The Beginner’s Guide to Electronics: Components—What to Buy First, Part 1The Beginner’s Guide to Electronics: Components—What to Buy First, Part 1

I fear I’ve opened a can of wriggly worms with my recent "The Beginner’s Guide to Electronics: Tools—What to Buy First" columns (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). The reason I say this is that I’ve received several emails and messages on LinkedIn asking if I have similar recommendations for components.

Well, duh! Of course I do. Much like my dear old mother, the real trick is to get us to stop talking (and writing, in my case).

While it’s true that you’ll typically need to purchase some components whenever you start a new project, it will make things a lot easier if you already have a handy-dandy treasure chest of commonly used parts.

All makers will have their own priorities, but I’m going to class the components in these columns into “must haves” and “nice to have” based on my own experiences and projects.

Note that any prices reported in this column are correct at the time of writing, but the cost of things can go up and down like a yo-yo (I’m sure I don’t need to use words like “pandemics,” “tariffs,” and “trade wars”).

Breadboards (must have)

Many hobby projects start life on one or more breadboards. These come in various sizes, but the two most used are classed as “half-size” and “full-size.”

Full-size breadboard. CLIVE “MAX” MAXFIELD

My own experience is that you can’t have too many of these little scamps. However, if you want to start slowly by dipping your toes in the breadboarding waters, you could do worse than this collection of two full-size and two half-size boards for only $8.99 on Amazon (as usual, always check the score and the number of ratings, which would be 4.6 out of 5 stars and 3,200+, respectively, in this case).

There’s a lot more to breadboards than you might expect. For example, some have split power and ground rails, which can confuse the unwary. Happily, I’ve written Handy-Dandy Breadboard Guide that explains all this in excruciating exhilarating detail.

Single-core breadboard jumper wires (nice to have)

One thing that goes hand-in-hand with breadboards is jumper wire. There are two different kinds. The first employs single-core wires. You can make these yourself from scratch (well, you’ll need some insulated single-core wire, of course).

However, a better solution is to buy a kit containing a collection of different colored wires of different lengths with pre-bent and pre-stripped ends.

Kit of single-core breadboard jumper wires. CLIVE “MAX” MAXFIELD

I just found this 560-piece kit for $11.99 on Amazon. To be honest, I would say that I typically work with these wires “as-is” only about 50% of the time. Otherwise, I use them as a starting point, cutting one end down and stripping the insulation off it as required.

The reason I classed these as “nice to have” is that you can do everything with the multi-core jumper wires presented in the next section.

For myself, I tend to employ a mix in my projects, using solid-core jumpers for short distances and (relatively) straight-line connections, and using multi-core jumpers for longer distances and connections that would otherwise require a lot of bends.

Multi-core breadboard jumper wires (must have)

The second type of jumper wire employs multicore wires with headers on the ends. These are available pre-made in different lengths and in male-to-male, male-to-female, and female-to-female configurations.

Multi-core jumper wires. CLIVE “MAX” MAXFIELD

Some kits offer all three configurations, such as this 120-piece set of 10-cm (4-in.) wires for only $6.98 on Amazon.

I use a lot of the 10-cm (4-in.) wires, I use quite a few of the 20-cm (8-in.) versions, and I occasionally make use of the 30-cm (12-in.) options. I predominantly require male-to-male, but the other configurations do come in handy on occasion.

One of the problems with the pre-made offerings is that—depending on the manufacturer—they can be a little “flakey.” Although this doesn’t happen often in the scheme of things, it’s frustrating to spend time debugging a project, only to discover that it was one of these pre-made jumper wires that was at fault. The solution is to make your own as discussed below.

Solid-core hookup wire (nice to have)

If you are serious about learning electronics, then you are almost certainly going to require some insulated hookup wire in a variety of colors.

You might find a kit of solid-core wires to be of use to make your own solid-core jumper wires, for example. I just saw such a kit comprising six colors of 22 AWG (American Wire Gauge) wires, each 30 feet (9 meters) long for $15.19 on Amazon.

To be honest, however, if you are counting your pennies, I would probably start off with a similar kit of multi-core hookup wires as discussed below.

Multi-core (stranded) hookup wire (must have)

This is something you are going to need. Ideally you would like to have access to loads of different gauges and colors. As a starting point, however, you could do worse than a kit comprising six colors of 22 AWG wires, each 25 feet (7.5 meters) long, such as this one for $19.99 on Amazon. As you will soon discover, this wire will come in handy for all sorts of things.

In Part 3 of my tools series, we discussed the idea of purchasing a crimping tool from a company called Pololu Robotics and Electronics.

Crimping tool. CLIVE “MAX” MAXFIELD

As I noted in that column: “This isn’t cheap at $39.95, but I must have had mine for more than 10 years now. I’ve used it constantly and it’s still going strong, so that’s not a lot of money when spread over the years. In addition to the crimping tool itself, Pololu also supply crimp connector housings (0.1-in. pitch), male crimp pins for 0.1-in. housings, and female crimp pins for 0.1-in. housings.”

Having a collection of multi-core hookup wires and your own crimping tool opens the door to all sorts of possibilities, not least that you can adopt a proper color scheme for your jumper wires, and you can make as many as you like of any length you like in any configuration you require.

Furthermore, suppose you have a component like a toggle switch or a potentiometer that you want to connect to your breadboard. In this case, you can solder multi-core hookup wires to the component’s terminals, and then you can use your crimper to attach male crimp pins to the other ends so you can plug them into your breadboard.

Having said this … if a crimper is not currently on the horizon for you, then you can get by with the multi-core jumper wires we discussed earlier. All you need to do is take one of these wires, cut the pin/housing off one end, strip the insulation, solder that end onto one of the component terminals, and repeat for the other terminals.

Next time

I think our discussions above are sufficient to get us out of the starting gate. Next time, we’ll introduce some more components to add to our collection, starting with resistors, capacitors, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and whatever else strikes our fancy.

Until then, as always, I look forward to casting my orbs over your captivating comments, insightful questions, and sagacious suggestions (you can email me at [email protected].