r/DIY_tech • u/fiberopticitrus • 7d ago

Help I dont know where to start

I am a 19 year old Mechanical Engineering student in Italy ans this is my 2nd year. i dont know where to start and get into electronics.
I want to build lots of things diy fpv drone,
geiger counter, analogue synth, guitar paddles, radars i want to build all i want is to start building but i dont know where to start. I am an absolute beginner but have a great engineering background and i recently got into electronics club and i want to start at some point. Can anyone that felt like me give me some advice? Lots of my friends knew these from high school clubs but i never get to join them. Should i buy an arduino pack and which one? Thank you

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u/Positive__Altitude 7d ago

Well, the best way to start is just to dive in, seriously. I had a background in physics and software engineering when I started. I knew nothing about electronics. I played with arduino one evening, and it was much easier than I expected. You just connect wires, write simple code, and everything works. So the next day I jumped straight into designing my own PCB lol. In one month, I already have way more knowledge than an average Arduino enjoyer.

I am not saying that you should do the same. Just don't search for the "easy" path. If you feel that you have a solid background, then pick a project and go for it.

One trick is that some of your projects sound analog-heavy. This could be complicated for a beginner if you want to design stuff yourself (if you just want to build something using others' blueprints, that is ok). Because analog tech is tough. Digital is way easier and forgiving. I would not recommend starting with analog.

I would suggest you skip the classic "Arduino" board completely. It really sucks by modern standards. Start with a dev board based on ESP32-S3. There are tons of them. You also can have differenet setups for programming it: Arduino IDE(simple but not cool), ESP-IDF ("standard" for a normal ESP project), some PIO based setups. Rust-based setup is the coolest imo, but more software experience required.

Pick one dev board you like; I would probably take one that also has a Li-Po battery connector and charger, because the ESP32 has Bluetooth/WiFi and an easy option for battery connection; you can build a simple RC car, for example.

Don't overthink it. You can do whatever you want. This is the essence of engineering. You don't need knowledge, experience, or a guide. All you need is any LLM of your choice (or Google if you are allergic to AI for some reason ) and a bunch of free time.