Basics

[Luke bruce]

Hi. I've just taken up an interest in electronics and I could use a little help.
I've bought a 'Dummies' book and a selection of electronic items,breadboard, resistors,capacitors etc.I've read the first few chapters of the book but I'm having trouble building even the simplest circuit on the breadboard from the circuit diagram. What would be ideal would be a book or web site that shows these circuits in situ on a breadboard in photos on a step by step basis. Can anyone help me.

 

[dknguyen]

What are you interested in building? I'd just Google around for a circuit I want to build rather than getting a book.

 

[Luke bruce]

Nothing in particular I'm trying to follow the circuit diagrams in the 'Dummies' book without a lot of success, so I thought there might be an alternative way of looking at these circuits until I got used to reading them.

 

[ericgibbs]

Nothing in particular I'm trying to follow the circuit diagrams in the 'Dummies' book without a lot of success, so I thought there might be an alternative way of looking at these circuits until I got used to reading them.

Look here and follow the links:

http://www.design-technology.info/electronics/default.htm

**broken link removed**

 

[Torben]

Hi Luke! Welcome to the forum.

Here's another good site for learning:

One thing you should note about the circuits you typically see in books on the basics is that they often leave out parts which would actually make the thing work better, focusing instead on the specific component being addressed in the text at that point in the book. For instance, many of the basic one-transistor amplifiers presented instructionally would be all but useless in the real world, but help keep the math simple and serve to illustrate an idea. You're often not meant to actually try to build them.

What are some examples of circuits you've tried to build and what have the results been?


Torben

 

[RadioRon]

Not being familiar with the Dummies series, I don't know their style, but you should try to avoid frustration by starting with simple circuits that reinforce the basics that you have to learn along the way. For example, when I started out, I had to learn Ohm's law, which is by far the most useful bit of math in electronics. To help understand it, we started by building circuits with only batteries, lamps, switches, and especially resistors. This doesn't allow you to build very many really interesting things, but you do get to learn ohm's law inside out. Once you've got resistors and batteries and switches figured out, you move on to capacitors, inductors and other "passive" devices, but avoid transistors for now. Then, once you've mastered all those bits, you can move on to transistors.

Hey, I know this sounds kind of boring, but this is the path you would likely take if you took a course on electronics at a school. They really want you to understand ohm's law quite thoroughly before attacking semiconductor stuff.

This doesn't mean you can't build other projects in the meantime, but it does give some structure so that you can learn and not get totally frustrated. Structure is important because there is so much to learn that it scares a lot of beginners away and that is too bad.

 

[Gayan Soyza]

Visit this site its superb & very interesting for beginners.

http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/

visit this past thread to know about breadboards

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/the-breadboard.54/?highlight=breadboard

 

[Luke bruce]

Thanks for all the advice, I'll give all the web sites a try.
Luke