Good Maker Fundamentals Resources

[richard]

Was perusing the web last night looking for good resources out there for people who have no clue about electronics fundamentals.

While I know that Adafruit has good tutorials and resources for learning the hardware, I was hoping for something even before that! How do you read electronic schematics, why exactly do I need that damn resistor with and LED, who's this ohm guy? These were more along the lines of what I was looking for.

So far, I've discovered Sparkfun's Tutorials and their concept tutorials, which seem good. Do you guys know any other decent resources for these topics that aren't a large, in depth book? @dj1 likely knows at least a few resources out there...

[WildZBill]

LOL! Electronics is a 4 year engineering course.
Of course it is a lot to read. It took me about 100 hours of study to get started, and years of experience before I started designing.
It is a lot easier now of course... The Arduino is a lot easier than a box of vacuum tubes and miles of wire.
This is a good area to explore. I feel that all you need is to understand Ohm's Law, have a chart of electronic part symbols, and then sample circuits to test. The chart should have the symbol, the name, the current and voltage requirements, and a picture of the part.

[mike]

Don't underestimate the value of simply seeing what someone else has done (like on instructables) and simply copying it! While I'd buy Ohm a beer if I could, there is certainly a lot you can do without even that!

[WildZBill]

I think that the best way to get someone hooked on electronics is to get them to do something fairly simple which has amazing results.
Fairly easy to do really. Depends on what might impress that particular person. Running a huge motor, flashing hundreds of lights, creating a six inch high voltage arc...

[mike]

Sounds like the makerfaire strategy.

Speaking of which... I'd like to go this year. I've skipped the last 2 years. Anyone else interested?