Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sir_Cmpwn | Hacker News Reader

My issue with learning electronics is that there's a steep gap between "plug this into that" and "plug this into that because x". I want to learn how to reason about the latter. Most resources I've seen like this don't give you that, they just have a bunch of prefab projects and lead you through them with the former strategy. Fortunately I've been able to learn some of the latter on my own but it would be great to see a good resource for the former.

I know how to program. I don't want to program a microcontroller to do all of the work. I don't want to build a "WiFi robot", I want to build a simple circuit with a few LEDs and understand completely how it works and why it was designed that way. I want to know how to choose the right batteries and resistors, or what components I need for arbitrary projects.

View on HN

I recommend The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill.

I'm an electrical engineer and in my experience most EE courses are very math heavy. This is because the theory behind electronics is very math heavy. Many people don't enjoy doing math problems in their spare time, though. The thing is that after you get past the theory and into the practice, the math mostly drops away as you learn abstractions and little tricks to aid in designing circuits. I like The Art of Electronics because it has the math there if you need it, but assumes you didn't get past Algebra. It mostly leads with the abstractions and little tricks that you would use to design circuits with a just a pen and paper.

Some people find it tedious, though. My advice is not to read it cover to cover. Read the parts that interest you and use the rest as a reference.

I'll second the recommendation, it does a great job of not only covering things but explaining why you'd use certain components and the engineering trade-offs required(the section on transistors is fantastic). It's old but still very relevant today.

If I remember correctly they even go from transistor up to building an entire 8-bit micro in addition to the excellent analog reference.

As someone who isn't an EE I found it still very straightforward to follow if a bit dense(in a good way) in some sections.

I started in EE in college and ended up switching to CpE (Computer Engineering, which basically was 60/40 CS/EE) because I found I liked the programming slightly more than the EE side of things.

I still find the book a tad dense at times but it's absolutely a must have for anyone that cares more about the why than the how. As said above, this is a fantastic reference book, you will likely never read this cover to cover unless you're following it as instruction material for a class.

Anymore these days, with all the breakouts and instructables a person could very likely get by with know whether something needs 5v or 3.3v (if that).

I feel like these monthly subscriptions are good for a while for someone who wants to get into the hobby and has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where to start. You get the inspiration, materials, and help specifically for the task at hand without all the other noise.

I have a feeling that after a few months if the person is still keenly interested they wouldn't need the subscription anymore and I'd be surprised if most subscribers stayed on past 6-9 months because of this (or the opposite).

Would it pay off to get the lab book Learning The Art of Electronics too?

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Art-Electronics-Hands-Course...

Yes. I have both, they are often recommended together. Get both and start doing the Lab Course. Refer to the Art when needed. Once you've done the Lab book you can re-read the Art to fill in the gaps. I recon you need about 15 months worth of leisurely evenings to do it justice.

Cool beans thought so but wanted to be sure before I blew that much money. :)

I asked an EE about that but got warned it's more like a reference book. He said the easiest book on electronics he ever saw was a Malvino book he stumbled on in a thrift store. I found one of its editions for $2 on Amazon. Great balance of explaining the basics, showing math, and practical advice of do's & don't.

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Principles-Simulation-Albe...

Also just found this. Use it as backup copy if you buy the book.

http://www.talkingelectronics.com/Download/Malvino_Electroni...

A very good start would be MIT's 6.002x via edX. It's currently offered in 3 parts, all self-paced:

https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-1-basic-circ...

https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-2-amplificat...

https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-electronics-3-applicatio...

There may be better electronics books out there, but one that I've found very helpful is Electronic Components -- A complete Reference for Project Builders by Delton T. Horn (1992). It explains enough of the theory of how the various components work to get a reasonable intuition, but it also describes the various kinds of those components that are available and why one might be better than another for some particular application.

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Components-Complete-Refere...

> I want to build a simple circuit with a few LEDs and understand completely how it works and why it was designed that way.

Once you get bored by "battery plus LED" circuits, I recommend Nibbler 4 bit CPU [1] and transistor clock [2]. They are sufficiently complex to be impressive and hone your EE skills, yet simple enough to still finish even if you're not really an EE. They also can be understood completely, there are no secrets and all design decisions are explained in the documentation.

[1] http://bigmessowires.com/nibbler [2] http://transistorclock.com

Mine as well.

I've been doing it as a VERY light hobby now for a few years (maybe building a little thing every few months or so, using an ESP8266 here and there). I still don't quite get where the hell they are getting the amount of resistance needed, or why this capacitor is needed here, etc...

I still haven't found any good resources that are between "plug x into y" and "read the whitepages for every component you will use and figure it out yourself". Most "advanced" tutorials/guides will just throw equations at you and say something like "you need to use this equation to figure out your resistance" but never why it's that equation, or why i should use that over the other one, or what situations that will apply to, or where they got the magic number they plugged into it.

I want to gain the "intuition" (probably not the right word) to know when I need to use this equation, where I'll need resistance at all, when it might be a good idea to have a capacitor. I know what each does on a basic level, i just need that next level of understanding.

I very strongly second this - I have the same problem. Once or twice a year I'll fiddle around and build something small - but I have serious trouble getting an intuitive grasp on how everything interacts at a high level. It's often a lot of trial and error for me, and while enjoyable, the lack of good learning material has seriously hampered the amount of projects I've attempted.

Could you give a specific example?

Sometimes ICs require external passives with specific values (e.g. a 1uF ceramic on pin 3), but you'll never really understand why those values because the chip is a black box to you. Usually you have to place external components because they would be too large to design onto the die itself, particularly large things like capacitors and inductors. As such their value is whatever the manufacturer says it should be and you go along with it. Often the most magical component requirements are found in RF circuits, and then you may as well go with what the manufacturer recommends because the designers probably simulated it first.

That said, I would guess you're talking about things where various combinations of components would work - e.g. a voltage divider, do you use 1R/10R or 1kR/100kR? That particular example is explained quite well [here](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/28897/how-to-...).

That's exactly what Gammel claimed to do in his original videos on this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13260343

He pointed out that the classes were usually theory heavy where you do piles of math without building anything. He said the kits normally had you plug stuff up without understanding what's going on. So, he tried to do a course that was incremental and build-oriented like kits but gave you understanding of theory/concepts a bit at a time. I haven't used the service but it was only one that claimed to do this.

Check out "Engineers Mini Notebook" series by Forrest M Mims III

I think in this case The book practical electronics for inventors / Paul Scherz McGraw-Hill would be a winner.

Seconding the recommendation for Practical Electronics for Inventors as a comprehensive and self-contained book for learning electronics at a hobbyist level.

Art of Electronics is also a good book but needs to be read with a discerning eye to place everything in the appropriate context: some sections are important, some are premature optimization for hobby-level projects, and some are flat out obsolete. I feel it's better used as a reference book than read cover to cover.

Also worth playing around with the Falstad circuit simulator: http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

And there are lots of good app notes out there from the manufacturers. (http://www.ti.com/ww/en/bobpease/assets/AN-31.pdf is a classic.)

So, get yourself a cheap arduino and an arduino circuits book.

Then look up each component and look at videos relating to them (most of them will include the technicals)

These kits are more for children in the software/hardware space.

I wouldn't recommend any uC to a newbie without first giving him/her a grasp of digital electronics using basic logic chips such as the 74xx/40xx families. My advice would be to learn the basics of binary math and how logic gates work, then get the CMOS and TTL cookbooks by Don Lancaster and start experimenting. On the analog side I also would recommend the books by Mims and later the obvious TAoE.

There are a lot of good book suggestions but I'll toss out an alternative idea of buying "bad" kits. Kits that just take care of one task. Maybe its the RF guts of a 30M ham radio receiver that barely technically works. Now you get to spend engineering effort on the somewhat simpler tasks of making a decent source of regulated noise free power, and build a decent AF amp strong enough to turn the headphones level audio into something driving a speaker using a couple transistors (or maybe an IC). And the input filtering isn't very good so you get to design a nice 10Mhz or so bandpass filter wide enough to let most of the receiver bandwidth thru but block enough interference signals especially AM radio transmitters. And now input signal levels are going to be low enough that a dedicated class A RF amp on the input might be a good idea to boost signals. Next thing you know you're going to be unhappy with the frequency stability of the VFO, so you either rig one of dozens of DDS VFO kits in its place or stabilize the free running VFO in the kit.

Anyway the point is if you can regulate power and build amplifiers and filters but not quite up to the level of building a 30M radio receiver, then improving a bad kit would be a good plan.

Likewise if your "wifi robot" you don't want is close source silo 100% maxed out no expansion possible it is quite useless. But if its got an IO pin or two and you want to learn how to light LEDs using resistors and maybe a transistor or two, you can use the wifi robot to handle the whole "how to turn it on and off" part while you focus on the source vs sink current limits and the excitement of inverting transistor driver circuits and the virtues of putting the LED in the collector or emitter circuit (assuming bipolar transistor) or the joys of trying to bias different types of switching FET transistors, oh its all a barrel of fun but by leveraging the unwanted "wifi robot" you can avoid some hassle.

Also note that the "maker community" of java programmers learning to solder and the ham radio community of EEs learning to program java, never ever cross pollinate. However I live in both camps and the ham radio guys have decades of "learn you some electronics for greater good" general category of book. So if you're not having much luck with the maker style books there are literal decades of the ham radio branch "learn electronics" books. Check the ARRL to start.

Try Practical Electronics for Inventors:

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Third...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com