What 'Essentials' Electronics Topic would you like to Learn More About?

A topic around micro-controllers might be useful.

sensors and signal conditioning

Carrying on from the first two comments...

Interfacing of sensors and actuators to microcontrollers.

Although there are many examples posted out there already, few appear to carry much in the way of educational value, reason for selection, or best practice in the design.

I would like to learn how to eat device outputs and learn how to interpret those signals...

Ben Heck showed signal interpretation of data coming off various pins for clock and audio on the Sony Nintendo Playstation...

I have a device I would like to capture data from but I don't know how to test output on the 5 pins... Looks like positive, negative, and 3 data pins.

Basically, I have a mitutoyo digital bore micrometer, I would like to create a device that captures the data output, connects to a raspberry Pi 3 via Bluetooth and sends the data for aggregating measurements in a CSV spreadsheet format.

This Instructable may be of interest:

Interfacing a Digital Micrometer to a Arduino & VGA Monitor

sensors and signal conditioning sounds great

Watching today's element14's The Ben Heck Show  I was wondering if there was the possibility of doing something to try and create a better link between some of the technologies used in the shows with some bite-sized DIY learning modules in the Learning Center ?

The show uses lots of sensors and microcontrollers and as already mentioned here they appear to be of interest to the community for inclusion in the 'Essentials' offerings.

In this week's show we had the likes of the Omron D6T MEMS thermal grid array sensor, a mention of the I2C bus, relays (both mechanical and solid state), and laser diodes. In addition there was the old chestnut of mixing mains power with logic control.

I was thinking that wouldn't it be great if someone after watching the show could then follow some links to get more educational info about the technology being used, along with a quick and easy way to obtain the components.

A vivid article on interfacing different sensors with a economic and long-lasting microcontroller with the objective to fulfill an integrated home automation system.

I'd like to see some actual 101 courses. Sensors and Connectors are great but seem like they're for people who already have some sort of idea what they're doing. I've never touched a board, let alone know what any of the parts are. That's more what I was hoping to find here. : /

Another useful topic would be electric actuators and electric motors and their interfaces.

Working with inductive loads

How about a series on what is needed for an efficient electronics maker operation - tools, techniques and work flows.

Technicians and technologists may receive some training in how to build electronic systems, but engineers often don't get much training and the rest of the maker community gets zero. It is a big topic with many relevant skills, but it can make a huge difference in project success to have the right tools and know how and when to use them. Work flows from concept to final test are not well covered in any one place and very few people are experts in all areas.

How about working with the big industrial servos and grey code absolute position sensors? Preferably with a simple micro controller.