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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
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.
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
Happy hacking!
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
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.
(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.
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.
Once you get through that you'll have a reasonable understanding of the field.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
I recently met up with a few people from my alma mater, and they have bought a bunch of Arduino's to teach embedded programming. From what they told me, they seem to be a great educational tool. I've never worked with them personally, but I do have experience with the processor used in the board, the ATMega. It's a nice architecture, clean design, and advisable. Another hint: stay away from PIC, they have severe limitations (like a hard-wired call stack, memory access limitations).
:-( ). Later on, you might feel the need for an osciloscope, these things can be quite expensive but you don't need the latest model, just a second-hand model from 10+ years old will be a very handy tool for measuring clocks, signals etc.
Still, this won't help you with understanding elektronics as such, but will it will make a bridge from your programming world to the electronics world.
Other things you need are: a multimeter (a good one costs some money, and a cheap one is probably good enough for a while, but from what I have heared, the problem of the cheap ones is that the calibration drifts after a couple of years). And a breadboard. That's a board with holes where you can plug in electronic components easily without need for a soldering iron. Very handy for experiments. For an example, see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HteDBfSJ9zo. (No idea if it's interesting, my flash audio doesn't work for some unknown reason
A last advice I can give you: read Elektor (a magazine available in many languages), find a simple circuit you find interesting and try to understand it. Read the explanation, calculate the voltages at certain points, build the circuit, measure, etc. This will teach you a lot.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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
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
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!
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
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
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.
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.
I know alioth may not be trying to toot his own horn, but his journal has a lot of entries about electronics
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!
Go to the library and get a bunch of books on electronics. Then go to Radio Shack and buy a bread board. A bread board is a board where you test circuit designs out. You don't need to do any soldering on it. A strip board is for a more permanent circuit that you don't plan on changing. One thing I recommend if you're going to be soldering on a strip board is FLUX. It makes soldering a hell of a lot easier. Components to buy from Radio Shack: A soldering iron, solder, flux, a breadboard or two. Also get a few 9 volt plugs to plug into the bread board or strip board and 9 volt batteries. Radio Shack also has a few cases you can put your circuit in, although there isn't much selection. You're going to need wire of course.
Now the question is - what do you want to build? The library books will have some circuits. So will bookstores. You can find them on the net as well. This girl from MIT has a lot of cool circuits and kits. Once you decide what to put together you will also probably be getting some other components like capacitors, resistors and chips like 555 timers. You can find 555 timers and chips like that from Radio Shack, but for more obscure chips you might want to look to see if there are electronics components stores in your area that sell this stuff. If not, go to Mouser.com or Digikey where you can usually buy whatever you need, unless it is a specialized chip that they don't have. This should get you a start on putting boards together.