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Good books to start with

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joseche

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Hi all, first post here, and begginer with electronics,

I am about to finish "Electronics for Dummies", and I want to move to a more serious book about the subject so I am thinking on getting one of these:

1) Getting Started in Electronics, Forrest M. Mims III, ISBN-10: 0945053282, ISBN-13: 978-0945053286
2) Practical Electronics for Inventors, Paul Scherz, ISBN-10: 0071452818, ISBN-13: 978-0071452816
3) Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics, Stan Gibilisco, ISBN-10: 0071459332, ISBN-13: 978-0071459334

About me: I am software eng. and I want/need to make a lot of automation for agro industry.

If you have any of these books please give me your inputs/recommendations.

Thanks
 
This might be blasphemy to recommend another site but...allaboutcircuits.com is a website based on several "books" of education. Good price...free.
 
I grew up with the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL) Radio Amateurs' Handbook. Seems that I managed to buy or somehow obtain one every seven years. They're updated and published annually with a price of about $7.00US back in the 1970s; the prices are astronomical today, and I don't think that current Handbooks are as good. I'd browse the various sources of used books and try to come up with one from the 1970s, one from the 1980s and one from the 1990s. The older books were more into construction of receivers, transmitters, amplifiers, etc., while the newer ones expect the ham to buy everything turn-key and just build little simple station accessories. Really dumbed down, I think. Although aimed at ham radio operators, the Handbook is full of good electronics theory, from the basics on-up. Expect the older books of the 1960s to be vacuum-tube based, the ones from the 1970s and 1980s to be a combination of tube and solid state and the current ones to me mostly solid-state/integrated circuits.
 
The Art of Electronics by Horowitz & Hill is pretty good (even though don't reveal who 'Art' is). It has a very nice balance of theory and practice. It is a tad dated, but the basics are the same. Can be had pretty cheap in paperback through eBay. A new edition is in the works.
 
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This might be blasphemy to recommend another site but...allaboutcircuits.com is a website based on several "books" of education. Good price...free.

Why blasphemy? a big number of the people here are members over there too. If you don't hear what you want at one site, just post to the other. Better yet, post the same question on both sites at once and see what falls out. AAC is very strict about modifying cars and fiddling with direct-to-mains powered devices. Here, not so much.
 
I agree with Jaguarjoe's recommendation of Horowitz and Hill's "The Art Of Electronics." Very good blend of theory and practice.

Another good learning technique is to build kits. If you pay attention to what you are building, you can learn a lot while having fun and ending up with a useful piece of equipment. Many of us "Old Timers" from tube days learned electronics by building Heathkits and Eico kits. They are no longer extant, but there are many vendors of kits today.

awright
 
Right, seems like "The Art of Electronics" it's like a classic I should get too.

I will buy first: Getting Started in Electronics because it's cost: $19.95, and when I finish that I will go for "The Art Of Electronics"

Thanks for your kind recommendations
 
I've read Teach yourself electricty and electronics, didn't like it. It has plenty of information in it, but the presentation is poor.

The Art of Electronics was really one of the best books I've ever read on the subject I can definitly second a recommendation on that. It was available at my local library.

You don't need to buy books, that's what libraries are for =) Then again the library system where I live is extremely good, I can get any book in the entire Monroe county library system delivered to my local branch for 50 cents, that's 33 libraries, so there are very few books I can't get.
 
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Hello there,


A very very good book on circuit analysis is "Engineering Circuit Analysis" by Hayt. It doesnt get any better than that for a first course on circuit analysis. This book has been published in many editions, im not sure what the latest one is but you can look it up on the web.
You'll need to know a bit of calculus to understand many of the chapters though, so hopefully you've had some already or else you'll have to find a book on that first. There is an awful lot on the web for free on calculus though so you shouldnt have to buy anything for that.
 
I found Electrical Fundamentals 1 and 2 by peter phillips quite useful. Both of those books cover the important aspects of electronics and they do a good job of explaining with illustrations. Actually some of the courses, for older students, run by schools and universities around my area use them. When I finished reading those books I found one called Basic Electronics First Metric Edition by Bernard Grob, it has ~700 pages of information covering many more aspects of electronics than the Electrical Fundamentals books do and sometimes deeper as well. I found that it also was well illustrated and easy to understand.

Overall these three books cover electronics really well, from the practical side to the theory, they have certainly been worth the money....but that's just in my opinion!

James
 
Why to buy. The library is better. Keep notes of the books u read.

All the ebooks are mostly available on the Internet.

Art of Electronics is! and it is the bible of electronics....although it is not a textbook for university courses as far as i know!

However i am not sure about this good practical sided book : The Electronics of Radio by David B Rutledge...i cudnt find any ebook of it. But the book is too good. Deals with a NorCal 40A transceiver at 7 MHz.

Please see recommmended books on electronics for theory, circuits, design ,pspice etc...google them...i have some of these ebooks!
 
The Art of Electronics by Horowitz & Hill is pretty good (even though don't reveal who 'Art' is). It has a very nice balance of theory and practice. It is a tad dated, but the basics are the same. Can be had pretty cheap in paperback through eBay. A new edition is in the works.

Another vote for that book, even though I haven't read it yet: a friend who's a real electronic guru recommended it to me.

One I have read that I can suggest is Albert Paul Malvino's Electronic Principles. Thorough, well-written, has rigorous math but is not overly dense, and contains the best explanations of how semiconductors work I've seen anywhere.
 
Forrest M. Mims I recommend as a no nonsence down to earth Author whose work is not padded with repetitiom or crap
 
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Amazon.com: Electronics Demystified (0639785511106): Stan Gibilisco: Books

I think
Electronics Demystified
is a good next step, its a step up from E4D, which is a very good book in it's own.

Also can be had used on Amazon for pretty cheap. I own a copy, still reference material from it.

Also
Starting Electronics
Amazon.com: Starting Electronics, Third Edition (9780750663861): Keith Brindley: Books

is a very good book, maybe too basic, but presentation is different than E4D so you may pick up some additional information there.


Also, NEETS is a good source of information and instruction:
**broken link removed**

HTH,
Andrew
 
Stan Gibilisco wrote "Teach yourself Electricity and Electronics" which I was very unimpressed with, I hope the Electronics demystified is better than his previous offerings which contained too much theory and almost zero practical knowledge. The NEETS link is nice, saved that one, the military knows how to provide practical examples quiet well.
 
While we're giving negative recommendations as well as positive, I would suggest staying away from anything written by Norm Crowhurst.

I recently inherited a pile of electronics book via my local dumpster, including some very good ones, and a whole variety of vintages (including a Dover reprint of a U.S Army textbook on transistors from the '60s). One of them was Crowhurst's Basic Electronics Course, 2nd edition. It's really the only book of the bunch I don't like.

Not that it doesn't contain lots of good information; it does. It's just that Crowhurst tends to go off on extremely long-winded tangents, no matter what the subject, making his explanations very hard to follow.

I really want to take a look at The Art of Electronics.
 
Lok for Malvino's book. Found it good.
 
Another vote for The Art of Electronics. I purchased mine in the Eighties and still refer to it from time to time when stuck. Great book:D
 
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