Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

theory vs. practical

Status
Not open for further replies.

warrenob1000

New Member
What's a good resource to learn about electronics while working on cool, useful projects (by cool and useful I mean more than "Light an LED with a battery and appropriate resistor")? The books I've looked at are either laden with too much theory to be informative to a reader with only high school level math, or too specific to each project with no explanation of how the circuits actually work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
 
warrenob1000 said:
What's a good resource to learn about electronics while working on cool, useful projects (by cool and useful I mean more than "Light an LED with a battery and appropriate resistor")? The books I've looked at are either laden with too much theory to be informative to a reader with only high school level math, or too specific to each project with no explanation of how the circuits actually work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

LOL sounds like you got took in by one of Forest M. Mims III old radioshaft electronics books! That jerk used to get rich selling electronic project books that were all variations on the same circuit: it's a tone generator, change a resistor to a photocell - its a theramin, change the photocell to a pot a cap - it's a metronome, change the the speaker to a light bulb - its a light flasher, etc ad nauseam. Then there would be a whole separate book that did all those same circuits with 555s instead of two transistors. That guy really pissed me off.

Well the old spring board style electronic project kit let you "build" stuff that you could potentially duplicate but had no real explanation that I recall. Much as I hate to admit that anything titled "an idiots guide to ..." is worth anything, I have yet to hear anything real bad about the series... and a search of amazon.com revealed one on electronics that might well be as good a starting point as any.

Beyond that there are some knowledgeable posters here that can answer specific questions.

D.
 
pretty much. These kinds of books just have brief descriptions of what the electronic components are, but do a poor job of bringing theory and application together.

Suggestions, anyone?
 
Learning electronics

I take it from your question that you are a beginner in electronics. In electronics as in all complex fields one needs to learn to crawl before they can walk and still later run. So to actually LEARN electronics it is necessary to start with the led flashers and simple transistor circuits to understand the basics behind how the components work. I understand these are not really "cool and useful projects" but they will help you build up to that level. And as you get more knowledge your projects will become more interesting.
 
If you happen to look at some "cookbook" type books out there, you'll be in over your head pretty quickly. Most of them are just big collections of circuits with slight variations and a couple sentences to explain them - the expectation is that you have enough theory under your belt so that you'll understand the circuit and remember it. The next time you have a similar task, you'll have a rough idea as to the easiest way to go. I'd guess that a good fraction of the books out there are of this type (probably because they're so easy to put together...)

In general, read up on Ohm's law, power, kirchoff's law, RC exponential time constants (i.e. 63% /37%), transistors (BJT, Mosfet, forward voltage, Beta, saturation, gate voltage), and you'll have the *essential bits*. That and learning how to read (and draw) schematics. At the introductory level, the most complex math is just plain algebra, along with a lot of "engineering approximation" (i.e. somewhere in the ballpark). Later on you'll learn when to break out the calcuator/spreadsheets/bode diagrams/etc, and when to just throw in a 1K resistor because it's "close 'nuff".

Once you have the fundamentals down, figure out whether you want to continue along the analog electronics path, do digital electronics, or just dive into the software/firmware/microcontroller side. In terms of real-life "interesting" projects, microcontrollers are pretty much required, but you'll never get there if you don't know the basics...
 
Learning the basics of micro controllers would be high on a list of things to get into. PICs or AVRs are both good candidates for the hobbyist as their development tools are free and the hardware is cheap, and there is a LOT of things you can do with them. You could go through several begginers electronics books to learn how to control a couple 7 segment LCD's using counters and various discrete logic circuits, or you could use a micro controller and 16X2 LCD display for 20-30 dollars. Add a few buttons or matrix keypad and options are virtually endless.
 
Last edited:
If there are any circuits that you don't understand, post them here so we can advise.
 
warrenob1000 said:
What's a good resource to learn about electronics while working on cool, useful projects (by cool and useful I mean more than "Light an LED with a battery and appropriate resistor")? The books I've looked at are either laden with too much theory to be informative to a reader with only high school level math, or too specific to each project with no explanation of how the circuits actually work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I had forgotten about these when I posted... trade rags ideas sections. They often have small usefull circuits with halfway decent explanations if you are willing to go back and check the data sheets and other concepts they mention.

EDN and Electronic Design would be the most popular ones.

D.
 
Get yourself the book "The Art of Electronics," by Horowitz and Hill. It is quite a large book, and although not a projects book, will explain pretty much all you need to know, without bogging you down with complex math.
I agree with those directing you toward microcontrollers. That is the 'best' part of electronics, at least the most fun.
There is a plethora of projects and tutorials on the net. I'm sure you could find something not too challenging, yet interesting to start with. Try this site:
**broken link removed**
Myself, I though the Mimms books were a very easy introduction. Sure he has repeated himself some, but he does give very easy explanations.
Perhaps a community college class on electronics would be worth looking into.
 
warrenob1000 said:
What's a good resource to learn about electronics while working on cool, useful projects (by cool and useful I mean more than "Light an LED with a battery and appropriate resistor")? The books I've looked at are either laden with too much theory to be informative to a reader with only high school level math, or too specific to each project with no explanation of how the circuits actually work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Try magazines. Elector Electronics has a feature where you can download articles, and even buy a whole years subscription on a CD. There you will have code for micro-controllers, descriptions of the circuit, PCB and circuit drawings, parts lists, source etc. You can order the PCBs from their web-shop cheap if you don't have the equipment to make them.

Pick a project at your level and that you find interesting.
 
cadstarsucks,
Whilst I echo some of your crisism of Forest M. Mims III (yes making money on the same circuit 1000 times over is pretty ****), I do think he was excellent at explaining things and giving many ideas for the same circuit can be helpful too. I remember learning about how current flow, hole flow and doping of semiconductors at the age of 12, something that some of my fellow students couldn't understand at the age of 22 and it wasn't because they were stupid, it was because it wasn't explained well enough.
 
Hero999 said:
cadstarsucks,
Whilst I echo some of your crisism of Forest M. Mims III (yes making money on the same circuit 1000 times over is pretty ****), I do think he was excellent at explaining things and giving many ideas for the same circuit can be helpful too. I remember learning about how current flow, hole flow and doping of semiconductors at the age of 12, something that some of my fellow students couldn't understand at the age of 22 and it wasn't because they were stupid, it was because it wasn't explained well enough.

Ummm...I was going through the Heathkit electronics courses when I was 12. At 13 I went though the Heathkit micros course ... I guess I forget just why he pissed me off so much.

D.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top