[Ground-station] Interesting Question from Community Member - what's your take?

[Michelle Thompson]

Greetings all,

Our mission here at ORI is educational, personal, and professional
advancement through open source digital radio work. The vast majority of
this work is done on the amteur radio bands, simply because it's the best
choice for experimental work. We use FPGAs, processors, ADCs, DACs, and a
pile of other circuits to get work done.

Here's a question that came up this week. The project in question is an SAO
for electronic conference badges. The circuit design is all analog, mostly
op amps. It's relatively simple. The idea is to collect sound, movement,
and nearby warm objects (proximity detection of other humans) and then
integrate those inputs over time in a capacitor. This capacitor level is
then presented as an RGB led output. Blue means everything is calm. Red
means I'm in the middle of a rave and probably overdid it.

"Would love to tackle a project like this, but rn, my skillset just lets me
get away with hooking up LEDs to a breadboard and make them blink without
burning them up. If I'd have a crack at it, I would connect the output to a
bluetooth jammer and other party deterrent components to regulate the
radiation. Do you happen to have some useful beginner friendly
tutorials/projects to get better with electronics? I find things online to
be very complex or standalone component showcases, which don't give you a
very good idea a going through a project from A to Z"

It's really an amazing time for radio. We have SDRs, where people that are
good at hardware can learn some software and extend their radio by many
orders of magnitude in terms of capability. People that are good at
software can turn fixed designs into adaptable and effective systems. What
an amazing time to be alive.

There's always a learning curve. Given that fact, what's *your* best way to
answer "how do I get better at electronics?"

-Michelle Thompson
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