Figure 1 Good and not-so-good pliers for electronic work.
When I first wanted to do some electronics I didn't have much money or equipment. Gradually over the years I bought and scrounged things that have been very helpful. You, too, will have to find or buy equipment when you get started. The question is, what equipment do you need? On this page I've tried to describe most of my favourite electronic tools and accessories, with some usage notes. Once you know what is out there, you will be able to go into an electronic store with confidence.
Electronic pliers (radiopench in Japanese!), also called "long nosed pliers" and "needle nose pliers". They must be very small, a good pair is less than 120mm long. You will have to buy these from an electronics shop, the small ones are not available in the hardware store.
Figure 1 Good and not-so-good pliers for electronic work.
It may also be a good idea to buy some angle snips, these are for cutting off the wires on the back of a PCB that has been soldered.
Figure 2 Two different types of snips, both are good.
This is an incredibly useful thing as it allows you to quickly
create electric circuits to test them. It is a plastic block about
170mm long and 65mm wide. It has lots of little holes in the top
surface. The holes are internally connected as shown in this figure:
The holes are all at a precision distance from each other. For historical reasons this distance is 1/10th of an inch, or 2.54mm. This distance is the standard pitch of the legs on all modern DIP computer chips, and many other small electronic devices. Other common electronic parts like resistors, transistors and so on have long flexible wires (legs) coming out of them and these can be bent to fit the holes as well.
Connections between devices can be made either using the built in conductors (the black lines in the figure above), or short pieces of thin solid core wire called hook-up wire. Solid core wire is insulated copper wire with just one cylinder of copper down the middle. Braided wire has many copper wires twisted into a bundle and this does not work well with the breadboard as the bundle quickly becomes frayed and this can cause short-circuits. I have a huge roll of CAT-5 ethernet wire (blue insulation) which contains 8 solid-core wires, which I found in a rubbish bin (see the section on scrounging). This source means I have never had to buy any hook-up wire.
Breadboards have little fittings along the sides so that several can be joined together, to make one big working area. When you are starting out, only one board is needed. But when you want to develop something really complicated, you will need three or more joined together.
To do anything with electronics you have to have a reasonably supply of the fundamental parts: resistors, capacitors, LEDs, switches, signal diodes and adjustable resistors. I have a multi-drawer cabinet, a little plastic thing with about 20 plastic drawers, and each drawer is stuffed full of resistors, capacitors etc. in a wide range of sizes. Go to the electronic store and buy some bags of assorted resistors and capacitors, maybe ten bags in all, so you have plenty to work with. Get a bag of each size range.
As your electronics knowledge increases you will also acquire many other types of components, for example transistors, operational amplifiers and logic chips. Here is some information about the ones I use.
Digital circuits usually work on 5V DC, although it is possible to work at other voltage levels too, this depends on the specific chips you use. Most will work over a range which is specified on the manufacturer's data sheet. A typical range is 3.6V to 6.0V but always check this as chips can be destroyed (burned out) if you go above the allowed maximum voltage.
Analog circuits work on any voltage you want, you are in control! However it is traditional when working with operational amplifiers (op-amps) to have two supply voltages, often +12V DC and -12V DC.
As you might expect there are special-purpose voltage regulator chips that exist only to create stable voltages. The classic ones for a hobby power supply are the "78" and "79" series:
More information about these devices can be seen here.
I have found that a simple power supply that can provide -12V, 0, 5V and 12V is a very useful thing, it means I can work with digital or analog devices.
The voltage regulators only regulate voltage, they do not create it. The usual approach is to have a mains-powered device which transforms mains power to unregulated DC, and then use the voltage regulators to create stable voltages from that. All the components go in one box, which has a mains lead and related safety features such as a fuse, and output terminals which carry the regulated output voltages. I can't advise you to build one of these as you are probably not qualified to work with (very dangerous) mains voltages. However you may be able to buy a complete unit for a reasonable cost from an electronics store.
When you are starting with electronics you may be able to use battery power. Batteries are good because they are portable and do not produce electrical noise. However they do need to be replaced when they go flat. The other problem with them is that 5V is not easily achieved using alkaline cells as the cell voltage is 1.5V. Try working with 3 D cells, which makes 4.5V. This is a safe voltage for many digital circuits and it is not too low, they should still work. You could also try 6V but you take the risk that some digital chips can fail at this voltage. My experience is that 6V is borderline-acceptable, I have never had a digital chip burn out at that voltage, even if the manufacturer's data sheet says it is the maximum allowed value.
This is a fundamental tool for measuring voltages, currents and resistances. Try to get one that has both a digital and analog display if you can, both types of display are useful for different things.
Figure 3 A cheap but very effective multimeter. This one has no current measurement facility but that is not a serious problem, there is an easy way to get current measurements using a voltmeter.
If you are only working with DC voltages, that is, voltages that are either "on" or "off" and which probably don't change rapidly with time, you probably don't need an oscilloscope. However if you are working with any sort of digital signal or rapidly changing voltage, it becomes an essential tool, really the essential tool. It allows you to see how any voltage in your circuit is changing with time, instantly and precisely. For many years I tried to learn electronics without one, but the day I bought one was the day I really started to go forward fast.
There are many good on-line tutorials on how to use an oscilloscope. Here's one.
Figure 4 A typical oscilloscope. Even the cheapest one you can buy (20MHz dual channel analog) will serve you well. Click on the image to see a closeup.