Learning electronics principles on your own can be a very daunting task. This isn’t the first time that I’ve set out to learn about electronics, but it has certainly been my most productive attempt thanks to a couple of great books, and the methodology I’ve adopted when reading them.
Unfortunately, after nearly two months of dedicated study using Mr. Gibilisco’s book, I hadn’t even touched a single component. The book teaches excellent theory with practical examples, but comes up short for hands-on experience. What I needed was an accompanying lab workbook.
Enter Dave Cutcher’s Electronic Circuits for the Evil Genius. This book reads like a lab manual, you’ll be creating (and more importantly, understanding) useful circuits from day one. To simplify things, I also picked up the Evil Genius component kit from Abra Electronics. This kit comes with all the components, printed circuit boards, and prototyping equipment that you need to build every project in the book.
These books compliment each other surprisingly well. Mr Gibilisco’s book does an excellent job of teaching electronic theory and design, while Mr. Cutcher’s approach gives you hands on experience building and testing simple electronic devices of your own.
I highly recommend these two books for anyone who wishes to undertake hobbyist electronics on their own.
