Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a good way to learn basic electronic circuits? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can anyone recommend a good way to learn basic electronic circuits?

8 pointsgrandalf11 comments

I have read some interesting links via HN about circuits, etc., and I would very much like to dig into this and learn how to make simple ones that do interesting things.<p>I ordered an Arduino yesterday, but I'd also like to be able to design analog circuits and to understand how basic components interact.<p>Can anyone recommend a software simulator for this? Or a book?

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You prob won't learn much from the simulator itself.. but try pspice if you just want one to play around with. Most simulators are based off of spice, so you can find a variant. LTspice http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ltspice.jsp is also pretty good

As for learning the theory, this site has helped me alot. It has everything you need to know to go from 0, to a highly functional level

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

I started off on an ee route. We used this textbook in our first circuit class: http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Circuits-8th-James-Nilsson/dp... .

In later classes we used this book, which I see in the bookshelves of my coworkers: http://www.amazon.com/Microelectronic-Circuits-Electrical-Co...

If you want to learn more basic concepts, I'd recommend looking perhaps for a class in your area to audit, or possibly mit ocw might have something.

I will say the following though:

1) many folks in industry get to a point to where they rarely, if not never sit down on paper and do node-voltage analysis. They eventually get a conceptual "feel" for everything and work in simulation environments (matlab, spice, etc.). The best way to get here is to do the conceptual exercises on paper first, then play with a simulator afterwards.

2) designing basic analog circuits can be learned from textbooks, but doing more "active" things like building a switching power supply requires more specific books.

http://www.elenco.com/snapcircuits.html

This is what you need. There's various 100-in-one or 500-in-one kits, you get a big bag of parts some instructions and you can start making all kinds of cool things. Also great if you have kids.

That's a really vague question. Do you need to know about fundamentals? Like what a capacator/resistor/transistor is? Do you need to know how to solder and assemble components? Are you interested in messing around with micro controller boards, maybe adding a temperature sensor or servo here and there? Or designing a board completely from scratch?

If want to know fundamental electronics, start with one of those corny radio shack kits where springs hold the wires in place.

For microcontrollers, I like NerdKits more than the other stuff out there. The LCD display gives you a lot more feedback than assembling some other kit, and finding out you can only make two LEDs blink.

Do those kits actually teach principles? I know what each of the components do, but I lack a broader conceptual framework...

for example, I don't know how to build a circuit that would plug into a headphone jack and switch a light on and off based on the volume level...

I also don't know how to build a simple audio amplifier, timer, etc.

Do you recommend any specific kit based on the above? I mean, I could read instructions and hook components together but I want to be able to build novel circuits that I dream up.

You may find these of interest:

http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

Horowitz & Hill's "The Art of Electronics" is also excellent, but more expensive.

The Horowitz book is always quoted as the electronics bible. But I always found it really dry and couldn't really grok the concepts at least when I read it years ago. I think I learned a lot more by just reading articles online and trying out random circuits people posted on geocities.

There is no replacement for trying out circuits.

I have been told there are some good introduction to electronics manuals published by the Navy through the US Government Printing Office, but I have looked at them myself. If you happen to run across one of those you might check it out.

I'm also getting into Arduino, just ordered mine. There seem to be a lot of blogs and the forums also look good.

<plug>I'm starting an online store for hardware hackers in the UK - http://laughingcomputer.com. There's a lot of good stuff out there which is not easily available in the UK. I'd love to fix that and get more people into hardware hacking.</plug>

An old fancy breadboard, components and a good guide from the internet should suffice. Do amplifiers, RF generators, explore the OPAMP.. timer circuits...you'll be ready for more stuff when u are done.

"Concise electronics for geeks" http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/

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