Top all-time · #5900
MightyOhm
Personal blog · mightyohm.com/bloghardwareculture
MightyOhm is a personal blog at mightyohm.com about hardware and culture. Since 2010, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link MightyOhm's electronics and soldering pages, especially a soldering comic and a recommended introductory electronics book, along with Geiger counter kits and surplus resources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-12
- /blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-book-ever-written/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-12
What Hacker News says?
growing up, this was one of my favorite books https://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-...
Comment linking /blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-book-ever-written/
on “Ask HN: How to self-learn electronics?”Submitted Soldering is Easy - Soldering Tutorial Comic Book as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSome of which applies to SV as well. The US Navy: - taught a huge number of people enough electronics to do field maintenance of radio and radar - had a further more theoretical education for radar operators - at the end of the war, sold off a huge amount of kit cheaply; some of this is still kicking around the ham community in California. See e.g. https://mightyohm.com/wiki/resources:surplus and the geographic dist…
Comment linking /wiki/resources:surplus
on “Europe's Software Problem”Submitted Working at valve as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe best resource to learn the basics that I have seen is a "comic book" that was made about 15 years back [1]. It goes over the basics and helps you get going. From there I suggest reading posts, watching videos and just talking to people who solder. Find some bare board kits (or your own kits) and assemble them. Soldering, like welding, is one of those things you can learn to do in a day...but it takes experience…
Comment linking /files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.pdf
on “Ask HN: Resources to get good at soldering?”Here it is - https://mightyohm.com/files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f17...
Comment linking /files/geiger/images/6275026497_3cf9f175b2_c.jpg
on “Flipper Zero Geiger Counter”They do today: http://mightyohm.com/blog/2011/04/sign-up-to-be-notified-whe...
Comment linking /blog/2011/04/sign-up-to-be-notified-when-my-book-is-published/
on “Soldering is easy - 7 page comic book about how to solder”Although not quite a comic, Forrest Mims' Getting Started in Electronics is considered a classic. http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-b... Citizen Engineer is a comic book / zine / electronics kit. Unfortunately, they haven't released a volume 2 yet. http://www.citizenengineer.com/
Comment linking /blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-book-ever-written/
on “Soldering is easy - 7 page comic book about how to solder”http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-b... In elementary/middle and even high school I absolutely loved this book. I even had a backup copy. It might be a bit more basic than you need if you studied it in college though.
Comment linking /blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-book-ever-written/
on “Ask HN: What are some nice electronics courses that blend theory and practice?”After buying a MightyOhm geiger counter kit[0], I needed something to test it with. Uranium glass ended up being one of the cheapest things you can buy that will register above the background radiation level. [0]: https://mightyohm.com/blog/products/geiger-counter/
Comment linking /blog/products/geiger-counter/
on “Uranium Glass”PCB manufacturers accept a format called "Gerber" files. They are basically drawings of all the layers of the PCB. You can download the Gerber files from the Kitspace page and send/upload them to a manufacturer of choice or even use one of the links to auto-upload them for you to Aisler, OSHPark, PCBWay or JLCPB. Since the PCB is the board only, component information is actually not required to manufacture it. If yo…
Comment linking /blog/2011/04/soldering-is-easy-comic-book/
on “Open Gamma Detector”You will get much better advice if you can be more specific about your ideas. Some examples would be helpful. I've built a few gadgets that collect data, analyze it, and then send it to a data store on the web. Think carefully about your needs for each of those 3 steps, as well as your readiness to get into low-level technical details. And then tell us more about what you're trying to do. In the mean time, here is s…
Comment linking /blog/2008/10/building-a-wifi-radio-part-1-introduction/
on “Ask HN: hardware startups, where to begin?”Looks like you need more than just an oscilloscope - you need a trend recorder. The DSO Nano is a great for casual work, but if you have some electronics skill, you can easily build an attenuator to hook into your laptop's microphone or line-in (1 channel or 2 channel) jack and record the signal for trend analysis. You can also use an MP3 player with recording abilities as long as it records to a WAV file, not MP3 d…
Comment linking /blog/2010/03/rigol-ds1052e-50mhz-to-100mhz-scope-conversion/
on “Ask HN: Recommend a portable oscilloscope”I got into soldering as a child, but never learned how to do it properly. Years later I found this comic-book-style guide somewhere online, which made it quite easy to do without messing it up: https://mightyohm.com/files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.p...
Comment linking /files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.pdf
on “I hate soldering existentially”
