The biohack.me forums were originally run on Vanilla and ran from January 2011 to July 2024. They are preserved here as a read-only archive. If you had an account on the forums and are in the archive and wish to have either your posts anonymized or removed entirely, email us and let us know.
While we are no longer running Vanilla, Patreon badges are still being awarded, and shoutout forum posts are being created, because this is done directly in the database via an automated task.
Looking for Some Good Resources
Hey guys,
So basically I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of any good resources for learning some basic electronic engineering and biology that would be useful for coming up with biohacks. I'm a self-taught programmer with some popular apps on Android so I'm capable of learning new technical skills, but I find it pretty hard to know where to start/what equipment I'd need to buy to get involved. I tried to learn electronic engineering a couple of times but ended up getting lost and spending lots on equipment that turned out to be pretty useless...
So what I'd ideally love is a reading list or even better a single book or site that would walk me through the basics so that I had a foundation of knowledge to work from. I'd also love to learn some general physics and maths so that I can feel like a crazy professor. If there was a guide to learning comic-book style knowledge that talked you through all the basics step by step I think there'd be a huge market out there for it - but my search so far has been unsuccessful. Failing that though, any books or sites you've found helpful yourself I'd be really grateful to hear about.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any suggestions/tips. I'll continue my search also and let you know if I find anything! :-D
Comments
Displaying all 6 comments
-
http://tangentsoft.net/elec/reviews/
Here are some good resources for analog electronics, you probably want to learn all of this before you go digital. This will provide a good backbone and is necessary for power supplies, and various things biohacking circuits will need. I cant tell you where to go from there but I assume working with arduino is a good start.g
-
Brilliant thanks a lot for the list that looks great, sounds like The Art of Electronics is a good place to start :-) And Arduino seems like something good to mess around with. I just bought a Raspberry Pi and I hear there are a few fun projects out there that involve combining them.Anyone know of some good software I could use? Ideally if I could simulate some circuits it would save me a lot of money and mess until I know what I'm doing...
-
I found CircuitLab which runs in the browser but I was looking for something a bit more comprehensive and satisfying... it would be nice to let little motor animations and things when you hit simulate...Thanks again for the help :-)
-
Yes. Part of the difficulty in augmentation is the breadth of specialties needed. First off, I offer my humble service like that "turn me into an animal guy"... provide the financial means for me to continue my college education and some living/ travel funds... and then I'm make it for you ;) .
More seriously though, I'm going to look into the "people/resources" section. I know it already exists on this site but I think it could be implemented in a more focused way. I mean, if I acquired the means to weld titanium, coat devices with parylene and/or other bioproofing material... that problem would be solved. It wouldn't be difficult, but it would take time/effort. At that point, I still wouldn't know how to build a circuit...
-
The university Circuits 1 course I went through used a free book by Digilent (cofounded by one EE professor here at WSU and its headquarters are located in Pullman. Guess who supplied our circuit boards and software?). Its called Real Analog and you can access it at http://www.digilentinc.com/NavTop/Classroom.cfm
In our Digital Logic we used the Real Digital textbook that is also on that site (learning how to program FPGA boards was one of my better course choices and I recommend it. I have a much better understanding of microcontrollers and digital circuits now). There's some other stuff on that site that I've never used but it could be helpful, I dunno.
-
Thanks for the the link! I found a playlist of lectures which looks like it could be very good. I can watch them while I do the washing up... Will let you know how I get on with it. I've also been reading Electronics for Dummies which starts off very easy to follow but then gets suddenly a lot trickier...
Displaying all 6 comments