How much math and theory do I need to make something useful out of the components?
Someone has mentioned book, which I'm browsing through, and (of course) do not understand. Another book was mentioned, which pretty much started out with running some kind of physics equations containing integrals without using any kind of lube, just to show how some kind of value is being calculated, without explaining what any of this means.
Is it really like that?
electronics is much the same as central heating plumbing, water/electricity goes faster/slower, stops, splits, gets stored, drained out, is pumped higher, sometimes it's noisy.
you can go a long way with just knowing that V=IR, and how to use a multimeter
boolean logic is just traffic rules - wait until green, go when the other lane is going, filter in turn, stop on red
programming is just a list of chores - get out of bed, clean teeth for 2 minutes, put on red jumper, sort laundry, write shopping list, walk dog until bored, repeat. Programmers don't know anything either, they just cut n paste code from stackoverflow until it compiles without errors :D
Equally most basic electronics is just copying someone else's device application note and not making any silly wiring errors.
Youtube is great for this
That book is all I've ever used, the rest is just experience. Not counting all the text books at Uni, but very little of that was any practical use until much later
For most sensors, GPS chips etc normally you just hook up the individual I/O lines from ie the raspberry pi directly to the chip and that's fine.
Basic concepts of electronics are helpful to know so you simply know the basics. What is taught in "Physics 2" at a college will teach you all the basics of electrical circuits etc. The difference between parallel and series circuits etc. You could look up if there are any online free courses teaching "Physics 2".
But really you just wire the I/O lines directly to the sensors, read the chip's manual on what lines need to be up / down at what times and for how long etc. Or if they have I2C / UART / SPI then just wire up those lines to the I2C / SPI lines on the raspberry pi etc and then just use the protocol libs in c / c++.
How much math and theory do I need to make something useful out of the components?
Someone has mentioned this book
If you are just hooking up sensors, servos, GPS chips etc you don't need any of this theory. You don't even need the Physics 2 class I mentioned. The Physics 2 class should be quick and give you all the basics of electrical circuits / electricity though.
Okay. This was helpful, thanks. I'll look up physics 2.
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