I am a new member and am interested in developing and teaching some classes about electronics. I am not an EE nor did I spend my career as an engineer. I do have a long history of electronics repair, Ham Radio, and home electrical work. My initial thought is to offer a class about basic discrete components (resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, etc.) and related Ohm’s Law. If there is enough interest in this area, I can work up some class materials. If there are other topics that I can support, I’m open to suggestions. Another topic might be How to Read a Schematic. I didn’t see prior classes like this at DMS - at least going back a couple of months. Let me know with a reply here.
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Tom;
There are some classes about – I do one on microprocessors where I teach schematics, PCB design, and small fabrication – but a class like yours would be really beneficial: I’ve had (on more than one occasion) to explain what basic components are for students who have had limited or no component experience.
I think they’d be a great addition to the Electronic Classes at DMS. I know that @artg_dms has thought about doing a “Fluke 100” to talk about how to use a bench multimeter: I’m sure that there are plenty of options that I’ve forgotten about since using a 3478A in college.
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Thanks Ian. I really do believe that some fundamental knowledge of components, basic DC and some AC principles are important for almost any electronics work. I could make this class dovetail with a DMM use class or weave in some DMM use. adding on to basic passive components could be some basic semiconductor component content. I don’t want to overlap other existing classes and can tailor the content to supplement what is already available. Let’s see what others might suggest then maybe I can meet you at DMS and learn more about how classes here work best.
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It looks like there might be enough interest for me to go ahead and work up a syllabus. I welcome any input into what will make this kind of class relevant to current members. If @artg_dms or @garfield or someone else who has taught a DMS class and could meet with me at the space in the next couple of weeks to discuss, I’d appreciate the time.
Tom;
I’m usually at the space every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from noon-ish until around 9 or so. I spend a lot of time in the Logistics work room that’s off of the main common room: feel free to pop your head in and I’m more than happy to talk!
Has been a while since we’ve had an 001 components class. Last one that I can recall was done by Rusty Cain well before covid. Covered basics such as -
- resistors - math for series and parallel. calculating pwr dissipation. different types. ideal vs real world.
- inductors - math for series and parallel. reactance. magnetic fields. when to worry about inductive kickback and how to deal with. transformer basics. ideal vs real world.
- caps - math for series and parallel. reactance. bypass and filter apps. different types. esl and esr - ideal vs real world.
Some other possible topics
- welcome to the world of 74xxxxx series ics. how the numbering system works. different families, different voltages. which families can talk to other families which way. level shifting. auto bidirectional shifting between systems running on different voltages. ti.com has an abundance of data sheets, app notes, epubs on all of this. enjoy!
- ltspice - free circuit simulator (analog.com). i entered my circuit - now what? creating signal sources and test loads to torture test your ckt. ideal results vs real world on the bench.
- how to read a data sheet - voltages, currents, timing diagrams, example schematics. where to get the info you need.
- and of course bench gear basics - meters, scopes, sig gens, dc load. noise, grounds, and other fun things. “that doesn’t look right”.
how to get the info you need without damaging the test gear.
Some of this is fresh on my mind due to the current project I’m working on. I’ve tapped the DMS Knowledge base (ie our members) on a number of topics. It’s been a fun interesting journey thus far.
For those interested in teaching, I would not worry to much about overlap. Every teacher has a different approach to any given topic.
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If you will be at the space today (Thursday 3/5) later this afternoon I will pop over to chat. I was there Tuesday around 3:30 but you had not yet arrived but I did talk to an Andrew in the Electronics area.
Tom;
I’m currently at the space and will be here until this evening. Swing on by!
Ian
Hi Tom, I am a degreed EE (not licensed) and you probably know more than I do about electronics. That said, everyone wants to teach classes on robotics and TTL and breadboarding and soldering.
Instead I have been wanting to do a class on basic electrical for a home. How to wire a circuit, simple switches, outlets, troubleshooting. I have done more basic 110 power repairs to lamp cords, machine cords at DMS, wiring electric motors (AC and DC) both 3 phase and 1 phase. It has taught me a ton about maintenance.
I also wanted to teach how to build kilns. The energy circuit would be a super easy way to teach ohms law, and P=IV. It would also introduce how controllers can be used in everyday life (In this case PIDs).
Raspberry pi’s and Arduinos are cool but they only really appeal to the kinds of people who don’t need to be taught how they work.
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I’ve been out of DMS for a while and don’t check Talk very often, but it was exciting to see your post. “A new guy joined and wants to teach electronics!”
Over several years, I did nearly 100 microcontroller classes. A number of titles are in the first link below with links to see class descriptions. I purchased my own parts and was free to run several classes at other makerspaces and ham radio clubs as well. I see that @artg_dms is still trapped in the Electronics Chair position. He is a great guy, has a budget and is very helpful in supporting classes. He may have or can acquire parts for your classes.
It is important to consider the target audience. I chose to aim at beginners with no experience required. Of course, I also got some very experienced folks who did not happen to know about the specific subject I was covering. It worked out great as they often helped me assist beginners with breadboards. Toward the end, I shifted from breadboards as noted in the second link.
Of course, my suggestion is that you consider microcontrollers. I had a limit of 6 or 8 and most classes filled very quickly. I am convinced that there is still demand. If you (or anyone else) want to pick up on microcontrollers, PM me and we can set up a call, and I can probably find the Word file of my handouts and sample programs. If you are not familiar with Arduino or others, I can help get you up to speed.
While I consider DMS students to be the best in the world, there are some that sign up and no-show which can put the honorarium at risk. I started sending out a reminder to their emails two days before class reminding of the no-show issue and asking that they cancel ASAP if they would not be able to attend. I could then post to Talk if a class had been full and now had a seat available. This worked well.
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Yes.
My hobby soldering classes always fill up, so there’s a ton of demand.
I like project-based learning rather than theory, etc, so last fall I taught a class (twice) to build a tunable RGB LED light strip with pots and an RP2040 on a breadboard. Discovered that most folks coming to the class didn’t have basic soldering skills. We were taking a long time just getting the header pins soldered to the RP2040 kits, so decided to teach a soldering class instead.
Someday I may resurrect that project class. It was fun but also long at 2h.
We also need a class on Multimeters.
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@artg_dms was planning on doing a Fluke 100 class the last time that he and I talked about it.
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I’d love to see classes or watch / collaborate with someone that is making audio gear (oscillators, guitar pedals, preamps, compressors, etc). I’d be happy to fund a project that could be shared use for our Music SIG.
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Does Electronics still have the Arduino kits you collected for teaching classes?
With Tanner gone, that is a valuable resource.
A long time ago, I taught an Introduction to Electronics class. Filled the Lecture Hall to capacity.
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I know that we do have some Microcontroller kits based off of the TI microcontrollers.
I usually teach on the ESP32 (specifically the Seeed Studio Xiao S-3) but give students the choice between the ESP32, an Arduino, or a RP2040 (if they’re more familiar with python).
With that said, I’ve started to limit the use of the RP2040 and the Arduino in my classes (it’s weird having one-offs when I teach, even in a small group of 4 or 5 students) and have standardized my documentation and teaching materials to the ESP32.
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I would not want to teach several different microcontrollers in one class.
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That would be a good follow-on class focus. I put myself through college repairing audio gear of the 1970 vintage plus I ham radio guy in those days too so your topics are within or adjacent to my knowledge area. Coincidentally, I ran across an old Popular Electronics issue from the 70s that described building a Theremin. An updated version of that curious musical instrument might catch the attention of some. But first I’d like to get started teaching with basic Resistor/Capacitor/Inductor terminology, Ohms Law, simple combinations of these three foundational elements. Building on that with topics around analog active components including junction transistors, simple ICs, and such would be a next level topic. And then more advanced things that cross over into microcontrollers (which has been on my need to learn list for years) and oscillator/amplifier kind of circuits would be another good branch. I have a course outline drafted but got redirected by some personal stuff for the last week but am ready to assemble a Powerpoint with theory and a few in-class breadboard experiments that don’t require soldering or anything fancy. Just a small 4" square type point-to-point breadboard and a handful of components to illustrate the class concepts.
I’ll need a couple more weeks to put this together.
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Bill, your Part 0 class is pretty close to what I was envisioning. Once I have a good draft of what I think I can teach to I’d love your feedback and compare notes with what you taught before.
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After the first few classes, I decided to use some honororium money and generate ten kits for students to use in class. If you remember the neat plastic boxes that I carried to class, they came from Tanner when Jim acquired a couple of pallets of them!
If you are interested, I could donate some of that to ELab for teachers to use.
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