Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

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217 pointsteleforce82 comments

I find the problem with a lot of electronics books is that they are either too deep, or too shallow. Gerry Sussman (yes, that Sussman) explained that the way electronics is taught, and the way engineers think about problems are two separate things.

So teaching material tends to fall into two camps: 1) detailed explanations that cover great depth, but are difficult to know how to apply to practical circuits, or 2) circuits that are presented as a fait accompli. They work, but I have no real idea why.

It reminds of statistics, in a way. I've seen biologists, undergrads and industry apply statistics like it was some kind of talisman. "Cargo Cult Statistics", as it were. They don't really "understand" the data that they're looking at.

At university one of the mandatory courses was Computer Organisation, which teaches how computers are built electronically. Two weeks of that course covered DRAM timings. Recently (almost 15 years later) I was trying to design a simple automation system for my home's ventilation system, and for it I needed to pull my logic signal up to 10v using a FET. I had absolutely no idea how to do that.

It's absolutely crazy that at some point I was able to (crudely) design a computer logically to the level of detail of DRAM timings, but at the same time I've never had a deep enough understanding of current to design a circuit that uses a logical signal to switch a 10v line using a FET.

(this is how you do it btw: https://tinyurl.com/ydsgmdvh)

There is a real case where someone could go a whole career in EE knowing a ton about DRAM timings and nothing about pulling up FET switches to the proper voltage.

I know - I've met them!

Real world effects of parasitics are underated. Found out the hard way that there's a whole lot of pain involved with hot plugging a battery into a board when there's a modular switch mode power supply onboard. Oh, you have a low esr ceramic cap on the input? Lol, the parasitic inductances of your wire and traces have formed a tank circuit and pushed the input voltage well above the unhappy voltage of something. K, you fixed that part, nope, lol, your inrush current is actually 15A because you had 68uF on the output of the smps and somehow you burnt out the internal fet of the smps module. Goddam nearly flipped a table.

Inrush is a real bitch. I make it a rule to include simple inrush current control circuits whenever I do DC input that sinks more power than, say, a USB cable.

Lotsa surprise inductances out there. I've felt your pain re: inductance + input cap creating a resonant tank, too. That's a nasty surprise when you manage to create that resonance with your wiring.

The worst is when the other guys think you're crazy because they're not suffering the same problems because either the smps they have had a soft start or they overspeced the living crap out of their input stage. I gave up and just spend the 5$ for the IC that provides slew rate control, single IC with a single fet? Oh hell yeah.

https://falstad.com/circuit/ - there goes my afternoon ...

Also, Micro-Cap is now free; not Open Source, still better than nothing. Windows only (although I seem to recall a Micro-Cap software running under the Mac Classic in the early 90s), but it works perfectly under Linux+WINE.

http://www.spectrum-soft.com/index.shtm

LTSpice is probably better for beginners, and my impression is that it is faster at the things it can do. Micro-Cap is really nice and does a whole lot more, though. And they're free, so you can have both!

Just wait till you put a bigger load on your fet than that 100K resistor, try to PWM it, and discover the Miller effect.

That's an absolutely trivial "how do you use a transistor" sort of example, though. If that's not covered I'd say it's because you're not learning electronics at all. You're just learning how a CPU talks to the RAM at a logical level, and what exactly you're actually doing when you're fiddling with the CAS latency setting in the BIOS.

That's my point exactly, that my entire curriculum from highschool until my CS degree I always have gotten away with only logic design. I'm pretty sure at some point we've learned what a FET is and how it works, but I guess designing a circuit that involved one was deemed either too advanced, or not advanced enough.

I even had courses in verilog. I'm pretty sure I'd do better designing a CPU in verilog, than designing a home automation controller. It's almost like a challenge of how close can you get to learning about electronics, without actually learning about electronics..

CS and EE are very different fields, there's lots to learn in each field.

My curriculum was a blend of EE and applied maths/phys: I made carbon nanotubes in a lab, used quantum tunneling microscopes to look at atoms of gold, used VHDL to write games and generate the signals to display them in VGA, used control theory and electromechanical models to make a webcam rotate and move to track a face via PID, applied Kalman filters, etc..

But at no point did I learn how a compiler works, how linting works, what are fundamental differences between main programming paradigms, what data structures to pick for different kinds of problems, what are the fundamentals of an OS, how to be comfortable with LISPs, etc..

Once I was out of the academic environment without a PhD or a strong specialization (and just struggling to find any work), it was much more valuable to know binary trees and SQL than all of the EE stuff. So I was on the other end of what you experience, where at one point we covered without gaps quantum physics/chemistry --> barebones CPU, yet I wouldn't have known how to make something robust with it afterwards.

And obviously, despite doing 'some' applied mathematics, any mathematician would look at what I did and probably roll their eyes at the amount of convenient assumptions made.

There's just so much to learn out there that most of what we do in our lives is rely on abstractions, and it doesn't even have to be specific to computers: most people can use a bicycle without being able to draw a functional one[0].

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3059089/it-turns-out-its-almost-...

Electronics is a big field. I think it really depends what you want to do in it that will determine the best way to learn it. I'd recommend people start with basic circuit theory then build up to op amps and then diodes, transistors, etc. That was the order I studied it at university at least.

They're not really two separate things because of the way they're taught. They're separate things because they're actually separate.

A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level.

Analog circuit design is basically a variant of the same theory used to model masses/springs and various other equivalent systems. (Of which there are many.) It's based on diff eqs with various simplifications (specifically the s-plane transformation for simplified analysis and its z-plane equivalent for DSP.)

There are maybe a couple of hundred or so standard circuit configurations to learn with their associated models and properties. The rest can be worked out. But it's essentially undergrad calculus and numerical analysis applied to an unexpectedly large collection of standard configurations which were invented/characterised by researchers with PhDs, often quite some time ago.

There are also specialisms - digital, RF/uWave, component design, data compression and encoding - which have their own lore.

Electronics is cookbook-level circuit design using a small selection of the standard models described with simple pre-calculus algebraic descriptions. It's hugely simplified and watered down. You can get a long way with it, but it's more like LEGO in that you can clip circuits together with only a very superficial idea of how they work.

Anyone who says they can make electronic engineering simple is lying. It's a subset of applied physics, so it's not simple at all.

Cookbook level electronics can be as simple as you want, but doesn't provide a deep understanding of circuit design, or issues like noise, distortion, and RF/shielding problems, data encoding systems, and so on. If you want those you'll need the full course, and that's a lot of work.

Great explanation of the differences! I would argue though that even for noise, distortion, and RF/shielding problems you can get quite far with "cookbook" level knowledge (though I'll grant that it's quite likely to get let astray by leaky abstractions with these, like the many answers to "how/whether you should connect the shield of a USB plug/socket to PCB and/or chassis ground").

When I was young I loved magazines like Popular Electronics.

After getting my EE, I looked back at those magazines in my collection I immediately thought "That's so wrong!" or "That omits so/too much" or "I can't believe I thought this was electronics" or "Baby project! How lame!".

:-)

So it's very much about what can be absorbed and tailoring to the audience. You can't start with the math load that an EE student gets with a broad, general audience.

You see the opposite of this with academic papers - either the level of assumed audience is stratospheric OR it's clearly wording to keep the riff-raff out of the field. Mostly the former but sometimes the latter. You often also see this in STEM textbooks - the audience isn't even freshmen oriented!

One of my mentors said "read all the hobby magazines, you never know what you might learn, sometimes they pick up new technology faster than industry". So did Bob Pease in one of his columns. But yeah, there's a lot of groaners in them.

> You can't start with the math load that an EE student gets with a broad, general audience.

Yeah, it's Wittgenstein's 'ladder', from the Tractatus:

> My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has climbed out on them, over them. (He must - so to speak - throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

This cookbook analogy is pretty true for all fields.

There are tons of software engineers who have never taken a higher math course, the "cookbook" and the intuition is enough to get the job done efficiently enough.

Chop wood, carry water. Using cookbook circuits is kind of like that zen story. You come full circle.

There's little enough honestly new in electronics that almost anything you do will look cookbook to an outsider. Designing actual products is exacting and deep, though. An example to look at is the writeup nwavguy did on his O2 headphone amp. He makes it look easy. The core amp is not an app note design or reference design but if he'd chosen the equivalent parts from TI it just about could have been. It's very straightforward. There is nothing exotic in it. The parts are cheap. The layout is even pretty mundane for high end audio. And yet it measures to be just about flawless, it has a nice no-pop turn-on circuit, etc. and there are plenty of headphone amps you can buy that do not. Without specific experience and expertise in audio design most fully qualified EEs would pathetically struggle to make something that nice.

It's one of the best electronic designs for hobbyists I've ever seen. All of you should build one if you think you might want something like that.

The only flaw I've found in mine is that the hysteresis on the low battery cutoff is not sufficient for some batteries (as they age and the internal resistance goes up) and it can "motorboat" before the battery cuts out. A really good low battery cutoff circuit is also surprisingly challenging.

“The novice says to the master, ‘What does one do before enlightenment?’ ‘Chop wood. Carry water,’ replies the master. The novice asks, ‘What, then, does one do after enlightenment?’ ‘Chop wood. Carry water.'”

>A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level.

this is so funny. i have a buddy who's finishing up his phd in ee that works on SDR and who lead a team that won the darpa spectrum challenge a few years ago. he has no idea (absolutely no idea) how odes model LRC systems. i'm closer to CS than EE so he was explaining SDR to me and at some point i said "oh like the ode representation <something something>" and he had no clue what i was talking about. sure he took the class where that was covered but he completely ignored it (probably barely passed).

just one data point.

Of course you can find PhDs that don’t master fundamentals properly, but that remains rare. PhD quals are supposed to root that out. It’s also true that in day to day electronic engineering, any sufficiently complicated circuit would be solved with SPICE or an equivalent. For a PhD student in electronic engineering to not know that SPICE essentially solves ODEs still seems very surprising.

Actually I found that almost no one mastered fundamentals properly when I was an EE undergrad, at least with respect semiconductor physics (and an antenna theory). The "holes and electrons" stuff fundamentally violates conservation of charge because at first the "holes" are stationary but later, with the Hall Effect, suddenly they're moving, that's a bit of sleight of hand that no one cottoned on to. Not the profs, not the legions of grad students. It really does go to show how much of education is cargo cult learning. It turns out that in fact both the 'holes' and the 'electrons' of semiconductor theory are statistical virtual particles and not the fundamental particles that they are purported to be. (Somewhere in my past comments is the similar bit about antennas if anyone is interested)

With the trend towards ICs, you can get far using by learning to read datasheets, source parts, design and order PCBs, solder, and program MCUs. If working with high frequencies (RF etc), you'll eventually run into trouble with interference, at which point it makes sense to reference a text or course.

If you'd like to peak behind the epoxy curtain, or design ICs yourself... then you need to dive deeper.

Something I've always disliked about electronics instruction, is discussion of actual applications.

Consider the esteemed Art of Electronics. By chapter, it covers Fundamentals, Transistors, Op Amps, Filters, and Oscillators.

That's all well and good. Except, in my case, while these are all interesting in isolation, I don't know what I am supposed to do with these components. How do I turn these components in to, say, a radio, or a garage door opener, or whatever else folks do with electronics?

No doubt it probably doesn't help to approach it without an application. That said, when learning programming, we had all of these contrived exercises to illustrate a programming concept. I remember an early Fortran exercise was computing the date for Easter in any particular year. Did I have a particular need to know where Easter fell? No, but it was nice to see math, and expressions, and variable, and input/output in operation vs just being presented with operators and precedence rules. We had to apply it to a "real world" task.

I took an electronics class in High School. And, frankly, we didn't build anything. We wired components together and took measurements. I learned Ohms Law, the resistor color code, etc. I did build, I think, an AM transmitter kit. Discrete components, PC board, soldered it all up. But I had no idea how it worked. Just an array random components soldered together.

Honestly, I think the success of modern hobby digital electronics, centered around mostly interfacing Things to a microcontroller, has such good velocity due to how little actual "electronics" knowledge you need to get your LED blinking or servo moving. It's mostly wiring up black boxes.

> How do I turn these components in to, say, a radio

The problem is that you have so many models of the same components, that can be connected together in so many configurations, to obtain so many results, that even if the book had a recipe to build a radio, it won't tell you a lot of how to build the radio for your given application (freq. range? power? bands? noise correction? etc.). It would probably be better to explain different components and how to use tools to probe them and tell whether they are behaving with the right voltage, current, resistance, frequency, timing, logic, etc.

Radio is the traditional hobby application and is a good place to start. The ARRL publications vary in quality and level but are generally pretty good. You can go as deep as you want into RF design at the hobby level as a ham. It's sort of a new golden age with good-enough test equipment so cheap these days and the sheer range of parts available on the internet.

One book I saw mentioned a lot in relation to learning electronics is this one:

https://artofelectronics.net/

Reviews state it's basically an encyclopedia of knowledge.

I have the physical copy of the last edition. It is good. For total beginners it might be a notch to fast tho.

The introduction has been rewritten completely from former editions as far as I can tell, and to my judgment has a better pacing and a friendlier tone. For those who already have a little bit of knowledge from tinkering around and seek to deepen their understanding it is definitly very much recommended.

If you use it like a calculus textbook I can see it working for first contact. But most people won't do that, which makes it not suitable for a "first contact" introduction. It's superb for people who have some prior experience and can read it in a choose-your-own-adventure way.

Yeah, it's a pretty hardcore book and would only work for most people after High School unless they are super committed.

It is good in that it develops why using transistors as switches doesn't work in many scenarios but then basically says, "Op Amps" are better for everything and the rest of the circuits use those instead so you could argue that many people don't need to learn about the underpinning theory.

It also weighs in 1000+ pages and doesn't work well as a reference for most things because the info often builds on previous chapters.

I felt it worked as a reference. Yeah, it might explain something using concepts you don't understand, but you can backtrack as far as necessary, then start working your way back to where you started.

See associated student manual. Reading that alongside it is what you are supposed to do if you are learning. Ultimately the first few chapters should be stepped through carefully as they are not a reference but a fundamental list.

The very early 1st edition of TAoE and the Laboratory Manual that was presented with it was what got me into EE.

Honestly, I've never found a good use for this book. It explains too little to use it as a textbook to learn the subject, but it misses a lot of important things to be a good reference too. And it's focus on analog circuit design makes it irrelevant for most of the modern careers. Yeah, there is student's companion etc., but also there are books available that are just better in this regard.

That was the bible when I did electronics courses as part of my degree in the early 90's. I hope it's still being updated :-)

For years I've been hoping for some open courseware which uses this and it's companion book "Learning the Art of Electronics". Alas I keep waiting.

For anyone who really wants to get into electronics, skip this and go pick up anything written by Forrest Mims. Practically anything he's ever written is gold. And since they were so common there's a lot of them floating around used.

You can find scans of a lot of them online, e.g. https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/R...

Thank you, this looks amazing!

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/R...

They have legendary status but they aren’t very good books. In some cases they are quite misleading. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s anything better out there yet at that level. I remember having to unlearn stuff when I progressed past the very limited explanations.

Electronics as a subject is one of those things that’s really difficult to explain without a basic understanding of maths and he skirts well around that where possible.

If you know how to juggle numbers, probably better to start with The Art of Electronics.

Agreed. In defense of Forrest Mims, though, his circuits generally work and are simple, to-the-point approaches.

An alternative, even if you are not into modular synths, is Moritz Klein's videos https://youtube.com/c/MoritzKlein0

The basics are very well explained.

This is very good but before throwing people off the deep end I'd suggest this overview (origin of the dx7 & fm synthesis):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXt_NXjc7oY

And then some bigclivedotcom to get going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Maq5IyHSuc

EEVblog for intermediate beginner stuff / home gamer lab gear: https://www.youtube.com/c/EevblogDave/videos?view=0&sort=p&f...

And finally some Marco Reps for advanced beginners: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcoReps/videos

Just to dip your toe in.

Wouldn't say Moritz videos are the deep end. He is explaining resistors by comparing them to water pipes with narrow parts. He is also very good at pointing out where such comparisons don't work.

I found that electronics are very difficult to learn from books, but easy to learn as an apprentice. Maybe just visit your local hackerspace, they'll have the tools around and ideas for easy starter projects.

As an electronics teacher, I don't think it is specifically that learning from books is difficult but that it is hard to strike the balance between theory and practice, the high level and the low level.

My approach has been to ignore a lot of detail until it is needed to understand what is happening on the macro level.

For example, you don't need to understand electrons especially travelling opposite to current, which can be especially challenging, until we might discuss why some components have a higher rated power than others or why we cannot control a large motor with a small transistor, at which point we can introduce current.

Thats why 'the art of electronics' has a lab companion book.

As a hobby electronics enthusiast who has been dabbling with this stuff basically my whole life, and is currently lodged firmly somewhere in the gap between "total n00b" and "advanced beginner", I would absolutely agree. The gap between practice and theory in this field is so large, and so many books are all the way at one end of the spectrum or the other, that it's very hard (in my experience) to find material in the "sweet spot" between theory and practice.

The reality is, you can learn a lot, and do a lot, with a moderately superficial knowledge of the underlying theory. But at the same time, there's a lot you can't do, or a lot of mistakes you can make unknowingly, without knowing the theory. Learning it incrementally, piece-meal as needed, is somewhat doable, but it's a slog. I wish I had a good answer for people who want to "do some electronics" but don't want to go get an E.E. degree.

I'm in the same position more or less. I recently discovered a book that looks to be a good "intermediate" theory text: Passive Circuit Analysis with LTSpice: an Interactive Approach.

Only have the kindle sample at present, as it's a fair chunk of money for my budget.

I'm wondering if there is a minimum book of analog electronics for embedded electronics (and especially the hacking of). I dabbed into a Tiva launchpad from last Dec to Feb and went through a beginner textbook, but put the project to suspend as I failed to bit bang a few peripherals so got discouraged. Nevertheless I noticed that I only need a minimum amount of analog electronics, basically:

1. Resistors (of course, for voltage divider mostly)

2. Capacitors (to be connected to power pins to filter, and usually pF/uF for different places. I forgot the "rules" since I haven't touched it for a few months)

3. Diodes (to protect against backward flow)

And that's pretty much it. From my understanding, the pins are also transistors but there is no need to go down that level (only need to know voltage tolerance, output signal strength and such). And even transistors are pretty easy to understand for TTL gates.

To go a bit further, I never read much about Op Amp, but considering you can build logic gates with Op Amps, maybe it not that difficult if I do not need to look into the details? I found anything that can be abstracted into logic gates to be easier to digest, but of course actually building a computer from Op Amp or TTL is still a feat beyond my reach (Ben Eater has a very good series).

There is: Horowitz celebrated "art of electronics" https://artofelectronics.net/

I think this is an encyclopedia?

Heard some good from this book: https://www.mheducation.ca/practical-electronics-for-invento...

Also a free one: https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/linear...

Thanks! Still looks a bit generic than I hope for. What I have in mind is sort of best practice cookbooks for embedded developers but focused on the analog part.

It should provide formulas if needed but avoid any mathematical explanation if possible. It should also be based on scenarios instead of components, in a "You should use an X component parallel/serialized between point a and b for the purpose of Y".

For example: "You probably want to protect the Vcc pin by connecting a capacitor between A and B from spikes, because XYZ will bring these spikes".

It should also supply a real life picture because I found it difficult to translate circuits on books to real life breadboards. On textbooks they usually use ideal components such as power sources with one terminal but it's kinda hard to wrap them around my head sometimes.

I understand it's probably too much to ask and one should build such knowledge slowly. But sometimes I dream a bit :D

You can learn a lot of that kind of thing from reading app notes and data sheets carefully when you're starting out. For analog, the old applications handbooks from National, Burr-Brown, Analog, Linear, etc. are all available scanned to pdf if you look for them.

Got it. Now that you said, I did remember reading a few app notes. There was one written by TI regarding ALL their chip X (IIRC it's a RAM chip) that did speak about how to protect the Vcc by connecting a capacitor as a best practice.

Thanks! Yeah I probably should read more of those app notes. I'm mostly interested in digital though.

Very large and expensive textbooks have been written on the subject of power protection and grounding.

A good (at the no-mathematics level), cheap but somewhat older book on power protection is Protection of Electronic Circuits from Overvoltages, Ronald B Standler, published by Dove. Focused more on whole-device protection rather than individual-IC protection though.

NB. Capacitors on supply pins of ICs are usually more for 1. mitigating noise emission from the IC onto the power rails, affecting other circuit components; 2. stabilising the power supply to the IC (and so its operational parameters) while it deals with signal transients.

If you are worried about an individual IC getting voltage spikes on its power supply pin(s), then you're probably doing it wrong. If not, use TVSes (transient voltage suppressors).

If you are getting analog signals into digital circuits there is quite a bit more to know. Sensor characteristics, signal conditioning and level shifiting, anti-aliasing, grounding, input protection, circuit layout, power supply effects.

Arduino For Scientific Measurement covers many of these in a straightforward, somewhat chatty way, for low frequency and DC signals. It's by a guy who has done a lot of well/bore measurement for the oil and gas industry and it is very focussed on the practice--there's no theory at all (except a very brief qualitative sketch of an ADC, IIRC).

Radio frequency is a whole other kettle of lobsters. Lots more to learn there.

I mean, if we're shilling books and intro electronics is the topic, here's a fun one: https://nostarch.com/hardwarehacking (Published Nov 2021).

Ok found a PDF and scanned through it. This appears to be a rehash of older material, going back as far as the 90s, as I recognise some of the graphics and explanations. Newnes seem to make a great effort to retitle and reuse stuff in this capacity. It doesn’t look like a terrible book to be fair but limited in explanation and use. Worthy of the title perhaps.

If I was at ground zero now I’d probably buy that, then do Khan Academy algebra and calculus, then pick up Art of Electronics and then Sedra/Smith.

Art of Electronics is really important as it discusses applied theory rather than just theory. The real world is a lot less ideal and has edge cases and problems galore in it and concerns which don’t even appear in theoretical texts.

I honestly wish I had all this stuff as a kid. Had to put up with local library contents which were full of garbage.

It depends what you want to do and at what level. There are many Makers in the world who don't have and don't need the AoE, it is a tome written a while back before lots of circuits came pre-packaged and which in many cases people don't care about how they work, as long as they just work.

Remember back in the day, to make a high powered audio amp, you needed a tonne of components and now you can get a 150W amp on a chip with a couple of external components. Some people will be interested in how each section works but many just want an audio amp!

If you were learning formally/professionally, that would be very different and the narrative in the AoE is very useful, especially around improving transistor characteristics by building up supporting components.

The problem is that line of thinking only scales to when things work using the very basic level of abstraction presented.

A 150W audio amplifier is a surprisingly difficult thing to get working right, even with an off the shelf IC. You have to consider grounding, trace impedances, current density, power supply quality, filtering and parasitics really otherwise you end up with wildly oscillating nightmares or exploding amplifier ICs.

> Remember back in the day, to make a high powered audio amp, you needed a tonne of components and now you can get a 150W amp on a chip with a couple of external components. Some people will be interested in how each section works but many just want an audio amp!

Careful you might get Audiophiles arguing that an IC doesnt cut the mustard.

> There are many Makers in the world who don't have and don't need the AoE, it is a tome written a while back before lots of circuits came pre-packaged and which in many cases people don't care about how they work, as long as they just work.

Are you talking about the 2nd edition (1989) or the updated 3rd edition (2015)?

If anyone else wants to read this book, it's available as an ebook through O'Reilly Complete Public Library (formerly Safari Books Online). In the US and Canada, many public libraries include access to O'Reilly's service as part of having a library card.

Cincinnati, Denver, Edmonton, Kansas City, and Seattle are among those libraries: https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/public-libraries-workfo... . Search your local library for this title and see what you find.

A lot of these guys start with the function they need a circuit to fulfil and learn just enough to select and integrate it into the project, so at the block diagram level. In those cases learning circuit design is overkill when learning how to select one (from a circuit cookbook) by understanding functional and integration parameters, customising and modifying it after reverse engineering are sufficient.

Akin to a course in driving rather than car design. Not sure how many books approach it that way but for a lot of people building fully customised electronic circuits is too much effort.

OK so the book is not bad. But since it touches so many subjects, I'd say most have been treated a bit superficially. Mind you, I don't think it's bad. You have most important concept explained in an accessible way, without the math getting in the way, and I'd say accurately enough. But if you want to go deeper into any of the many subjects presented in the book, you'll do much better buying a separate book (and there's no way around math). All in, I think many people would benefit from it, especially most beginners who have no idea how things work. I'm not sure about the HN crowd.

Not great. I'd recommend "Practical Electronics for Inventors" by Paul Scherz, it strikes a good balance between theory and practice.

This is advice for hobbyists. Guys who want to tinker, wire their home, and fix their car, and maybe fix that broken radio.

I have found most people are rusty when it comes to Electronics, and electricity.

The Art of Electronics, and it's lab, is very long. I was shocked when I heard Harvard Students completed it in 1 semester. It's recommended here a lot though. There's nothing wrong with it other than being written years ago. I don't like the part on computers, and solid state electronics. (I'm too lazy to pull out my copy, but would love to know how it's possible by a ex student. Maybe it's a two semester course? It's in the foreword to anyone interested.)

If you just want a decent understanding of electricity, I like the "Make" publications. Throw in the Dummies whatever on Electronics.

The US navy also has a decent books too. They are free.

If wiring a house/building pick up a copy of Ugly's, and Dewalt Electrical code reference. Make sure you know how a 3 way switch works before putting the books down. For some reason a three way switch is Greek to a lot of people.

If you are really suppose to know this stuff, but feel like a fraud, pick up Electricial Engineering 101 Everything you should have learned in school but didn't.

I don't have a recommendation for working on automobiles though. Even though the basics of electronics will get you through most problems you will encounter when working on your vechicle, I am still looking for an in-depth manual. Something that goes deep into the computers of our vechicles. The books recommended to mechanics just skim over a lot of the complicated stuff. There's a need for an in-depth book on electric vehicles. I'm always looking for anything Tesla, but it's all priority? Or, very high priced information. Elon if you ever read this; we love, and respect you. Us shade tree mechanics are salivating over your engineer's repair info. There are a lot of hot rod types that want to get your salvaged vechices back on the road. And no you don't inside info to get a crashed Tesla up and running, but it would be nice. We might remember the favor when there's more competition?

It's all about manipulating OHM's law. Again--it's all about OHM's law for the theory. Don't make it more complicated than needed.

Learning about resistors, caps, potentiometers, etc. is pretty basic.

Oh yea, a nice DVOM, like Fluke 88, and a power source, will make your life easier. You don't need a Fluke 88 with all the attachments. I got one in Reno for $75.00, and just love the quality of the instrument. I truly feel if a guy likes their tooling it just makes solving a problem less of a hassle.

The Art of Electronics was originally written for science (physics) students who intend to become experimentalists. Experimentalists traditionally build their own instruments - i.e. if you can just buy something to do a measurement, why should you get funding? You should be advancing the state of the art.

AoE is at the level of "you might have to do just about anything with an op amp that's possible with an op amp, but you won't be designing op amps". Yeah, that's a little hardcore for hobbyists, but just about everything you might need is in there somewhere, or at least you'll learn what the thing you need is called.

The problem with 3-way switches is that there's (at least) 8 ways they can be wired:

https://www.easy-do-it-yourself-home-improvements.com/3-way-...

And more generally, the difficult part about building electricity is code. Codebooks are absolutely huge, difficult to read, and can vary by locality (not just by country or state but actually at the municipal level). I just don't have it in me to try and memorize a huge code book just so I can do a bit of wiring around the house (already need to memorize a bunch of standards in my day job as a mechanical engineer).

They are a pain. The NEC is a huge mess. To those doing residential wiring, pull those wires at least 6" from the receptacles. Fasten within 6". Record abusive Building Inspectors.

The way 3-way switch wiring is presented in codebooks and electricians' manuals is 'weird' in a way that makes it very hard (for me) to understand. I am a qualified electronics engineer and I would much rather analyze some obscure analog circuit than try to understand someone's 3-way switch diagram.

Why is this interesting? An intro to electronics book locked behind a paywall...

Do you have to buy it chapter-by-chapter?

Pfft. If they really want to extract maximum profit, they should consider selling word-by-word. Perhaps more important words could be auctioned, there are endless possibilities.

That's Elsevier for you…

If you scroll down to the bottom there's a link to buy the whole book.

I am doing electronics since my first job in 2007, and I never managed to get a university education in it. I greatly regret.

Even 15 years later, I still can't do things every uni grad should be able to through practice, and drill. You will never be as good as an engineer with university education, if you self-study.

You can pump for-profit books on HN?

Yes, just like you can pump other for-profit services and products on HN, you can pump for-profit books too.

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