Novice Design Project

[electroniks]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum and to electronics. I have read books in electronics but they were mainly about analysis but I never felt I know how to design from scratch so I am wondering how professionals do that.
On a second note I want to do a small DESIGN project to get started, would any one please guide me in the right direction so I can learn how to do that?

Thank you.

 

[Papabravo]

You start with something small, simple, and doable, and you do that. Then you try something a bit more challenging, and do that. Pretty soon you find out that you have discovered a lot of things.

The second thing you need to do is read about things other people have done. Look at a schematic and learn to recognize patterns. For example how do people do RESET circuits? Look at a schematic, look at the circuit and ask how long is the RESET pulse going to be.

Hope this helps

 

[Papabravo]

OK a project!

Take a Schmitt Trigger Inverter like a 74HC14, and one resistor, and one capacitor and make a relaxation oscillator. Try to figure out how the values of the components control the frequency. That's it - simple straight forward and yet a challenge for the first timer.

 

[electroniks]

OK a project!

Take a Schmitt Trigger Inverter like a 74HC14, and one resistor, and one capacitor and make a relaxation oscillator. Try to figure out how the values of the components control the frequency. That's it - simple straight forward and yet a challenge for the first timer.

ok, I have all the parts available here and I constructed it as the attached image.

Constructing and reading about how these circuits work is an easy task. My question related to design was actually about how to design from scratch, I am guessing that I a little confused as what the definition of DESIGN is but I think I mainly want to know for example how to build a modulator without looking at similar schematics and only from scrath if that makes sense. Like for example who came up first with this design for the relaxation circuit and why did (s)he put the components together as such, how did (s)he think of this, what was the mind set...

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

My question related to design was actually about how to design from scratch, I am guessing that I a little confused as what the definition of DESIGN is but I think I mainly want to know for example how to build a modulator without looking at similar schematics and only from scrath if that makes sense.

Basically you need to go and get a GOOD solid eductation in Electronics, you can't learn something as complicated as that from books.

But why would you want to design something from scratch?, that's like saying you want to write a book, but you're going to invent all your own words for it!.

Even designs supposedly designed from scratch are based on previous designs, it's almost impossible to design something entirely from scratch.

Even worse than that, a great many circuits actually originated back in the old valve days, they are just modified for transistors or modern technology.

As a suitable example?, how about a wheel? - why reinvent it?, would it work better if it wasn't round? - but you can certainly 'improve' it for specific purposes using modern technology (but it's still just a wheel).

 

[electroniks]

My question related to design was actually about how to design from scratch, I am guessing that I a little confused as what the definition of DESIGN is but I think I mainly want to know for example how to build a modulator without looking at similar schematics and only from scrath if that makes sense.

Basically you need to go and get a GOOD solid eductation in Electronics, you can't learn something as complicated as that from books.

But why would you want to design something from scratch?, that's like saying you want to write a book, but you're going to invent all your own words for it!.

Even designs supposedly designed from scratch are based on previous designs, it's almost impossible to design something entirely from scratch.

Even worse than that, a great many circuits actually originated back in the old valve days, they are just modified for transistors or modern technology.

As a suitable example?, how about a wheel? - why reinvent it?, would it work better if it wasn't round? - but you can certainly 'improve' it for specific purposes using modern technology (but it's still just a wheel).

OK, I understand now! You mean electronics design is basically like playing with LEGO but only more science/engineering oriented. I can get that! So for electronics design one must know all components available and their functionality and properties and then put them together to make another system. Right?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

OK, I understand now! You mean electronics design is basically like playing with LEGO but only more science/engineering oriented. I can get that! So for electronics design one must know all components available and their functionality and properties and then put them together to make another system. Right?

Pretty well, it's like learning a foreign language, you have to know the words, and how to put them together to make a sentence, then how to put them together to make a speech, then how to put then together to write a book etc.

 

[falmeshon]

Even designs supposedly designed from scratch are based on previous designs, it's almost impossible to design something entirely from scratch.

Hit the nail right on the head. A good way to design things in general is to make a "shopping list" (or if you want to be fancy, a flow chart) of things to do, but make it in order so that to progress down the list you must accomplish the tasks before it. The trick is to start off very general at a high level of abstraction peeling off layers until you arrive at prototyping and testing. If you are methodical at every step, you will save many frustrating hours in debugging and redesign.

The absolute golden rule for people starting out in electronics is start small. Break things up into crumb size pieces and make sure you understand every crumb before making the bread so to speak. For instance, a digital low pass filter may have a control module, data processing module and power regulation module. Within those modules will be sub modules such as multiplexers, adders and so on. To understand how to build the overall device, you must master the everything that it consists of.

I would focus on first building simple circuits with some of the smallest modules in electronics-- simple ics, counters, gates, timers, resistors capacitors, transistors etc. Master the properties of each, then work towards interconnecting them in ever more complicated ways.

 

[BeeBop]

Even designs supposedly designed from scratch are based on previous designs, it's almost impossible to design something entirely from scratch.

This is true of all knowlege, and is a hot topic in graduate schools right about now.

Creativity has to do with questioning the current body of knowlege; inovation is based on tradition. (T.S. Elliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent," is a great work on creativity.)

I very much agree with Nigel, except that:

Basically you need to go and get a GOOD solid eductation in Electronics, you can't learn something as complicated as that from books.

A GOOD solid education in anything, should teach you how to learn something as complicated as that from books.

Its other, will spoon feed you with knowlege which you need now, but will not help you learn.

A good instructor will direct your learning effort, and help you get the focus, and shorten the path. If you spend enough time with such an instructor, you will learn how to focus your learning on your own.

Regards,
Robert