electronics-design

Resources to Learn Electronics Design

Ufuk Safak

— 6 min read
Resources to Learn Electronics Design
Photo by Michael Dziedzic / Unsplash


In 2022, eight years after graduating with a B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, I decided to learn electronics again.

I’m not the kind of person who can specialize deeply in one thing. My brain doesn’t allow it — it jumps between ideas like a kid in a toy store. I’m too enthusiastic, too curious, and far too easily distracted to ever be a true “expert.”

But as I have a tag "Electronics Engineer" and I want to contribute to society by designing electronics products, I realized I need to learn that specialization from the beginning. I was always kind of middle man between specialists, just trying to keep things organized by also helping technical details. But If I am electronics engineer and doesn't want to write code anymore, I decided to spend energy to learn it again.

And I believe I manage to be a good learner! I still have a lot to learn as I feel ashamed of myself a year ago continuously for more than 5 years. Every year I learned so much that when I recall how I spoke last year or how I designed that solution, I always find it amateur. Which is supposed to be a good thing.

There’s a quote I like (I can’t remember who said it):

“If you’re not ashamed of who you were five years ago, it means you are still same idiot.”

So, I finally started to feel ready to take a break to learning and start sharing what I learned and how I learned to help others.

Learning the right way this time

So I started over. I opened YouTube. And I began watching, note-taking, pausing, and rewinding.

And something unexpected happened: I learned electronics better on YouTube than I ever did in university.

Don’t get me wrong, I have deep respect for my professors. But honestly, YouTube turned out to be the best teacher I’ve ever had. Good explanations usually come from people who’ve already messed things up a few times. And that’s exactly why they’re so good at teaching it. Also, the incentive system - views, likes, subscribers, paying members has accidentally created one of the most efficient education ecosystems in human history.

You can pause, rewind, take notes, or jump to another video the moment something doesn’t click. No grades, no pressure, just curiosity.

So, at university, I was too young and only learned theory. On YouTube, I learned theory with practice baked in — and could use that knowledge right away 😄.

After 3 years of this journey, I feel ready to take a break from just learning and start sharing — not to teach, but to point others toward what worked for me.

So in this post, I’ll share my favorite YouTube channels for learning electronics. If you’re an electronics engineer who once said, “I should probably refresh my basics someday,” — this list might be exactly what you need.

Honorable mentions first

I’m not going to list company websites full of white papers, application notes, and blogs. Their incentive to educate us about their products is pretty obvious. Still, that’s also a very solid way to learn specific technical details.

But since I’m mostly a visual learner, I usually prefer watching videos to really digest the knowledge, and then supplement it with application notes and blogs.

But Altium deserves an extra headline here!

Altium Academy with Zach Peterson

Their YouTube channel and website are both one of the richest content collection you can find. They also have a podcast channel which covers mostly industrial details, not best practices. Actually they have 2 youtube channels: Altium and Altium Academy.

I’m both a follower and a user of Altium. Not everyone is a fan - there have been some complaints about licensing costs and their closed ecosystem - but still, they produce great educational material.

Here are some great videos from Altium:

Experts without dedicated YouTube channel

There are also some people — usually the real experts and industry veterans — who don’t have their own YouTube channels but frequently appear on others to share their deep technical knowledge.

People like Rick Hartley and Eric Bogatin have taught me a lot over the years. They’re on another level, true experts who enjoy sharing what they know.

Speaking of Eric, his full course content is now available for free thanks to sponsors: The EEcosystem Masterclass. I’m actually planning to rewatch those courses soonthis time in a more structured way, and maybe even get the certification.

Fun fact: as I keep learning, I also keep forgetting. The only thing I really miss these days is my younger brain.

Anyway, let's list some great content creators as a gratitude to all of them.

Phil's Lab, Phil Salmony

He graduated from Cambridge and has a personal website offering extra content. His tutorials, especially the “Design Together” series with Altium are incredibly useful. You can learn a lot just by following along.

What I really like is how he teaches details while designing, not separately. I’d actually love to meet him one day. He has videos like:

He is also writing at Altium website. Definitely worth take a look.

EEVBlog, Dave Jones

This channel is a bit old school but focus mostly on pure electronics engineering rather than ECAD practices. I’m not saying other channels are just ECAD learning platforms — but they usually teach while designing something, which makes them easier to follow.

If you want to learn about MLCC capacitors or, say, how an op-amp works, this would be my first stop.

Dave has been doing this for a very long time — you can literally see how he’s aged through the years 😄. With his unique voice and Australian accent, he’s one of the most influential figures in the electronics engineering community.

We all love you, Dave Jones. Thanks for everything.

Here are some great videos:

Robert Feranec

He also has a personal training website. I watched a lot of his video, mostly with guests, and he has one of the best YouTube channels about electronics design.

Especially his 2-hour-long videos with guests, they all deserve full attention. I am leaving a couple of them as a link here:

Predictable Designs with John Teel

John runs a great YouTube channel and a personal website. Over the last few months (I’m writing this in October 2025), his videos have become a bit repetitive — probably because he’s been promoting his latest guide.

His channel remains one of the best resources for understanding industrial-scale PCB manufacturing, design for manufacturing (DFM), certification, and product testing. He also shares a lot of valuable insights about hardware startups, crowdfunding, and taking a product from prototype to production.

Here are a few standout videos from his channel:

If you’re building a hardware product and want to understand what really happens beyond the prototype — especially in manufacturing, certification, and compliance — John’s channel is a must-watch.

Dario Fresu

I’ve been reading his blog posts and watching his videos a lot lately. He’s especially focused on EMI and EMC, and his videos are incredibly educational for anyone dealing with those challenges. Definitely worth following if you want to understand signal integrity and noise control at a deeper level.

Funny detail is while listing those channels, I realized I still have at least 15 must watch videos with 25 to 30 hours length.

I think I need to collect a bit more courage before I start sharing my own tips and tricks about electronics design. Maybe I’ll skip that part for now. I still have that familiar impostor syndrome lingering around — but hopefully not for long.

Even this simple list took me about 2.5 hours to write. I can’t imagine how much time and effort they’ve invested in creating and sharing their knowledge.

Sure, everyone has their own incentives — more followers, more subscribers, more customers — but still, it’s one of the most peaceful and meaningful ways to keep education alive.

Thank for reading.

Read more