Step 1: Buy Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims, or any other book by him.
Step 2: Build all the projects in his books. You'll only need a proto board and a few other cheap components.
You'll build up an intuition in electronics by doing all these projects. If you want to throw a microcontroller in the mix, get the cheap TI MSP430 Launchpad- it's about $5, and you can use C or Arduino.
You'll build up an intuition in electronics by doing all these projects. If you want to throw a microcontroller in the mix, get the cheap TI MSP430 Launchpad- it's about $5, and you can use C or Arduino.