Hi all, I'M A NEWBEE, not only here, to electronics too.

[alexidewayz]

Hi everyone just writing this post to tell a bit of my story and ask a few newbie questions. If you don't like boring stories about people's lives, but would still like to answer my simple questions, go at the very bottom of the page.

I'm a tech at BMW in Montréal, Canada, I just stumbled into electronics, almost by accident.
Let me explain, when you work at a dealership, time is $$$ you don't have time to "fix" cars, you only have time to "replace the part", "do I have power coming in?? yes, Do I have power coming out?? NO, replace and NEXT", so you don't really have time to open things up and study what really happened.
Next thing you know, all the cool things I had learned about electronics in my mechanics school, has slowly faded away.

A few weeks ago, my boss, sensing I had good aptitudes in diagnostics, decided to send me to BMW university for the "basics of electronics" course. It was basically the same program that I had in my tech school, but it brung all that cool knowledge back to the surface and I'm now a better tech because of it, but that's still not how I decided to come to this website.

The other day, my girlfriend comes back inside panicked after leaving for work, "the car wont start, how am I going to get to work" so I ran outside, checked, car cranks, but no start, pull one of the plug wires and asked her to crank, OK I got fire, yanked the rear seat out, asked her to turn the ign. on, no noise from pump??? Checked with multi-meter, no power.

I already knew what it was, I had changed the $60 part no more than 6 months ago, it seems that the main relay has went south again.

Jumped the thing and sent her on her way to work, but meanwhile, I started analysing the wiring diagrams to find out WHY.

I noticed that, from the diagrams, it seemed the main relay is in fact 2 relays in a box with a couple of diodes and a resistor.
When my GF came back, I opened the box, confirmed what I thought and went straight to Addison, (a used/surplus component store) and started looking at the relays and found one "bosh" that was an exact mach, except for the resistance value of the coil which was higher, so I took out my newly refreshed knowledge about Ohm's law, bought a 100 30ohms resistors for $1.99, a relay for $1.99, a spool of PC grade solder for $6.99 and a desoldering iron for $13.99, an eye opening experience into a new hobby, priceless. For everything else, there's mastercard LOL.

So for a bit more than 1/2 the price of the dealer only part, I bought parts, supplies and tools to fix my car for cheap and now I'M IN LOVE WITH ELECTRONICS. I already ordered a DMM kit, because a coworker is looking to buy an inexpensive one, so as a joke, I went "I'll build you one LOL" and he said "No jokes?? Cool."


OK, now that I've bored you to death, here's a few newbie questions.

1-I already bought a few books, the first is The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications 2008 that I read, here:http://
www.electronics-tutorials.com/, was an essential book to have if you are starting out in electronics and a second one called Electronic Principles by Malvino, Albert Paul, which wasn't suggested, but had good reviews and I found it for $0.67 used on amazon.ca

So my question here is are there any other books that I just CAN'T go without??

2-What would be a good first kit to build, aside from the DMM kit that I ordered for a friend

3-Is it worth it to buy one of those fancy kid's solderless electronic labs to learn?? if yes, which would be the best to buy in your opinion??? I was looking at that one:**broken link removed**

 

[Torben]

Welcome to the site!

I would say a somewhat dense but indispensable book is "Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It's a bit dated now but still worth the money.

The link for the kit you gave was bad (took me to an error page) but any of those kits can help you play around and see how the various parts interact in the real world.

I'm just a learning hobbyist but this place is also a great resource. Use the Search function and pick the brains of the pros who hang around here. It's a great site.


Torben

 

[Hero999]

This first thing you should build is a simple 1.25 to 15V power supply using an LM317 or go for the bi-polar power supply which gives +/-1.25 to 15V.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/variable-bipolar-power-supply.24291/

You could also learn about microcontrollers (something I'm begining to do) which are used to do lots of things inside cars.

 

[Boncuk]

New to electronics

Hi alexidewayz,

welcome to the forum.

If there is a Radio Shack store near your location try to purchase "engineer's note book".

It has a lot of basics concerning logic ICs and also analog ICs with small applications.

For beginners it is kind of hard to remember truth tables of Boole's algebra. Here you find the necessary tables and also example circuits where they are useful.

I don't know if this notebook is still available but you could give it a try.

If it's not, just contact me. I'll give you the book and also the minibooks, all written by the same author.

Kind regards

Hans

 

[Gaston]

Hi alexidewayz,

welcome to the forum.

If there is a Radio Shack store near your location try to purchase "engineer's note book".

It has a lot of basics concerning logic ICs and also analog ICs with small applications.

For beginners it is kind of hard to remember truth tables of Boole's algebra. Here you find the necessary tables and also example circuits where they are useful.

I don't know if this notebook is still available but you could give it a try.

If it's not, just contact me. I'll give you the book and also the minibooks, all written by the same author.

Kind regards

Hans

unfortunatly radio shack doesn't sell them anymore. i bought the basic electroncs book about 15 - 20 years ago. i went to buy the minibooks a few years ago and they don't sell them anymore. i would love to have a copy myself

 

[alexidewayz]

Thanks everyone for your helpful answers...

...If it's not, just contact me. I'll give you the book and also the minibooks, all written by the same author.

Kind regards

Hans

WOW! Thank you infinitely, that is the kindest Internet gesture (directed towards me at least) I've ever seen, +1 rep right there for you my friend.

I would say a somewhat dense but indispensable book is "Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It's a bit dated now but still worth the money.
The link for the kit you gave was bad (took me to an error page)...

Thanks, that book is now on my amazon.com wish list AND I fixed the link.

This first thing you should build is a simple 1.25 to 15V power supply using...

What do you think about this one???
**broken link removed**

You could also learn about micro-controllers (something I'm beginning to do) which are used to do lots of things inside cars.

I surely take a look into that.

Unfortunately radio shack doesn't sell them anymore...

Well in fact, here in Canada, RadioShack doesn't even exist anymore, it's been replaced by "TheSource" now and sadly, they have lost their Hands on DIY approach and have become more like a mini "FuturShop" wannabee than anything else.

 

[Hero999]

That circuit has some issues:

R1 should be 220R and R2 should be 3K.

With just a 1000:mu:F capacitor and a 24V transformer it won't be able to supply 30V at 1A. There will lots of ripple on the output at high currents.

Use a 28V transformer and a 4,700:muF >50V capacitor.

At output voltages lower than about 15V the current will be severely reduced as the regulater's safe area protection circuitry kicks in. There is nothing you can do about this, it's a safety feature of the regulator.

Did you checkout the thread I linked you to in my previous post?

 

[alexidewayz]

...Did you checkout the thread I linked you to in my previous post?

Yes, I did, I was just asking because I was impressed by the 30V. 1A output and the fact that I had already put my mind on it "before" I asked the question here, plus it is available as a kit, so it'd be easier to find the components and see what they look like and the fact that a kit comes with instructions would have made it simpler for a first experience, but now that you tell me he has flaws in his design, I wonder what kind of instructions I would have gotten with that??? LOL.
Thanks for pointing out the design problems and I'll take a "closer" look at the one YOU linked here.

Bear in mind that as I ask these questions and I read the answers, I'm also reading books and websites, including this one, so I don't know much yet even less about finding design flaws in a diagram.

I guess this is how we learn...

Thank you very much for your help.

Oh! one more question, here:

...Use a 28V transformer and a 4,700:muF >50V capacitor...

you say to use a 4k7 "muF", now, I know what a uF & pF is, but what's a muF

 

[Hero999]

I meant 4,700:mu:F.

 

[Torben]

Oh! one more question, here: you say to use a 4k7 "muF", now, I know what a uF & pF is, but what's a muF

This forum has a smiley defined for the 'micro-' symbol (Greek letter mu). Check the Smilies box to the right of the message compose textarea. It's ": mu :" (without the spaces).

I think that the :muF was just a typo and the trailing colon got dropped so it didn't show up.


Torben

 

[alexidewayz]

AH! HA! Thanks. That makes more sense in my poor untrained (yet) mind.
hm: :mu: :delta: :ltoet: :gtoet: Interesting feature.

 

[rjvh]

some ideas for a project and keep it simple
fashing LEDs (for a fake alarm indicator in your car or house) try to make them with transistors and learn how its work
buildt a siren to anoy the neighborhood or use it as an alarm

there are loads of simple circuits to start with

and after all you have always a source for info on this forum

Robert-Jan

 

[eblc1388]

At output voltages lower than about 15V the current will be severely reduced as the regulater's safe area protection circuitry kicks in. There is nothing you can do about this, it's a safety feature of the regulator.

For anyone wanted to build the Van Roon circuit, I offer a simple modification to cut the heat wasted, and increase the current available at low output voltage.

Just use a 12Vx2 Center Tapped transformer instead and add a SPDT toggle switch. The transformer should cost about the same as an untapped one so the additional cost increase is minimal.

 

[Pommie]

For anyone wanted to build the Van Roon circuit, I offer a simple modification to cut the heat wasted, and increase the current available at low output voltage.

Just use a 12Vx2 Center Tapped transformer instead and add a SPDT toggle switch. The transformer should cost about the same as an untapped one so the additional cost increase is minimal.

Nice mod.

Mike.
Edit, silly suggestion removed.

 

[Hero999]

It's also possible to get the switch to work automatically.

Just replace the switch with a relay with a transistor and potential divder so the coil is de-energised when the output drops below a certain voltage.

It still really needs to be a higher voltage transformer and a larger capacitor for reliable operation at higher voltages though.