Back to school

I’ve came to that period of my life when I need something to do. And I started to look for things I was interested in earlier. The first that came up was robotics. I remember that it was really cool to play with Lego NXT in the university.

But time changes and I got an Arduino. And after I’ve finished playing with the blinking LEDs I’ve realized that there is a whole big world behind that I was always interested it — Electronics. I’ve even used to take electronic courses back at school for a short period of time, and not much knowledge came from there. School physics did not help to understand all the electromagnetics either. But now I’ve decided to figure it out at last.

And I did. I’ve found a lot of resources for beginners. I’ve finally was able to realize what do I want and what do I need. Unfortunately there were not much Russian websites about electronics (Just want to mention http://radiokot.ru — cool project doing the right thing). But I di find a lot of cool videos on YouTube. There is quite a long list now in my subscriptions, but I want especially highlight this channel — http://www.youtube.com/user/mjlorton. Martin does not teach electronics, he’s learning himself, he makes mistakes and shows that there is nothing to be afraid of. I think it is the best way to teach.

A word about shops... There are some offline shops here in Saint-Petersburg, but often they have nothing to choose from, sometimes even some common used resistor values are not in stock. And need to say that pricing is quite high too. Of course there are some online-shops, but they are not much of a help too. So the only good option to get some really interesting materials, components and equipment is ebay or amazon, but Russian Post Service makes it nearly impossible to get something quick and not stolen. I think someday I am going to fill the lack of bits and pieces, but now I am watching videos and waiting till I can start doing all this myself.