledge of color codes or nomenclature or pins configurations in the case of diodes and transistors. - When tinkering with digital circuits try to use only 5V level components, avoid 3.3V components. Of course you can use converters to interface but it's nice to avoid that complexity at the beginning.

Hope this helps.