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Books On Electronics For the Lay Programmer?
leoboiko writes "I'm a computer scientist and programmer with no training whatsoever in hardware or electronics. Sure, we designed a simple CPU (at a purely logical level) and learned about binary math and whatnot, and I can build a PC and stuff, but lately I've been wanting to, you know, solder something. Make my own cables, understand multimeters, perhaps assemble a simple robot or two. Play with hobbyist-level electronics. How does one go about educating oneself in this topic? I've been browsing Lessons in Electric Circuits online and it's been helpful, together with Misconceptions About 'Electricity' which went a long way in helping me finally to grok what electric charge and power actually are. I've reached the point where I want an actual dead-tree book, though. Any recommendations?"
Pick up the Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill. The lab manual might also be helpful. The Art of Electronics is basically the electronics Bible for physicists and a popular introductory text for electrical engineers.
For technical electronics work (like soldering or cable assembly) you will probably want to find a specific book (the Navy electronics manuals would be very helpful).
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
An excellent starter is "The Art of Electronics By Paul Horowitz, Horowitz, Winfield Hill"
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521370957
You should also have a look at the classic:
"Foundations of Wireless and Electronics
by M.G. Scroggie "
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundations-Wireless-Electronics-M-G-Scroggie/dp/0750634308
AT&ROFLMAO
3 Scary things: A programmer with soldering iron, a manager who codes and a user who gets Ideas
I would like to make a plug for your local community college, if you live in a reasonably-sized city. Most community colleges offer a couple of basic-level electronics classes, which teach you basic circuit theory. Books (either eBooks or paper ones) like Misconceptions About 'Electricity' are sort of interesting from a physics perspective, but they don't really offer much insight into electronics. In fact, many of the logical assumptions taught to electrical engineers _aren't_ true, strictly speaking, but are 'true enough' and much easier to understand.
If you're looking for someplace where you can learn about your basic circuit elements (resistors, capacitors, op-amps, etc) a real dyed-in-the-wool intro electronics course might be just what you're craving.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Get yourself an Arduino.
http://www.arduino.cc/
I would suggest looking at the various hobby robotics books in a good bookshop. Most of these will cover stuff like how to solder, how a transistor/FET work and how to wire up configurations like H bridges etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I recommend this annoyingly named book, which is an excellent cover-all on this and related subjects. Really did join the dots for me many years ago and it looks like it's now in its 2nd edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Unconventional-Electronics/dp/0750675438/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210145164&sr=1-1
(Any grammar nazi's able to show me how to tidy up that link? Or point me at the right place on here to find out please?)
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
It might be that I'm not a particularly good student, but I've never really been able to learn from textbooks unless I already had at least some background knowledge about the subject I was studying. I'm a practicing electronics engineer, and I find that textbooks are a great reference. I also enjoy reading textbooks written on areas where I have some knowledge, but not enough.
That being said, learning something like electronics or signal processing completely from a textbook would be really tough for me. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think the original poster would be much better off taking a class or two than he would be trying to slug his way through something like the Art of Electronics.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Happy hacking!
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
A good magazine, with hands-on projects for both beginner and advanced hobbyists: Silicon Chip
I"m not sure if my account is banned from posting in here, but I'll try. I read this when I was 12 and it was very easy to follow. The electronics section starts with the basics and builds you up to where you can build radios and other complicated things. The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications (2008 edition) The 2008 ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications uniquely serves both amateur experimenters and industry practitioners, emphasizing connections between basic theory and application. The ARRL Handbook is simply the standard in applied electronics and communications. This 85th edition is both a useful introduction to radio communication and a source for answers to questions about every aspect of the state-of-the-art. Topics include Amateur Radio licensing requirements and operating activities, fundamental and advanced electronics and communications concepts, radio propagation and antenna theory, practical projects, repair techniques, references and much more. The Handbook includes descriptions for new and emerging wireless technologies involving digital signal processing (DSP) innovations, and radio applications utilizing software and the Internet. The book is filled with valuable references, practical examples and projects. The CD-ROM at the back of the book includes all of the fully searchable text and illustrations in the printed book, as well as companion software, PC board templates and other support files.
Much as you can't learn to program well without looking at programs more complicated than you'll find in any textbook, you need to study real world circuits.
Whether you want to do digital stuff or analog, it's worth your time learning the analog stuff -- digital systems tend to break as a result of the underlying analog problem of circuit design.
For example, Wikipedia has the internal schematic for a 741 op amp along with a decent explanation. Once you understand the function of every one of those transistors, you'll be able to really understand why it has both a gain-bandwidth limit and a slew rate limit, and what the difference is.
The best source of real-world circuits I've found is the application notes and example circuits in data sheets published by manufacturers. Since they need the resultant circuits to work when engineers build them, they don't leave out the random extras that textbooks often do. Does that MOSFET need a gate resistor? A circuit in an app note will probably say, whereas an example diagram might well not.
If your goal is to learn more in general, as opposed to solving a specific problem, I'd pay more attention to the author than exactly what they're writing about. For example, I can't recommend Jim Williams' design notes highly enough -- he's both an excellent engineer and an excellent author. Making Shakespeare a citation is the sort of thing that keeps his writing lively and interesting. Or rating circuit complexity in baby bottles as a measure of how long it took him to design and debug it. And, of course, he often goes into great detail about the *practical* considerations involved in precise, high-speed analog work -- especially as it relates to working at the lab bench, rather than with professionally printed PCBs and the like.
I'm sure others will have excellent textbook recommendations. They're an important part, but only a part. Add some analysis of real-world circuits that you'll find in application notes, and a bunch of fussing around with actual silicon and a scope, and you'll be well on your way.
http://pragprog.com/titles/ctelec/a-peek-at-computer-electronics
(I'm a physics professor teaching electronics to undergraduates this term.)
I'll second Horowitz and Hill.
But if you want a gentler sunday school introduction before you pick up the Bible, get "Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest M. Mims III. This is the book I taught myself with, bought it from Radio Shack when I was twelve. Text-and-drawings done "lab notebook" style, very basic approach.
You'll need Horowitz and Hill to get the math, but for basic concepts Mims can't be beat.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-002Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm
Not a book, but course materials and video lectures.
Electronics for Dummies? I'm sure it exists.
Analog stuff gets pretty deep, pretty quickly. For what you want to do it sounds like you'd be best off learning the bare basics about LRCs and view transistors as digital devices, then cobble stuff together out of TTL components. As a software guy, you'd probably get a blast out of using a PIC or FPGA board since you write firmware, but get to do some hardware stuff too.
LTspice/SwitcherCAD III
http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/index.jsp
and there is a yahoo group.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LTspice/?v=1&t=directory&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=dir&slk=1
Electronic Circuits --- Handbook for Design and Applications
Tietze, U., Schenk, Ch.
For an overview, see the official homepage at http://tietze-schenk.com/tsbook.htm.
I don't recommend this as your first book about electronics, but once you feel at home in the field it will become a very valuable guide to designing your circuitry.
Overall, I recommend "Electronic Circuits" for ambitious hobbyists and most engineering practice. It is a bit too advanced for complete newbies, and for cutting edge development you might want something that covers the theory in more depth. But for everything in between it is great.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Did anyone else expect that "Misconceptions About Electricity" page to suddenly tell you that you are EDUCATED EVIL?
:P
Still, it was an interesting read.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
There are No Electrons: Electronics for Idiots is extremely basic, but its entertainment value is inestimable and it's really quite profound on the basics. You'll never feel like you understand the fundamentals better.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I recommend Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers by Tom Igoe and Dan O'Sullivan. The title of the book itself doesn't sound all that appealing, but this is the book you want. It will teach you all the little tricks that seasoned practitioners know, but that most books won't even tell you about. Other guides I have found useful are the old Radio Shack notebooks. I'm not sure how they're called, or where you'd get them legally. I haven't seen them at Radio Shack and I do not know if they're still in print.
And last, I have to plug this TechShop establishment since they offer classes at very reasonable rates and they were kind enough to host our Ruby Hackfest in their awesome space last month.
I was in the same boat as you are. As others have mentioned "Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill (with its companion Lab manual) is the classic text for people like us. But to get the most out of the book, you will eventually have to invest in some basic electronics equipment, especially an oscilloscope. The bottom line is that you need to invest at least $1,000 for all kinds of parts, small and large, and devour information on the www like many do pr0n on this site. You would also get the most bang for the buck by playing around with microcontroller projects.
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" is a fabulous book despite its rather dumb title. It gives a very hands-on approach while not shying away from the advanced topics
"The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz is definitely the standard for electronics, but for me it delved too much into the theory. It is extremely thorough, but maybe not geared towards people just wanting to build their own first small circuits.
- is probably to go and lie down in dark room until the feeling passes. And here is an effective cure for toothache, which I learned from my mother: Fill your mouth with cold water and sit on a hot stove. When the water boils, the toothache will be gone. Works every time.
Seriously, though, what do you want to achive with your tinkering? If you go to a well stocked electronics shop, they'll have a lot of books about the theory and some about how to learn the right, practical skills: how to solder etc. I have approached the subject several times over the years, but the problem in my view is that the things one can easilty build are not all that interesting - to me, that is. It is easy to make USB thingies, for example, or things like amplifiers, programmable robots and so on, I think one of the things you will realize sooner or later is that electronics theory has amazingly little to do with practice - which is why you can use components with 10% or even 20% tolerance. You basically just slap things together sort of the right way and then adjust things with a couple of potentiometers if you really feel you must.
I too was interested in learning electronics basics and picked up AoE. The book seems comprehensive and good, but for getting a basic understanding and feel for building circuits it's not so good.
Is there any book that describes how you actually design your own circuits? I mean starting with basic stuff like getting a diode to blink (using just transistors etc, not any timing circuits eg.)? I mean how to pick the needed resistors and figuring out their values and what components you'll need etc. I know the math for this and all about kirchovs laws etc but these don't help much when you just have a blank piece of circuitboard and an idea...
Once you get through that you'll have a reasonable understanding of the field.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Looking at the references, I was struck by the fact that B Franklin is continually mentioned.
There is nothing about the giants of the field - Volta, Faraday, Maxwell, etc. Just bits explaining where Franklin was wrong.
For the record, Franklin was a poor scientist who contributed nothing to Man's basic understanding of the physical universe. If your educational system spends its time trying to push the idea that Americans are responsible for fundamental scientific advances, then I am not surprised you end up needing to ask Slashdot for help!
My reading of scientific history suggest to me that, in general, American society breeds very poor theoretical scientists. Such advances as are made in the US tend to be done by first-generation immigrants. A classic instance would be Einstein, who did all his work in Europe, then was tempted over to the US by money, where he did nothing of value ever again....
You have to bridge the gap between bits and voltages. I don't remember the titles of my books, so I will include keywords (You're probably past steps 1&2? Working backwards from #4 would also work).
:)
:)
1. Break down assembly language even further and look into OP codes as well as the FDOES (Fetch-Decode-Operands-Execute-Store) cycle. Think clocks and busses. [microprocessor architecture, bus architecture, instruction set, instruction architecture]
2. Move further into details of how ALU and memory are implemented: how flip-flops are used to store state, and how ALU's adder circuits, etc. can be implemented using NAND gates. Know what a 7401 is. [digital circuit design, half adder, full adder, flip-flop, register]
3. Then at a lower level, study how NAND gates themselves are implemented using transistors. Know about BJTs and FETs. [transistor electronics, electronic circuit analysis and design, BJT, FET]
4. You can be happy at the transistor level, but to solder things that actually work (and at the same time, know what you're doing), you have to study electric circuits and power electronics [electrical engineering, power electronics, ohm's law, thevenin, kirchoff's circuit laws]. Know how to read the color bands on resistors and appreciate the cheeky mnemonics for BBROYGBVGW
5. If you want to grind your own sand to make your chips and transistors, you may want to look up material science
*Be careful not to inhale the lead fumes, lest you suffer brain damage
Now if someone could recommend books for each stage...
(It's hard to recommend self-learning hardware, because I was taught hardware and am self-learning Computer Science.)
I wonder if it might not be just as well to go ahead and build a project. There are many designs on the web, and also kits. A kit would be a good place to start, it's not unlikely that you'll have to learn some debugging techniques.
As to theory, I find the "Scots guide to electronics" a good resource. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
Horowitz and Hill should probably be on your bookshelf if you get serious. But you don't have to read it before getting started.
I'm a radio ham. One thing you could build for less than 30 $ would be a software defined shortwave receiver. Check out the 'softrock40' yahoo group if this sounds interesting.
The better the quality, the simpler and easier the circuit.
Get a receiver or amp that has a problem and mess with it. A receiver in "protect mode" is a good one since that pretty much means that you have a DC offset on the output. A bi-polar amp will drive you nuts, since *any* bad component will throw DC onto the output, but you'll learn a ton going through it. A mosfet amp is much simpler since they are more like tube amps in topology. Hell, for that matter, try to get ahold of an old tube amp. They are very simple and are a good way to get yer feet wet.
Or an old cassette deck, like an old Nakamichi. Nobody wants them anymore (and they shouldn't, either), but they have a lot of cool control/motor circuitry in them. Especially if you get a hold of one that's discrete -- ie, all the logic and control is done with transistors.
and get the service manual -- it'll have schematics and sometimes theory of operation.
Oh yeah, the advice for the Navy Manuals is right on. Those are the clearest and most comprehensive books on the subject.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
For the musically inclined electronics noob I recommend Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians.
The book goes through all the basics: making and repairing your own cables, soldering, working with metal and plexiglass chassis, various types of boards(breadboards, etching). Projects are of varying difficulty and include a headphone amp, miniamp, fuzz-tone, "ring" modulator and phase shifter(the most difficult). Most projects use battery power and are safe to build and operate(note: unfortunately, none of the projects are synths.)
Maybe not your cup of tea but more fun to reuse than a run of the mill blinkenlighter.
You should probably consider Computer Engineering instead then. That way you get the best of both worlds!
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
I would suggest these websites:
http://www.xgamestation.com/
http://www.parallax.com
There's a lot of educational projects (with the books included) and I find them very useful in situation like yours.
I'm in similar situation... I just picked up an Arduino. http://www.arduino.cc/ It's an open source micro controller that you code in C and it gives you access to ~10 digital IO pins and 6 analog ones. They sell add-on packs to do things like ethernet (built in web server) or wireless. Find something around your house and automate it :p
I'm not sure how available some of the books listed above are. Hopefully you'll find them, and find them useful.
Some other books to look at are over on the ARRL.org website. Their primary focus of course is radio electronics, but they also have books on basic circuit boarding, robotics, and a few other electronic projects, as well as a few kits if you are interested in them.
Hope that's of some help. Have fun.
You never know...
Google Make Magazine! It is great for the DIY in you.
-Ghost
*Nothing* beats practical experience. Others have mentioned the Art of Electronics (which I have, and recommend as well). But practical experience is what really is the fun bits and what cemented it for me. I started from your position, and what I did was this:
:-)
1. Solderless breadboard, and an assortment of transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, 555 timers, op-amps etc. Do some simple circuits with them - make logic gates with BJTs and resistors, then do the same with mosfets (construct some CMOS gates out of discrete transistors for instance). Experiment with power supplies - buck converters to step DC voltages down, boost converters to step voltages up. Make sure you have several of each, because you'll probably let the magic smoke out of some of them.
2. Decide on a simple practical project. I chose to make a solar power system for my garden - an 80 watt pv panel sourced from ebay. The first project was to turn on lights at night from the battery that had been charged by the panel in the day. This consisted of a voltage comparator to detect when the solar panel voltage had fallen below a certain level. The output is connected to a power transistor that turns on the lights.
3. More complex stuff. Get a heap of 74 series or 4000 series logic ICs and make something with it. This will teach you how the real world has a nasty habit of creeping into your digital designs: glitches, why we need decoupling capacitors, synchronizing clocks, that kind of thing. I built an RS232 nixie tube display. It had no microcontroller - the UART was entirely implemented in 4000 series logic. I built it on tri-pad proto board. This required me to learn how to build several things: a simple switch mode power supply to boost 12v to 170vdc for the tubes, as well as the UART.
4. It is your fate to home brew a computer. My next project was a Z80 based single board computer on 160x100mm (Eurocard). It has a CTC, PIO, real time clock, paged memory, 512k of flash memory and 32k of RAM, and an expansion connector. The flash was initially programmed by a similar circuit to the nixie tube UART, but with a simple address generator circuit added. Once the initial program was written, the Z80 system could write its own flash.
I'm now up to the stage where I'm doing more challenging designs, such as an ethernet card for an 8 bit system, implemented almost entirely surface mount components, the glue logic being in a programmable logic chip called a CPLD (the little brother of the FPGA). There are even more real world considerations that mess with digital design here: how to avoid ground bounce, PCB layout considerations to make the board work at all, and also a good bit of real fun programming: writing a driver for it in assembly language
There's a great deal you can do as an electronics hobbyist: for example, you can make your own PCBs for fine pitch surface mount components if you have access to a laser printer: I've made my own PCBs for chips with 0.4mm pin pitch (that's 0.2mm traces and 0.2mm spacing) using nothing but gEDA PCB (which is GPL'd PCB layout software), a laser printer, a clothes iron, copper clad board and etchant. Sparkfun Electronics have some great tutorials on hand soldering surface mount components, by the way. As you progress, you'll want to be able to do this because there are a lot of interesting ICs that are only available in some sort of surface mount package.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
can be found with Mastering Electronics, by John Watson. Though Horowitz & Hill is definitely the nutz for a great overview.
As recommended elsewhere, The Art Of Elelctronics is a great book.
However, nothing beats a group of peers to teach you. In addition to TAOE, I recommend getting involved with your local HAM Radio club and hopefully find a handful of really good old-school analog electronics guys.
You can search for a local club here: http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/club/clubsearch.phtml
Electric Circuits 7th Edition, by Nilsson and Riedel, ISBN 0-13-146592-9 was the introductory text used at my university (UC Santa Barbara).
I didn't really go to class much, so most of my learning was straight out of this book. It is very easy to understand, and everything is covered from a basic level. It covers what all of the basic circuit elements are, how to analyze circuits, opamps, and circuits with reactive components, i.e. inductors and capacitors. It does not cover too many other topics, but it is an excellent reference on basic circuit analysis techniques which I still refer to today when I need to refresh my memory on basic circuit techniques. It will help you learn basic techniques very effectively which online resources do not often include, especially not all in one place. I find that it's style of writing and layout is much easier to understand than Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics, which is frequently recommended as a self-study book, but the scope of that book is much different from this one.
For finding out what basic circuits you will find useful, I would honestly just recommend using google, it will help you find much of what you need to know. Find any of the myriad sites that have a list of basic circuits, and just look through them.
You indicated an interest in robotics, and usually most of the work goes into the physical construction, and programming a microcontroller. My books in this area are unfortunately not at my current residence, but you should buy a book on robotics specifically, make sure it covers the physical design and construction. You will also need to choose a microcontroller platform, the two most popular for hobbyists are Atmel and Microchip. The former is IMHO a better solution as it is more flexible and uses an open toolchain. Microchip is easier to get started with, but you are limited because you need to use their proprietary toolchain (or a third party toolchain that may not support all chips properly), and free compilers are usually only shareware, otherwise you have to write in assembly (which is not a bad idea).
For a hobbyist you will want an nice array of parts, you should get a resistor kit with a bunch of values, get a capacitor kit but it doesn't need to be big if you also buy a bunch of 0.1uF ceramic and 10uF electrolytic capacitors which you will probably use a lot of, get some 2N3904/6 transistors (basic NPN and PNP transistors), some MOSFETs that can handle some decent current, a breadboard with wires, and some basic chips like the 555 timer, a decade counter, maybe some logic gates, and some opamps (I'd recommend the LM358 since it can operate with a single power supply voltage).
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
It's still a work in progress, but it's mostly done by now and really well-written as an introductory guide.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
http://www.usna.edu/EE/ee301/internal/Applied_EngineeringPrinciples.pdf
Chapter 1 covers electrical, chapter 2 covers electronic. The remaining chapters dive into nuclear power field topics (chemistry, mechanics, reactor theory - also very handy for those interested in 'just the facts' for those topics). This reference is about as technical as it gets without venturing into "If I told you I'd have to kill you" territory.
It's awesome that the Naval Academy has an unclassified version out there...
this sig was brought to you by the letter
Lessons in Electric Circuts
Seriously. In conjunction with Socratic Electronics, it should give you a great start.
kaens.blogspot.com
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ Great site, use it all the time as a reference. Also I suggest, if you are actually serious about learning electronics, visiting several electronics based forums and just reading up on the latest posts. You pick up random information that helps build up the diversity of your knowledge. http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/ http://www.electro-tech-online.com/ http://www.dutchforce.com/~eforum/index.php There's more, but that is the main ones for me (not including AVRFreaks hehe).
Nice entry, I have been asking myself the same question for a while right now. Maybe Computer Scientists are just destined to use somebody else's circuits, but looking to all these cool links, I don't think so :D
Ham Radio provides all of the pieces the op seeks, and while I came into it during the age of analogue electronics, today's higher-class licensees do learn about digital processing. Our friend's programming skills will allow him (or her in the case of a female radio novice) to customize the digital signal processing which now abounds even in small homebrew equipment.
See www.ARRL.org for information on becoming a ham. Local classes are held almost everywhere, and license exams are very cheap (take-away pizza level).
As for me, I am rarely found using voice. I get plenty of digital satisfaction from my linux-box. I'm mostly found on cw (Continuous Wave, modulated as a binary state known as Morse Code!). Ironically, there's something more personal about a conversation carried on in beeps.
For our FOSS friends, Ubuntu's Synaptic and Sourceforge provide a wealth of amateur radio oriented software.
73 (Best wishes)
de (from) KD1QR
One word: VELLEMAN
Another good textbook you could use apart from Art of Electronics is Tietze and Schenk: Electronic Circuits (translation of a classic German textbook).
When I was much younger, I built a lot of Heathkit electronics. Then, I started building my own circuit boards with these blanks you could buy from Radio Shack. You draw your connections on the board's copper with a dark marker. Then, you put it in the acid bath and it burned away all the coppper you did not cover. It was a blast wiring up an op amp and other stuff. Just start reading, dude.
Radio shack. Forrest M. Mimms, III wrote a series of books (pamphlets really) describing lots of electronic circuits. They're very clear, and the intro book (an actual book) "Getting Started in Electronics" tells how to solder, how to use breadboards and wire-wraps, etc, and has a bunch of example circuits to build. It also describes the operation and use of most basic electronic components. Get this book and start building things. Once you have the hang of basic circuits, then get into the more advanced theory (Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, mentioned above.)
Not a sentence!
Hello, I am an arctic explorer with great deal of experience. I traveled to both poles, survived multiple blizzards, wrestled a polar bear to death, lived among the Eskimos for five years, and found the meaning life. But recently, I suddenly realized: What do I know about snow? Those tiny flakes, with intricate design, each one original and yet all similar, those shiny abundant miracles silently dropping from the sky. What do we know about them? I put aside a half-eaten steak of raw seal meat, put my ski on, and decided: I have to know! Any recommendations where to start?
Electronics for the Evil Genius
Mechatronics for the Evil Genius
etc etc the whole series is good for beginners and have good ideas to take further.
I was an Aviation Electronics tech in the Navy, and I still work in electronics design and repair. Here are my recommendations. First, find yourself a copy of CircuitMaker 2000, I don't care how you get it, it is invaluable because you don't need to breadboard anything or buy any components or equipment until you really know what you are doing. It is discontinued, but I bet you can find it in the dark corners of the 'net. The Art of Electronics is good, but is a bit too terse. It doesn't get into a lot of the practical use of electronics. The Navy's NEETS modules are fantastic, I would recommend those above anything else. Get a subscription to Popular Electronics, or whatever it is called now. And if you want to go embedded, buy an STK500 and a NGW100 from www.digikey.com. And for a soldering iron, get a Weller soldering station, you'll be glad you did.
Death is life's great reward. R. Hoek
Reading books is fine for getting the basics, but you'll never really understand electronics until you start doing practical work. A good low cost (free) way of starting is to download a spice simulator and have a go a designing some simple circuits (e.g. audio amplifier, filter etc). once you're happy with the simulation, buy some parts and try it for real. play with circuit parameters to see what they do.
the one I've been using for years (because its powereful yet easy to use, with a nice GUI) is SIMetrix. This is great for professionals like me and hobbyists. The intro version is free, but node limited (nodes being the number of connections in a circuit). You register for free and download it. Their website is here http://www.catena.uk.com/
If it's good enough for Grommit, it's good enough for me.
Hi,
During my computer engineering degree I often made use of this website as an additional resource:
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
It provides a great fundamental basis for all electronics and electrical circuits from simple DC/AC all the way to *FETs and OP-Amps. Enjoy!
Horowitz & Hill is a great book you should get.
If you want to start w/ something a bit simpler, Malvino is aimed at community college electronics technician courses. I used the 2nd or 3rd edition to teach myself the subject.
But as others have remarked. You've got to build things.
Have Fun!
rhb
I just got my 'Nerdkits' USB version (www.nerdkits.com) which includes an atmel chip, breadboard, misc wires / leds / fun stuff, and an LCD display to play with. My intention is to try some of the basics, and then see if I can follow along with some of MIT's 'open university' courses in electronics (The Nerdkits are sold by some MIT students, if I understand correctly). I'll eventually get an arduino to play with, but I thought the 'nerdkit' was a better basic starter. The 'serial wombat' also looks interesting - www.serialwombat.com. I have one of the older editions of 'The Art of Electronics' from my (largely failed) college days which I've been meaning to update to a current version and dive back into - my recollection is that it's a fine text. I've been told that a good quality soldering iron is a joy to use compared to the basic ones, but haven't made the investment yet.
Great thread; I'm going to compile a list and hit amazon later today.
My goal is to do more 'home automation' projects. Happy (hardware) hacking!
I would most earnestly recommend that you find someone who knows how to solder practically (repair shop guy, college tech etc) and get them to demonstrate. There's 100's of ways of doing it wrong and very few ways of doing it right.
Once you know how to solder then the books are OK.
Hmm, yeah, that is a really cool book. Well worth the 6 MB download. Probably not worth getting put on the no-fly list, but you can't have everything.
I'd recommend Tom Duncan's Adventure in Electronics and the sequel, Adventure in MicroElectronics. A practical, project based guide (aimed at schoolage kids, but equally consumable by novice adults), it combines the satisfaction of actually building stuff with basic theory.
P.
If you want something more on the practical side, emphasizing (but not limited to) radio techniques, you could look at The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications. It's a great reference book.
Fiat Lux.
The way I started as a kid back in the late '70s was by playing with TTL parts from Radio Shack.
First, get a solderless breadboard and some 22ga solid wire. Then get a 555 chip, some resistors and capacitors, and hook it up. To drive an 8 ohm speaker, use a 100uf capacitor, and to drive an LED use a 270-470 ohm resistor. And find a 5 volt brick to power it. (That was the tricky part back in the day... getting my parents to be okay with me building a 7805-based power supply that actually plugged into the wall.)
Then get the TTL Cookbook, and some TTL chips (mainly 74LS00, 74LS02, 74LS04, 74LS74, 74LS90, 74LS93 for the basic stuff, and maybe a 7447/7448 and a 7-segment LED) and 4.7K resistors for pull-ups, and start playing around. Blinkenlights projects can be pretty fun.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I had and lost a first edition of AoE and it is by far the best book for understanding electronics. I have a later edition now as I have replaced the old one.
Don't forget, of course, your local library!!! Lots of great books on these sorts of subjects. Libraries are pretty lacking for the "latest and greatest" trends, but for the core science and technologies they are a fantastic resource.
As for soldering, there is but one way to learn it, by doing! Buy a soldering iron and some solder and start soldering some wire. Rosen core flux solder and some copper wire. Buy a cheap "do it yourself" electronics kit and wreck that, then fix it.
As for understanding basic "electricity" the best analogy I've ever seen is water. "Voltage" is the pressure. "Current" is volume. A bucket is a capacitor. A long hose is an inductor. The size of the hose (or lack of) is resistance. Almost any behavior you get from water varying these components works similarly to electricity (in low frequence DC of course.)
Hey, it is very basic but it worked for me. Lots of diagrams and some simple projects to make. Having played about with some simple breadboard circuits for 6 months I get the feeling I will never "understand" it properly but once you know the basics you can do osme fun stuff.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The Horowitz book is an excellent reference, and it's especially good if you want to understand the details of what's actually going on.
If you really want to dive in and swim however, I might also recommend "Electronic Circuits for the Evil Genius" by Dave Cutcher. I think that will get you into building things more quickly that Horowitz, but without a lot of the fundamentals.
Another idea is to get yourself one of those Radio Shack 200 in 1 electronic project kits. No soldering required for that, but you could always order the parts for any of the projects and stick them on a breadboard yourself.
Have fun!
Make the Woz your friend.
not to push amazon, but was looking the publishers site and found this first
http://www.amazon.com/Active-Filter-Cookbook-Second-LANCASTER/dp/075062986X
see other books mentioned
I'd suggest that you buy an Arduino starter kit from Lady Ada's site, and try her Arduino tutorial.
And join a nearby Arduino user group!
David Mellis just started one in Boston, which led me to purchase an Arduino last night!
The forums on the arduino site mention quite a few regional user's groups, maybe you can find one near you?
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
I was in a similar situation a while ago, and I really found the articles at linuxfocus.org to be helpful, especially this one. (It is about building a simple robot)
Linuxfocus.org (which is now hosted by tldp.org, but still has all the archived articles) is a good place to start for a programmer who wants to get into electronics. It is a linux hacking site that did some hardware on the side, so it tends to have beginner level electronics with some intermediate level programming to make really cool things.
The list of hardware articles can be found here.
The Art of Electronics, which many people have recommended, is a well-written book, but it comes with a couple caveats. First, it is twenty years old, which means it spends a lot of time on topics that aren't as important today (JFETs, for example). Second, and more importantly, it's an electronics book, which means it's intended to be read after a corresponding class in basic circuit theory. Electronics is the study of how semiconductor devices are used in electrical circuits, not the study of electrical circuits in general. While the first chapter of AoE does offer a review of circuit theory concepts, it's pretty terse. If you're good at calculus and want a good textbook, try Engineering Circuit Analysis by Hayt, Kemmerly, and Durbin. This may be a bit more work than you're looking for, but one of the things you quickly learn about electricity is that it's pretty abstract (being invisible and all), and visualization aids like LEDs and even expensive test equipment don't help as much as you might think unless you already have an idea of what's going on. If you're just doing digital circuits you can get by with less, but for anything remotely analog, knowing the theory helps a lot.
Visit the
Here is a suggested order:
... those books. The best way to learn what they're thinking, is to get the same background.
"Getting Started in Electronics"
Any of the mini-notebook series written by Forrest Mims
"arrl handbook" any recent year is good enough no need to buy the latest 2008 version
"TTL handbook"
"art of electronics"
"troubleshooting analog circuits" by Robert Pease
Sure, AoE is two decades out of style, and TTL Cookbook is even older.
But the logical thinking required and the basic principles will not change.
Furthermore, today's stuff didn't just spring into existence from nothing, it was developed by the folks whom got their education from
The best way to predict the future is to learn from the past, etc. Always, in general life as in electronics, think in terms of past, present, future, and how it all fits together.
Better get used to "catching up" to the modern times, since you're going to be doing it continuously until you're dead, so may as well get some practice.
Finally there's 500 crappy electronics books published each year. Out of the 5000 published in the 80s, the only one worth reading is AoE. No one has the time to evaluate all 500 books published last year to find the one non-crappy one. So trust me/us and read AoE.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If you're interested in analog circuits (audio, RF, etc), then diving into the world of active analog components would be the way to go.
Learning digital first to get comfortable with soldering and the basics and tackle interfacing to the real world as an entrée into the analog world would be my suggestion.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Subscribe to Circuit Cellar Ink Steve Ciarcia has been doing electronic/software projects every month for over 30 years. Well OK, now he's just in charge of the magazine. That means you get to read about several projects every month instead of just one :-) This is exactly what you want to be reading. You can suplement it with some of the other suggestions on slashdot, but only to fill in the gaps when you don't understand something in Circuit Cellar. I'm shocked that I didn't see this listed in the comments so far - it's mandatory reading for what you want to do.
Are you looking to dive in with practical information or learn pure theory first? I personally like to learn by building first, and then start learning theory after I fried a couple of components. I just spent the last three years at an art school in an Interactive Media program. (Art school and electronics? Yes - there's a growing amount of interactive works - not to mention the increasing demand for User Interface Design) We learned some very practical information in Physical Computing: interacting between the real world and computers. We began by building our own temperature sensors, pressure sensors, and then learning how to connect them with computers, without any formal programming experience, using a combination of serial communication, arduino and basic stamps, python, MaxMSP, Processing and Flash.
You may want to check out the art world for some really creative uses of technology:
I had an opportunity to speak with Norm White, an artist who has been building with electronics since the 60's , he made some amazing artwork, such as the "The Helpless Robot" - which runs off an old 386 and Delphi. Details here. (He's looking for someone to translate it to a modern language)
Alan Rath is another artist who builds interactive robots.
Conflux is a street art festival in Brooklyn that often attracts artists who mix technology with art. There have been some really cool interactive games that use modified cellphones
Aram Bartholl does some cool work, mixing virtual world concepts such as IM'ing with very low tech. See Chat
Some other practical suggestions:
For a great hands on approach, check out Tom Igoe and Dan O'Sullivan's Pysical Computing Tom Igoe is the head of Physical Computing at New York University.
Amphibionics by Karl Williams was my first attempt at building my own circuit board and robot.
I usually buy my components online at DigiKey. Navigating their site and trying to choose between the 100s of varieties of 1uF capacitors was a learning experience in itself.
I resonate with the feelings you expressed about wanting to actually solder and build something. I have bee reading "Electronics For Dummies" as a primer and overall I like it. It starts out with the basics of electrons and how components work. I had to slog through the chapters on making your own PCBs, but I am looking forward to getting started on the next chapter which is on microcontrollers. I'm glad you asked the question, now I can sift through the other responses and get an idea of what else I may want to read on the subject.
Curious Inventor has a good soldering information page with a video. Very helpful when you're just getting started.
I also second the Forrest Mims recommendation.
So: are you a member of the team that designed the Windows start menu, or the Apple mouse?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... at least know how to tell HW & SW faults apart.
arduino is a good suggestion, i'd also say the online (or print) versions of MAKE. in addition to skill building sections like soldering, making PCBs we also have 4 volumes that come out per year with tons of electronics articles. http://www.makezine.com/ (i'm the senior editor)...
Forrest M Mims -Getting Started In Electronics ...is a fun and informative starting point for the basics. It is kinda high school level in its presentation but covers most topics. It was my main source of 'basics/teach yourself' as a mechie. I eventually found my way to wiring PLCs, creating sensors, etc. In my role as a Mechanical Technician, I now perform power usage studies on products and fully automate our prototypes.(PLC wiring and Programming)
METER EXAMPLE: ESI480A
http://www.toolsusa.com/asp/item_detail.asp?T1=PBE%209WT%20ESI480A&trackcode=YahooShopping&WT.srch=1
Features you will immediately / eventually want in a meter:
(aside from standard features like ac/dc volts, resistance)
-Autoranging
-DC AMPS = 10.0
-Diode Test ->|-
-Capacitance -|(-
-Relative Reading(ability to zero the meter)
-Freq(Hz) / Duty cycle(%) / ms (to measure pulse trains/PWM)
I use that meter at home.
I use a Fluke 89IV at work because I didn't have to pay for it. (Fluke is gold standard in DMMs)
A Circuit Simulator applet:
http://www.falstad.com/circuit/
check out the examples in the 'Circuit' menu.
Good Luck
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
These guys wrote some of the easiest to understand books I've ever seen. I have the old dead-tree versions of Basic Electronics and Basic Electricity, but these days you can get PDFs of them from Wiley
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
1) pick up a second semester physics book at the libray. Second semester is usually when they start to cover electrical and electromagnetic concepts.
2) Pick up an electronics learning lab for radio shack or an online store. The high dollar ones are the best.
3) Work through some learning lab problems, then dry lab the book examples and problems then build it in the learning lab and see how close you get (don't forget, real life electronics have tolerances (which is an important lesson in itself)).
4) Pick up a few small kits from a radio shack or online stores and build those.
By the time you are done, you will have a good grasp of the basics. Though if you don't know differential equations inductance may be a little opaque. But the solution to those only involves trig (eventually, after solving the equation).
You're right, I have too much time on my hands. But I live in a cold northern climate where getting out is sometimes a problem and so I have to do something with my spare time.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
My first programming language WAS solder! I have been doing electronics for 50 years and programming for 40 so I have lived in both worlds. There are two relatively new books that I would recommend that tie these two worlds together better than any I have seen before. The first is "Physical Computing" by Dan O'Sullivan and Tom Igoe, and the second is "Making Things Talk" by Tom Igoe. I had been out of touch with the hardware side for a couple of years and bought these books and it is amazing what has happened. Good luck!
> var int smoke=I*R;
Voltage does not cause smoke. Power causes smoke, so if that were what you wanted, you'd say smoke=I*I*R.
I found Electronic Components: A Complete Reference for Project Builders quite helpful in understanding what is going on. But I haven't compared it against other books.
http://www.isbn.nu/9780830633333
A 7 minute into into soldering with lots of good closeups and
explanations. Soldering Introduction Video and Picture Gallery
Another video on surface mount soldering: Surface_Mount_Soldering/101
Thanks,
--
Matt
The best reference book I've ever come across for microelectronics is Microelectronic Circuits, by Sedra & Smith. We used it as our textbook in Electrical Engineering. It may appear a little daunting, but if you're looking to understand the fundamentals of transistors and semiconductors, this is a great reference book.
http://sedrasmith.org/
OK, first my geek credentials -- I have assembled and worked in 1977-79 with Motorola D2 kit (M6800 processor), assembled and got working the Heathkit H8 (which used an OCTAL keypad!), and designed my own 6809-based system, the Aamber [sic] Pegasus.
Since as a programmer I am guessing your emphasis will be digital electronics, I would recommend the following:
A+ Certification For Dummies
by Ron Gilster
The benefit of this is that there is a nice certification at the end, and you will be able to repair your own computer gear (at least, if it's made before 2005!)
Once the singularity arrives, you can set up a Computer Antiques and Repairs shop, and regale your visitors of stories, whilst wearing an onion on your belt (as was the style at the time.)
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Nuts and Volts magazine on-line at www.nutsvolts.com and the dead-tree version are pretty good.Lots of interesting stuff there, and most authors are pretty good at explaining the theory behind the project. Last I looked, they had a special section devoted to robotics, if that's what you're into.
http://www.arrl.org. Even if you're not interested in a ham license, they have quite a lot of good books on analog electronics for newbies.
Physical Computing and also Making Things Talk are two fun ones from Tom Igoe. Making Things talk is mostly microcontroller (mostly Arduino ie AVR) but Physical Computing has lots of basic stuff in it as well as microcontrollers.
The OP seems to be talking about embedded systems - and for over 20 years, the rag "Embedded Systems Programming", now "Embedded Systems Design", has had excellent tutorials on hardware for the programmer, and software for the EE. The rag has been blessed with some very good long-term writers, my favorites are Barr, Ganssle, and Crenshaw; and they all have written some damn good books on embedded systems hardware and software. Look the up at Amazon. Go to embedded.com and read the back issues, and immediately subscribe. Do it NOW. Another rag recommended by another, that I hesitate to recommend, is Circuit Cellar, named after the column that Steve Ciarcia used to write for Byte Magazine. I have fond memories of the original Byte column and the first 10 years of the rag. There are many articles that covered both the electronic design and discussed/published the device driver code. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader as to its current suitability. Another recommend Make, but I cannot recommend Make magazine as usable for electronics tutorial. Its best use, at least to me, is for generic ideas. Like other SD denizens, I was a technician in the military before my CS education (and worked as a tech while going to school), and because of this mixed background, I can frequently see the "big picture", while neither the hardware or software designers have a clue about the other design process. It is good that another code monkey strives to learn electrical fundamentals.
Don't pick up a physics book. Most of the time physics books have current as the flow of electrons. You want to learn from a book that is positive current convention i.e. the flow of holes. That entire website Lessons In Electric Circuits is all flow of electrons.... useless.
Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics by Stan Gibilisco.
There's a reason for all those technicians in the lab and on the production floor. And it's not to assemble product: it's to bounce CS and IST majors who get the hardware bug in them. There is nothing more dangerous than a software guy let loose with a screwdriver, except possibly a software guy set loose with a soldering iron. :p
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I recommend Practical Electronics for Inventors, by Paul Scherz. As the title implies, it covers the subject in really practical terms that go way beyond theoretical models like Kirchoff's rules which are hard to apply to complex situations. He also presents water-pressure analogies even for components like transistors, which helps you gain intuition about how circuits behave. Intuition is essential for actually designing circuits, rather than just analyzing them, which is what a lot of electrical engineering classes teach people to do.
You'd best just purge that website from your memory. The idiot has no friggin' clue what he's talking about.
His concept of a "proton" and electrical flow is enough to make we want to hurl.
I got this DVD about a week ago that runs through some nice demos, covers basic principles, and focuses on using super cheap gear (instead of selling you on expensive soldering stations, strippers, etc.). It comes replete with examples of how to wire your telecaster. I found it inspiring enough for me to start wiring my own guitar electronics.
dkap.info
I recommend the Art of Electronics, also. But don't hesite to follow Alioth recommendation ("Practical Experience!"). You can complement with the Forrest Mims III's old Radio Shack notebooks about practical circuits about analog, digital, opto-electronics.
1) TextBook: "Practical Electronics for Inventors" ,tutorials, and links
...a common misconception ... soldering things does not mean you know anything about hardware electronics. you can get an electrical engineering degree without even soldering anything.
2) PIC Microcontroller and electronic circuits simulator: "Proteus VSM"
3) You need a cheap oscilloscope (hard to find)
4) Digital multimeters are you best friends ($10 each)
5) look for surplus-electronics online stores. My favorite is "AllElectronics.com".
6) look at robotroom.com
by the way
good luck
I really enjoyed: There Are No Electrons : Electronics for Earthlings"
This book is great - I've owned (and used) both editions (lent the first edition out and ended up buying the second as a replacement). I find it particularly useful in that it answers design questions in a straight forward manner and shows you how to solve whatever problem you might be working with while at the same time giving solid theoretical explanations (the water pressure motif used throughout the book is quite good).
I also own The Art of Electronics but usually turn to Practical Electronics for Inventors first.
Some are obvious, like misoriented diodes in a rectifying bridge. Some are not, like a PNP BJT where a NPN should be.
However, before you build any of the projects, especially any of the high powered ones, make sure you search online for errata, or better yet, have a real EE check the circuit (if you're not one). And if you wanna build something really nasty, like an EMP gun or a magnetic accelerator, treat it like you would the Anarchist's Cookbook...
Also be aware that the Evil Genius series is very light on theory of operation, and what is present is occasionally oversimplified to the point of being misleading. Don't rely on them for theory.
But overall, for a hobbyist, they are an excellent example of how to approach a complete project, including planning, packaging, and building your own tools and test equipment. And for those who don't want to craft every PWB or enclosure on their own, the publisher sells kits.
I can see the fnords!
2 things needed here: 1) 9V battery, 2) tongue
Another resource is the magazine 'Circuit Cellar'. It is something line 'Nuts 'n' Volts', with a slant toward microprocessor based real world projects. Steve Ciarcia, the editor, wrote a hardware based column for Byte magazine back in the day when wirewrapping up a working Z80 system on the kitchen table was par for the course.
ARRL publications teach everything from how to plug in an electronic device to choosing the shape and composition of a core to get optimal performance in specific types of tuners when you wind your own transformer, et cetera. The Handbook is great! It reads something like this:
BUILDING PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS
Step 1: Do not try to build your own printed circuit board. Capacitive coupling (see chapter 2) between the traces will cause it not to work correctly.
Step 2: Refer to table 1 for suppliers of various types of blanks and table 2 for properties of commercially available etchants. Table 3 lists types of common markers and tapes that can be used for masking. Figure 4 shows a simple way of making through connections for multi-layer boards as discussed in the sidebar. When laying out components place the main-line RF components as close together as possible to reduce interference (see chapter 8) (for problems with inductive coupling, see chapter 3), as shown in diagram A of project 5, a simple 8 megawatt death ray.
It's great. The other nice thing about ham radio is that you can usually find someone more experienced who will be excited about helping you learn.
73 SK KE5TWD
Go to a used book store and find an old ARRL Handbook. This is from the Amature Radio Relay League and it is used by "ham" radio people. I loved the first one or two that I got. They covered everything from semiconductors to antennas.
I always found Master Handbook of 1001 Practical Electronic Circuits to come in handy when I build projects. There are designs for all kinds of basic electronic circuits that you can chain together to come up with some usefull designs. The nice part about a book like this is that it gives you all the common chip numbers that many other manuals gloss over.
That and a Digikey catalog are all you need.
Personally, in my office I have a mad-scientist corner. We're engineers, and it is fun to actually make things rather than just design them all the time. I think over the past 30-some years of my life I have owned a dozen soldering irons and never really took a serious interest in learning how to actually do a damn thing with them. A couple years ago, we couldn't find something that met our needs, so we designed something to integrate different readily-available parts, and put it all together ourselves.
I'd say the key is to have enough cash to spend on stuff, not fearing breaking things (goes with part one), have a project that is important to you for starting off, and get a big old DigiKey and Allied Electronics catalog for ideas. Also, practice soldering on the cheap stuff if your natural talent for it is as bad as mine...
Join the ranks of the Amateur Radio hobbyist. Their ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) provides a lot of learning opportunities such as:
Hands-on Radio Experiments
http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?category=&words=1255&SearchWords.x=0&SearchWords.y=0
ARRL Handbook (2008 softcover + CD/ROM)
http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?category=&words=1018&SearchWords.x=0&SearchWords.y=0
QST (monthly magazine included with ARRL membership)
http://www.arrl.org/qst/
HTH!
A Grammar Nazi would tell you that (a) URL tidying is not within their fascistic charter and (b) to learn about capitalization and punctuation. But I don't give a shit, so I won't.
Amazon URLs can be easily shortened by dropping everything after the ISBN (that 10-digit number after the book title). So in this case:
http://www.amazon.com/Bebop-Boolean-Boogie-Unconventional-Electronics/dp/0750675438/
Or you can use tinyurl.com.
My background is in Computer Science too. 20+ years working in the field. But back in school I took some EE clasess. There is really no substitute for learning the basics and the math that goes with it. Many people see complex numbers or an integral sign and shut the book. Don't do that. You need to get through the basics of what I'd call "EE 101" at least to the point of basic AC theory and a little bit about how semiconductors work.
The ARRL publishes a "handbook" it is of course aimmed mostly at amature ("ham") radio but it has good intro chapetrs on basic theory written for a reader who has only taken math through high school and stoped short of calculus. but un-like many books it continues on to teach "real world" things like how real components differe from the ideal ones and how to solder and it has pages of data for common transisters. There are also many contruction projects with plans and photos. They publish this every year and it is bigger them many phone books. Current year handbooks are expensive but Amazon will sell older (the 2005 ed.) copies cheap
Search on the title
"The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications"
This is such a common referance book that most libraries will have a copy.
It is geared to radio so it has chaperts on things like transmition lines and antenna theory and inpedance matching but also goes into making your own printed circuit boards and how to work an ociloscope and meter and basic eletronic trouble shooting. It is not a "text book" it is more like a compendium of articles but it is well edited as you would expect of an "85th edition" book.
The ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) Handbook has a pretty good overview of electronics (and a lot of stuff you probably won't need unless you want to build a ham radio station).
They are clearing out the 2007 edition at the moment: http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=no-HB2007
You must have just seen Iron Man...
I know exactly how you feel.
Wonderful! You're in exactly the same situation I was in about two months ago, when a friend recommended that I pick up a Xilinx FPGA board.
I'm a programmer, I'd never done any kind of electronics before. I fooled around with the FPGA for a bit, but found the whole idea baffling. I'm used to procedural logic, asynchronous design, calling and returning from functions, but this FPGA beast was fully synchronous. All functions defined in my HDL were executing at the same time! How odd! Well, on second thought, of course it makes sense. HDLs are languages for defining circuits, not programming. That spark of realization drove me to go back to basics and try to understand exactly how to define a circuit using digital logic. It's been addictively fun. It sounds like that's sort of where you are now.
The most important thing to remember in all this is that all circuits are analog. It may say "digital", but that's just a convenient abstraction. Fully grok the fundamentals of analog circuits before you try to understand the digital.
For books, I have to second or third or fourth "The Art of Electronics". The other inexpensive but fun book I've used when learning was "Starting Electronics", by Keith Brindley. It's small, but an easy read, and leads you through a bunch of breadboard experiments.
Finally, experiment! Go nuts! Get a cabinet of basic parts and a breadboard. You don't even need a fancy regulated power supply, just grab a 9V battery, a 7805 voltage regulator and a couple of capacitors, shouldn't cost more than a dollar or two for parts and spares. Just start playing. If you burn out an LED or two, who cares, they're cheap! Grab a 555 timer, and some 4000 or 7400 series logic, TTL (the 74LS00 series) or CMOS (the 74HC00 series), and start playing. Learn how to interface TTL to CMOS, you can find that with a simple Google search. Hunt down your local surplus electronics shops, start stripping boards. It's all putty in your hands! I hope you have fun with it.
I'm surprised no one mentioned this one: http://aggregate.org/hankd/piaee12.pdf It's a bit dated now (from the mid 90's), but still has lots of good info. It was originally designed as a college text for non-EE majors, but is much more project-oriented than a classic text. By the way, the title was meant to be an homage to the Art of EE - a great book, but a bit intimidating in scope for a newbie...
Come up with a project of reasonable difficulty and work on it together. Embedded stuff is excellent for this because there is a good mix of hardware and software. The results will also be much more satisfying as there is twice as much effort going into it, and more importantly, you will be making sure that the software is of high quality, and the ee will be making sure the hardware is of high quality.
I'm an ee, and I can say from experience that this kind of knowledge exchange is much faster and more rewarding (because you're also helping the other person avoid the myriad of pitfalls in your area of expertise). There no reason to start off by reading a book when you can have someone tutor you (in exchange for your knowledge of course:)). If the practical experience intrigues you, THEN pick up a book and learn more about the theory behind it.
From ARRL, a 18MB downloadable presentation tutorial about basics of electronics: Basic Electronics for the New Ham
Outline:
-The Elements of Electricity
-Volt-Ohm-Meter Basics (Measuring Electricity)
-Circuit Diagrams Basics (Electronic Roadmaps)
-The Resistor
-Ohm's Law
-The Capacitor
-The Inductor
-The Diode
-The Transistor (Electronic Valve)
I've been doing robotics for years, and the standard intro kit is a Vex kit. You can buy a basic kit and all sorts of sub kits to build just about anything, but the complexity is a few steps up from a lego kit (which isn't bad, but is better for programming.)
You can also hack together a robot-four wheels, two motors, a board, a battery, a motor control and a switch. Add in a remote control or a pic board to take it a step up. Soldering the wires to the motors can teach you quite a bit.
For making your own cables, just google it. Seriously, the only thing you need for a cat5 is cable, heads, a crimper/stripper/cutter, and a diagram. Most other cables are the same.
As for basics-I've learned as much from wiki+sources in wiki articles+additional links in wiki articles+google as I have from most of the books I've bought.
I'm throwing in another vote for the NAVY electronics manual-really comprehensive, but still understandable.Fundamentals of Electric Circuits is one of the better ones for explaining the basics, but math heavy. Schaum guides also aren't a bad choices, but they get a bit too bogged down in the math.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Great place for all things electronic. Obviously the focus is more on radio, but there are quite a few beginner books. One recent one has a kit that can be purchased with it so you build learn electronics while building a radio.
http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?category=Help+for+Beginners&words=
I remember a lot of kids back in undergrad enjoyed playing with PIC boards because they provide a lot of capability. They were probably the most popular thing folks would tinker with. Since the OP probably lacks an oscilloscope, he/she should probably get a copy of PSPICE (or some other SPICE), and the manual (available free online) so they can run transient simulations too. Also harbor freight has multimeters for $3.99 on sale, perfect for home labs or (non-correlation) bench stuff at work without having to worry about disconnected meters walking off.
Haven't seen this one mentioned yet. It's primarily oriented towards digital electronics, but gets into things like the importance of transmission-line effects in high-speed systems.
Be forwarned--this is an unconventional text. The man is one of the most colorful characters you'd ever meet, and this book approaches electronics in much the same way Richard Feynman taught physics.
The ARRL Handbook. It's aimed at amateur radio operators, but it's the single best guide to practical and theoretical electronics I've ever come across.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
I'm in the same situation. I read the sample chapter in this book, and it looked pretty good. I'm going to buy it soon.
http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ctelec/a-peek-at-computer-electronics
I'm a little more knowledgable than the OP, but only just. I've played around with actual circuit creation on those breadboard kits and back in the day when Heathkit was still around.
It strikes me that there's a BIG jump in here somewhere and I'd like someone knowledgeable to weigh in on this.
For all those slow-speed logic circuits I made I do not believe I ever needed to use capacitors, yet when I look at my MoBo I see capacitors all over the place. I've jumped to the conclusion that at high speed there's extra noise on the lines and that the capacitors help to mitigate that noise.
Is this true?
Assuming it is true, I think the OP would also be served by getting a sense of how far he can go w/o having to worry about effects like this.
If this is not true, if the capacitors are needed even for slower speed logic circuits, then... I'll have to dig out my old copy of Art of Electronics myself.
I highly recommend Teach Yourself Electronics by Malcolm Plant. I have a Master's degree in electrical engineering and I started with hobby electronics before I learned to ride a bike, and this book is sitting on my desk as I type. ;)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I've enjoyed the Mims book and also the
Cutcher book "electronic circuits for the evil genius", pretty much anything from the evil genius
series is informative and entertaining.
Is M$ a requirement for your book / kit?
I have been M$ free for over 8 years. I am curious about ?winavr?. Will your book / kit work with Linux?
B-)
Reply
Joe Pardue to me
Nope, sorry.
Joe
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
How instructive are the electronic construction sets that they sell at Radio Shack? They look like they contain some worthwhile projects.
Can you really learn anything from them or are they just a toy?
Out of print, but still available thru Amazon: "How to Build and Use Electronic Devices Without Frustration, Panic, Mountains of Money, or an Engineering Degree" by Stuart A. Hoenig and F. Leland Payne. It's mostly about designing using op amps, but goes into some basic theory in the process.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
...which I learned from my mother: Fill your mouth with cold water and sit on a hot stove. When the water boils, the toothache will be gone. Did she learn that at the Condi Rice school of Home Dentistry?"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
try "Physical Computing" by Tom Igoe. He's a professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and has a wonderful knack for explaining electronics and design to beginners and experts alike. It's a great book and got a lot of us neophytes through the program.
I know you are referring to the baseline 8 bitters, but there are now 16 bit pics, some with a DSP core, and 32 bit pics that use a MIPS core. Things have come a long way.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Here goes some useful links to electronics resources in the web:
Mag Lab Education - Electricity and Magnetism: A to Z
Make Magazine - all about hobbyst stuff - try searching here for "multimeter", or "soldering", or "PCB"...
Microelectronics Videos - very good videos about microelectronics and fiber optics
UVA Virtual Lab - Amazing multimedia resources covering many aspects of electricity and magnetism
ePanorama - practical projects, texts, tutorials, and many more...
MIT OpenCourseWare - if you want to go really deep in theory...
anyone wants to complete this list???
About a year ago I was in your position. I went with the NCS 2056T 8-bit computer kit from Apatco (www.apatcto.com). The XGameStation (pico) is another good place to start.
Both of those are solderless breadboard kits but they are a great place to start because it's a lot easier to move a wire than to remove a solder connection that shouldn't be there.
The NCS kit is sort of like building your own Apple 2 (with a lot of missing peripherals) and the XGameStation is like building your on NES.
I used to love programming. Well, I still do, sortuh. But building your own stuff is such a rewarding outcome. I recently built a 64 point fireworks controller using a pic 16f57. I still keep up on programming for fun, but building things is so much more satisfying. As an end result you will be much happier with your hardware creations than with your program creations. They are much more satisfying and all your bitchy programmer friends will say, "oh, thats cool!". I'd love to help you out as I have several books but they are unfortunately 300 miles from me in a storage unit. You will need two, though. One that is sort of like an 'Electronics for Dummies' and one that gets negative reviews because of its cold form as they usually delve deep into abstracts and provide mountains of information. Hehehe, I have the 'Handbook of Electronics Calculations' here with me though. If you find electronics interesting that book could have you busy for years to come. Heh. Good luck.
No joke. I mean, come on posters. leoboiko wants a book for the basics, not for programming microcontrollers.
Electronics for Dummies starts with the tools you need and minimal but practical math, introduces you to the basics like resistors and capacitors, discusses the circuit and reading a schematic, goes over soldering and then dips its toes in more advanced stuff like microcontrollers, robotics and even making your own breadboards. It tops it all of with project idea. It is a logical, clear progression and an excellent reference.
Funny, I'm in the same situation as you, a programmer who just got interested in electronics four days ago after being amazed at the maker faire in san mateo. I looked at a number of these books. Art of Electronics? The Navy Manuals? Go simpler.
You'll have a blast! Just a few chapters into the book I got an idea for a proximity sensor. I ran to the radio shack and picked up the parts then hacked together a circuit. It sends out infrared light and detects the reflection when your hand is near. The completed circuit triggers a transistor, allowing an led to light up in varying degrees as your hand moves closer and back.
Awesome! And that's only three days into this book.
Why? I've been in electronics for 15+ years and haven't touched a soldering iron since the 7400. It's all software now: verilog, hardware verification languages, constraint solvers, etc.
I suggest you get a good book on OO or learn about source code management and versioning.
I'd be careful about giving too much credence to the Misconceptions article...
I am aware of some of the misconceptions taught about electricity in grade school textbooks. However many of the things on that site seem to be quibbling about semantics and some are just outright incorrect. Like this one here:
"1. All electric currents are flows of electrons? Wrong.
Electric currents are not just flows of electrons, they are flows of electric charge. Both protons and electrons posses exactly the same amount of 'electricity.' If either the protons *OR* the electrons flow, that flow is an electric current. In salt water, in fluorescent bulbs, and in battery acid, atoms with extra protons can flow along, and this flow is a genuine electric current. And in fuel cell membranes and in solid ice, electric current is actually a flow of protons."
Now it is correct that electric current isn't a flow of electrons, but rather of charge. But it absolutely isn't a flow of protons either.
Let's take the example of a conductive metal. The reason a metal is conductive is because metals (most metals anyway) have either one or maybe two outer valence electrons. These outer electrons are easily swapped with electron absorbers like chlorine or oxygen (which is why metal rusts or forms salts when exposed to highly reactive substances on the other side of the periodic table).
In a metal wire or strip or block or whatever, these electrons exist in close proximity to one another because they are on the outer orbitals of the atom, so they can easily jump from one atom's outer orbital to another. This promoted soup of free electrons is often referred to as an "electron pool". Now, according to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, only two electrons of opposing spin can occupy the same orbital at the same time (so in order to understand really what's going on with electricity it helps to know a little bit about quantum mechanics). When an electron enters the system (via electromotive force... electrical potential... voltage), it tries to get into the electron pool, and it does so by displacing one of the electrons in an orbital, then the displaced electron jumps to another atoms orbital, which in turn displaces another... etc. When you think about it, imagine desk ball-pendulum toy. An electron comes into the wire from one side, the force pushes through the wire through the existing electrons, then pushes out an electron on the other side (provided that it has a path to ground).
Now even this isn't precisely accurate because although the PEP is still in play, the entire electron pool acts like one big shared orbital.
OK, a little simplified, but we get the general gist. It is the electrons that are moving.
Now why not protons?
Think about it. It is a metal. A crystal. The atom nuclei don't move in a crystal... well, they do, but they vibrate around but they don't move relative to one another, not like water flowing or anything. If protons are in the nucleus, how can protons flow? Answer... they can't.
Electricity exists due to the MOTILITY of charge, and in any metal, only the electrons can jump around. More abstractly, we can only talk about electricity, the phenomenon, with respect to the electrons because they are how charge MOVES. Even an ion with a net positive charge is better described as "electron poor" while that with a net negative charge is "electron rich" because it is the oversupply or undersupply of electrons which gives it its charge.
Now, let's look at another statement... a proton and an electron possess the same amount of 'electricity'. This is wrong, they possess equal opposing CHARGES. ELECTRICITY = CHARGE FLOW.
Let's look at another... An atom with extra protons can flow along? Really. You know what you call hydrogen with an extra proton? HELIUM!!! (Well only if you have a neutron or two with it, of course). What he should have said that an atom which is electron poor (positively charged ion) can flow along. Even so, it's the formation of free electron pools which allows negative charge to move, and thus create the potential for electrical current.
Seems to me that trading one set of misconceptions for another may not be the path to enlightenment.
I wanted to build some robots, so I bought a book on electronics: It's by Benard Grob, I have found it to be a great book. It starts off with what electricity is, how it moves down a wire etc.. then goes into electronic components, how and why they work.
http://www.amazon.com/Grob-Basic-Electronics-Books/dp/002802253X
My first robot is almost done, it's very simple and just reverses direction when it bumps into something.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
I'm in the same boat (programmer never did hardware). I just started this book and am having a blast: Making Things Talk Although I got sidetracked by this great site: Lady Ada which sells a kit you can assemble.
Pick up a book called Ready, Set, Go. Pick up a guitar and an Epiphone Valve Junior ($120 amp) and learn to mod it, then build your own copy. I built my own amp after a month with just the schematic for the original and no RSG or other books. Tube amps are damn simple.
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I had to chuckle when you jump from how to make a cable and understand your multimeter to building a robot in one sentence. That's like saying "I'd like to climb that small mound of dirt in the sand pit, maybe figure out how to use the slide, perhaps climb mt everest a couple of times".
That is the whole point of a good school.
Not to teach you everything you need to know, but to equip you to learn the rest with less help then you needed as an undergrad.
I've learned more from textbooks sense school then I ever learned in school.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just accept the approximation and run with it.
If you have basic math you can make real things with op-amps in no time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The explanations are simple and the diagrams are helpful. It contains both basic circuit theory and example circuits to show how components are used.
I bought the Radio Shack version of this book back in grade school. It was very helpful in learning how to read schematics and build basic projects. A bit of helpful advise is also mixed in throughout.
His Engineer's Notebook series of books are also helpful to get basic circuit ideas.
If you are into ham radio, and have got the coin, I'd suggest an Elecraft K2 (or KX1).
http://www.elecraft.com/
I dream in binary.
I started off with the 160-in-one electronics project kit as a kid. I learned all the fundamentals of electronics, resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, potentiometers, etc. When my friend's son started getting to the appropriate age (12-13) I bought him the updated version called the Electronics Learning Lab
The kit provides you with everything you need to do simple projects on up to the point where you create your own devices to perform whatever you want.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
http://www.amazon.com/There-Are-Electrons-Electronics-Earthlings/dp/0962781592
"The Art of Electronics" is great. You might also want to look up Nuts and Volts magazine http://www.nutsvolts.com/, Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, http://www.circellar.com/ and pick up a couple of Don Lancaster's "Cookbook" series http://www.tinaja.com/. Steve and Don are hardware gurus that have been around since the beginning of home computers, and there is much insight to be gained. It is an odd thing, but often older books on 'obsolete' technology are easier to grasp, and give background no longer explained in modern volumes. For instance, I have a circa 1920's transformer handbook that speaks clearly on topics that are either glossed over, or not covered at all in many newer introductory texts.
If you're interested in Robotics, I would suggest learning to use a microcontroller. 8051s and AVRs are great, simple to use, powerful and recognized industry wide. For the 8051, I would strongly suggest Delmar Thomson - The 8051 Microcontroller Architecture, Programming and Applications.
As for textbooks, as general references I'd suggest The Art of Electronics. For the very basics, I've found that Malvino's Electronics Principles is very good, but it will not be as useful as The Art of Electronics in the long run. I would also recommend Floyd's Electronics Fundamentals: Circuits, Devices and Applications. Having these three textbooks, or atleast The Art of Electronics and any other is essential in my mind for anyone who wants to start learning electronics. You will learn the theoretical side, and with some will, apply it.
Also Google can be a great resource, as are application notes for various ICs, but at the end of the day, you will need to put the theory into practice and try for yourself to truly grasp what you are learning.
I would recommend The Art of Electronics. Then for the Practical aspect visit: 1. http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/ 2. http://www.elektor.com/ Here you will find magazines for everything you need in hobby electronics.
Maybe you had one as a kid, maybe you wished you did. They come with an actual dead-tree book. The hardest thing these days is finding them... it's no longer as easy as going down to Radio Shack. Google found me one a couple of years ago when I wanted to introduce a 9 year old to electronics.
It's basic. Very basic. It tells you how, step by step, and lets you build things. You get words that tell you what to do, schematics that tell you what to do, and pictures that tell you what to do, for each project. You get to understand how it all works. You get to learn what parts are what, and what they do. Once you've done every project in the book, you should have a decent foundation.
http://www.arrl.org/ - The "ARRL Handbook" is the Ham radio "Bible". I learned the basics from my dad's ARRL handbooks as a kid. Also lots of good info at the ARRL website.