yezzer
Some weekend reading. Programming : fine. Circuits : no idea what I’m doing. #RaspberryPiPico
Nov 19, 2022 at 12:39pmWeb
Show threadSean McBethNov 19, 2022

@yezzer good luck! Electronics is a lot of fun.

Invest in a good soldering iron, like a Hakko with a digital temperature display. I spent way too long with a $10 Radio Shack iron and it was the single largest source of my problems with soldering.

Also, you don't want to make a habit of breathing solder flux fumes. Set up a small fan.

Show threadSean McBethNov 19, 2022
@yezzer Finally, breadboards are nice to throw things together really quickly, but they are kind of fragile (the springs inside can wear it and you'll start to fail to get good connections) and can add a lot of parasitic capacitance to a circuit (which will make anything with a timing crystal just not work right). So the breadboard can be a source of some frustrating problems that are difficult to troubleshoot.
Show threadyezzerNov 19, 2022

@seanmcbeth already have a lot of kit, have a TS80P flashed with custom firmware which is so much better than the £10 ones I used previously.

I mainly use i2c and SPI with either breadboards or #pimoroni breakout garden, so don’t get into any circuit building. Like what even is a diode etc. I did do an electronics course ~25 years ago, but don’t remember much.

Show threadBritish Tech GuruNov 21, 2022
@yezzer I have that book but I do my best Python learning by giving myself a problem then looking up how to solve it. The one thing I do need is a book (not a website) that details every single GPIO pin, what it does, how and why and when it does something other than on or off, the grisly details together with example code.
Show threadyezzerNov 21, 2022

@britishtechguru I have no problems with the programming side, I've been doing it for decades 😬

building circuits is not something I've done much of though, like - when I'd need to use resistors, capacitors, diodes, what is a vbus, when to use vsys, etc

Show threadBritish Tech GuruNov 21, 2022
@yezzer Python is new to me. I did my OND, HNC & HND in computer studies and never could get a job in computing - not even as the shoe shine boy! I wrote a lot of shareware between 1990 and 2007 in c++ and pascal til I took a break from something that just wasn't making money. Now I'm back, learning python and doing my own thing.