Scott,

Ah yes, good ol' Forrest Mimms and his Engineer's Handbooks
and the "Getting Started in Electronics" book.  I have a dog-eared
copy of that book, and still use the resistor color band reference
in the handbooks when I'm having a particularly forgetful day at the
workbench.

At the end of the day, the reasons I was so excited about my PIC motor
controller were:

1) Never had used a PIC before.  Mucho cool to program a device, I thought.
2) Never had made a working PCB before.
3) Always wanted to make my computer "do something", i.e. control something
outside of the normal peripherals, and control them on-the-cheap.

Then, I joined PICLIST.  Visions of ADC/DAC, IR remotes, home automation,
wireless networking, making use of upper layers of known IR/wireless/other
protocols to "do my own thing" in a circuit, serial/USB stuff, radio stuff,
laser stuff, etc. etc. etc. all started bouncing around in my head. Not to
mention even more robotics, their sensing systems, and other stuff that I'd
never considered previously.  I also realized how elementary my knowledge of
electronics is.  I knew it was elementary, but it still stunned me how much
I don't know.  I don't even understand the concept of "pull-up resistors".
Anyway, that's for me to research, and just to let you know more about where
I'm coming from.

Thanks for the book titles, I'll look into them.  Easy Pic'n sounds like a
good place to start. :)

Gustaf

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Scott Pierce
> Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 12:36 AM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: [OT:] read-only mode
>
>
> I found that picking up a few books on electronics/robotics really helped
> me learn.  At first I would look at a circuit and have absolutely no idea
> how it worked or even what most of the components were or did.  The more I
> read the more I became familiar with basic circuit design.  One book that
> really helped me was "Getting Started In Electronics" from Radio
> Shack.  Granted, its format seems a bit aimed towards children (12 years
> old maybe) but it has a lot of important and fundamental information about
> different electronic devices.  I have also bought books specific
> to the PIC
> micros such as Easy Pic'n, Programming and Customizing Pic
> Micros, Pic'n Up
> the Pace, and Programming Robot Controllers.  Robot books I have include
> Robot Builders Bonanza, Build Your Own Robot (mainly geared towards the
> Motorola 68hc11/12 micro), and Robots, Androids, and Animatronics.  I have
> also spent countless hours reading anything and everything I can find on
> the net.  But now, to show for all my work, I can look at a circuit and
> have a good understanding of what each part of the circuit does and the
> general reasoning behind it.  Just keep at it, don't get discouraged, and
> read a lot :)  It doesn't matter if you understand something today because
> something you read tomorrow might put it into perspective and it will all
> come together.
>
> Scott Pierce
>
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