Electronics for Absolute Beginners - 2010


Want to learn something about electronics, but don't know where to start? Electronics for Absolute Beginners is a one day course that I originally designed for the women's arts and technology group MzTEK. We had an excellent first run in January 2010 with lots of enthusiasm, and considerable skill from all the participants.

The course introduces the key electronic components and tries to give an intuitive feel for how circuits work. It provides plenty of opportunity to try experiments on the circuits suggested and should give people enough understanding to feel they can build and modify circuits in future.

Each stage of the course introduces new ideas that build and develop throughout the day. There are lots of fun circuits ending up with an electronic organ and a chain-light sequencer.

The course notes are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons License

If you would like me to run the course for your group or organization then please contact me to discuss options.
 Circuit building
Electronics for Absolute Beginners
Course Notes
(Open Office Format)

Electronics for Absolute Beginners
Course Notes
(PDF Format)

Electronics for Absolute Beginners
Parts List
(PDF Format)

Video of an organ circuit like the one in the course.


Want to develop your electronics skills further? Here are some suggestions:

My course to build an Atari Punk Console - an introduction to the more practical side of building electronics.


Make: Electronics - from O'Reilly. Got storming reviews and very similar in concept to this course. One brave beginner blogged their circuit building

Make also had a very good series of videos about different electronic components. Good refresh for those that have done the course or introduction for those that haven't.

The Art of Electronics is the classic text book for those that want to do deep in to the subject without having their head explode! It's packed with information, but is a surprisingly readable. Probably not suitable for absolute beginners though. Buy a copy when you've built a few circuits and want to know what's really going on.