In my country, 2 decades ago there are were plenty of people who knew the basics. Today, it feels like a lost art.
I would like to approach it as a hobby, not like electronic engineer level, but enough to debug problem and change components to a low level.
What is the pragmatic approach in this mission? I reckon it will be valuable in the future that comes.
Apart from that, just fix broken stuff. Practice like any other skill, like others have said.
Like decide what skills to learn based on what’s broken.
Need to solder something together? Buy the soldering iron. Need to figure out which capacitor you need to replace with? Learn how to identify capacitors and navigate digikey.com
* big caps that can contain high voltages even when a device is powered off, in TVs or microwaves.
* Know where a fire extinguisher etc is, keep them near the workbench.
* Keep the workbench clean, tidy and well-vented.
* Don't panic when mistakes are made. Slow down instead of doing a quick-fix.
* I like a big red button to power down everything instantly. Can be just a switch on a plug box.
* an isolation transformer - meaning you must now touch both conductors to get shocked instead of just the live one
* a foot switch to control the power supply - serves as a "dead man's switch" to cut power in case of an accident
(these are not mutually-exclusive, you can combine them)
Risks to consider in general are (also of the top of my head don't take as exhaustive):
* Electrocution
* Burning yourself
* Setting stuff on fire
* Fumes, both from soldering and overheating/burning plastic
There's a kind of balance between habits and awareness. Rely too much on awareness and you will miss some safety issue during a complicated repair. You need good habits, but rely too much on them and you won't notice when you finally make a mistake.
Those apply during repair processes. It's also possible to render a device unsafe to use, for example by damaging a li-ion battery or by a 'bodge' repair that circumvents a safety feature.
A cheap multimeter and a cheap soldering iron/hot air station combo will get you very far in the hobby. I enjoy these channels:
MyMateVince (a guy who fixes many useful household items): https://www.youtube.com/user/mymatevince
StezStixFix: https://www.youtube.com/@StezStixFix
Electronics Repair School (more advanced, he fixes laptops, tvs, and sometimes gpus): https://www.youtube.com/@electronicsrepairschool
When the problem is not exactly the same, I'm just lost. There is not a lot of diagnosis videos on YouTube. All the videos are: "1. I observed this problem. 2. [???] 3. I'll walk you through soldering on the new components." skipping the most important step 2.
Same for car repair videos: "I see Problem X happening. Problem X usually means component Y has failed. Here's how to replace component Y. The end." If that doesn't work, you wasted money on the part and your time ripping apart your car and putting it back together.
In the channels that I suggested, all of them go into the repair not knowing what the fault actually is. They take the viewer through the whole diagnosis, and they (with the exception of Electronics Repair School) are not electronics technicians.
Once a person has seen enough different ways of diagnosing items (by watching videos or hands on trying), then faults in other items become easier to find.
He buys cheap crap, takes it apart, and usually infers a schematic. He also admires or critiques the designs. After a while you'll notice patterns.
1. Take things apart, and try to figure out how they work. Don't worry too much about getting them back together. But then, trying to reassemble it is good practice too. There's plenty of old electronic junk that you can explore before throwing it away. Build a mental catalog of how things work and are assembled. Among other things, this will help you when you need to come up with a strategy for getting some particular gadget open -- often 9/10 of the problem.
2. Like others have said, YouTube is great. People will make a video of a repair, or even just getting something open, for a few "likes." Also, most of them are just normal genuine people who aren't trying to be influencers, so it's kind of culturally refreshing. Many of my successful repairs started with YouTube, such as my clothes washer and dryer, refrigerator, lawn mower.
3. Many of my most cherished tools are what I call for "demolition," not electronics specific, like picks, pry bars, a slim knife that can get between things, stuff like that. Another set of cherished tools are my magnifying visor, small magnifying glass, bright flashlight, and a stereo inspection microscope that I got second-hand.
4. A lot of "electronic" failures are actually mechanical in nature, and you can just use your general troubleshooting rundown to figure them out. Switches, connectors, cables, etc.
5. Begin to get the hang of identifying parts, and how part numbering schemes work. It will help you in your search for spares.
6. These days I often ask my spouse for a opinion. She's a laboratory scientist, quite sharp and skeptical. I'll have a hypothesis, and she asks the one question that blows it out of the water.
Good luck! Don't get electrocuted or burn your house down.
For some reason I got my hands on a lot of old clocks as a child, and after getting the springs out, I never could get them back in. Turns out there's a special lathe you need to use to coil them up tightly enough. Only learnt that when I was about 20.
Beginner
* Get a Miniware TS101 USB C soldering iron, some solder, solder wick, flux
* Get a mediocre multimeter
* Do a little soldering assembly kit to learn how to solder, there are some good NASA manuals and videos to learn techniques and you won't need to do as good a job as they do
* Learn how to identify and replace broken capacitors
* Learn how to replace power and USB connectors
* ^ (a huge proportion of things that are fixable at all are going to be those two)
Intermediate
* Learn about static (ESD) safety, get the equipment and supplies to prevent frying things yourself
* Get an arduino or other low cost prototyping board and learn to program it and do little projects
* Find some broken consumer electronics with guides on https://www.ifixit.com/Guide and try to fix them, these things are often less about "electronics" and more about glue
* Read the parts of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about maintaining and fixing things
* Read https://www.eevblog.com and watch https://www.youtube.com/eevblog for information and inspiration
Advanced
* Get an oscilloscope and bench power supply, learn how to probe and analyze signals on boards
* Figure out yourself what next steps to pursue, you should be able to at this point, or at least to ask more specific questions
I've learned not to fear B+, but to give very healthy respect to anything more than 500 volts. (Only use 1 hand, keep the other behind you, always have a safety partner, etc)
I've learned to hate Silver Mica capacitors. I've learned how to track down the bad ones that cause the "crashing" sound in old radios.
I've learned that in very old electronics, you can let smoke out, and things will still work. I've gotten good at seeing where the smoke comes from.
You'll definitely need to learn to solder. I'd suggest starting with something like an Arduino starter kit to get a sense of how components actually interact.
But remember, if something is dead, you can't really make it worse. (Just be careful not to make yourself worse along the way)
Man, I'd say be very respectful to anything that might be running 120-240V, and be very sure about anything higher than that. Anything <50V can often just be fun tinker whatever assuming you're ok with breaking whatever you're playing with, up to a certain max amperage of your power source. High amperage but low voltage can still cause some serious messups if you don't have the right fuses in place. But I get other voltages are common in Europe.
AC, 120V will 'bite', 240V will make you shaky (remembers id10t maneuver yesterday, first in a decade). And burn you. In damp environments or with corrosion around, much worse things can happen.
Probably implied here, but learning to desolder is huge too. And there are tricks to it that didn't come easily to me. When you buy your first iron, I think it's worth getting some flux and solder wick as well. Taking circuits apart cleanly and properly can make repairs so much easier.
Start with something like The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Winfield.
An example of the kinds of EE stuff you don't heave to know to be an effective troubleshooter of basic issues, might be, oh, say, what it means for the poles of a transfer function lie in the left half of the s-plane.
A stereo that loses the right channel unless you push on the board? Broken solder joint.
Visibly exploded caps? Bad caps.
Some basic understanding of electricity and current flow and the high-level concepts will help, but a detailed education is more for building your own than just repairing existing mass-produced setups.
(As an aside the electrical knowledge in a good ham radio study guide would be a great place to start - https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId... )
Anyways, I took pictures of the components and described what I was seeing. It walked me through things really well and asked me to do tests and report back. It even told me how to use my specific multimeter after I took a picture of it. I ended up soldering a jumper cable from the console power supply line (not working) to the micro usb power line (working).
It actually works now and really saved me 30 bucks buying a new controller.
I know few people who repaired their washing machines just watching youtube videos. No skills and no knowledge. That’s the best error you can find - series error. All the appliances of the same manufacturer built in the 5 years will predictably fail and replacing 20 cent regulator revives the machine.
There are then random faults, that need deep knowledge and hours of debugging. They’re not economically viable to repair unless the machinery is very expensive. Good example is 400€ transistor replacement in €20k Tektronix probe.
Then there are things one shouldn’t touch - Tesla battery packs and open microwave ovens for example. Enough energy to kill or badly injure the unlucky hobbyists (in German): https://www.kosmo.at/tesla-akku-explodiert-mann-schwer-verle...
There are enough analog electronics to repair what requires deep analog design knowledge. Music instruments and radio equipment might fall into this category.
I would say, the repairs make no sense in the future that comes. With more and more electronics and programmable components the repairs are not economically viable. I am designing a motherboard with MPM54304 PMIC and a microprocessor. Both are programmed and without firmware sources and circuit diagram one will not able to recreate desired functionality. After product release I will organize workshop for my colleagues from service department and they will still come to me to discuss the repairs when some early faulty products will be send back by customers.
80% of the problems are a single part or loose connector, and they’re big enough and common enough that they’re easy to work on and have lots of YouTube help available.
Then you can progress to working on the control boards themselves instead of just swapping them.
If you have a garage and will do this, I highly recommend the harbor freight lift table: https://www.harborfreight.com/500-lb-capacity-hydraulic-tabl...
Once you get into it you can actually make some coin, free washer, $10-50 in parts, sell for $100 when working.