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Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

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Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#71

Post by buescher »

squarefoot wrote: post #56
gerdesj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://falstad.com/circuit/ - there goes my afternoon ...

Also, Micro-Cap is now free; not Open Source, still better than nothing. Windows only (although I seem to recall a Micro-Cap software running under the Mac Classic in the early 90s), but it works perfectly under Linux+WINE. http://www.spectrum-soft.com/index.shtm

LTSpice is probably better for beginners, and my impression is that it is faster at the things it can do. Micro-Cap is really nice and does a whole lot more, though. And they're free, so you can have both!

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#72

Post by qualifiedeephd »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45
blippage wrote: post #25

I find the problem with a lot of electronics books is that they are either too deep, or too shallow. Gerry Sussman (yes, that Sussman) explained that the way electronics is taught, and the way engineers think about problems are two separate things. So teaching material tends to fall into two camps: 1) detailed explanations that cover great depth, but are difficult to know how to apply to practical circuits, or 2) cir…

They're not really two separate things because of the way they're taught. They're separate things because they're actually separate. A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level. Analog circuit design is basically a variant of the same theory used to model masses/springs and various other equivalent systems. (Of which there are many.) It's based on diff eqs with various simplifications (spec…

>A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level.

this is so funny. i have a buddy who's finishing up his phd in ee that works on SDR and who lead a team that won the darpa spectrum challenge a few years ago. he has no idea (absolutely no idea) how odes model LRC systems. i'm closer to CS than EE so he was explaining SDR to me and at some point i said "oh like the ode representation " and he had no clue what i was talking about. sure he took the class where that was covered but he completely ignored it (probably barely passed).

just one data point.

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#73

Post by DaveExeter »

stephen_g wrote: post #9
bsder wrote: post #8

For anyone who really wants to get into electronics, skip this and go pick up anything written by Forrest Mims. Practically anything he's ever written is gold. And since they were so common there's a lot of them floating around used.

You can find scans of a lot of them online, e.g. https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/R...

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/R...

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#74

Post by dasudasu »

qualifiedeephd wrote: post #72
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really two separate things because of the way they're taught. They're separate things because they're actually separate. A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level. Analog circuit design is basically a variant of the same theory used to model masses/springs and various other equivalent systems. (Of which there are many.) It's based on diff eqs with various simplifications (spec…

>A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level. this is so funny. i have a buddy who's finishing up his phd in ee that works on SDR and who lead a team that won the darpa spectrum challenge a few years ago. he has no idea (absolutely no idea) how odes model LRC systems. i'm closer to CS than EE so he was explaining SDR to me and at some point i said "oh like the ode representation " and he ha…

Of course you can find PhDs that don’t master fundamentals properly, but that remains rare. PhD quals are supposed to root that out. It’s also true that in day to day electronic engineering, any sufficiently complicated circuit would be solved with SPICE or an equivalent. For a PhD student in electronic engineering to not know that SPICE essentially solves ODEs still seems very surprising.

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#75

Post by tinco »

dale_glass wrote: post #69
tinco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At university one of the mandatory courses was Computer Organisation, which teaches how computers are built electronically. Two weeks of that course covered DRAM timings. Recently (almost 15 years later) I was trying to design a simple automation system for my home's ventilation system, and for it I needed to pull my logic signal up to 10v using a FET. I had absolutely no idea how to do that. It's absolutely crazy th…

That's an absolutely trivial "how do you use a transistor" sort of example, though. If that's not covered I'd say it's because you're not learning electronics at all. You're just learning how a CPU talks to the RAM at a logical level, and what exactly you're actually doing when you're fiddling with the CAS latency setting in the BIOS.

That's my point exactly, that my entire curriculum from highschool until my CS degree I always have gotten away with only logic design. I'm pretty sure at some point we've learned what a FET is and how it works, but I guess designing a circuit that involved one was deemed either too advanced, or not advanced enough.

I even had courses in verilog. I'm pretty sure I'd do better designing a CPU in verilog, than designing a home automation controller. It's almost like a challenge of how close can you get to learning about electronics, without actually learning about electronics..

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#76

Post by buescher »

markus_zhang wrote: post #57
auxym wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard some good from this book: https://www.mheducation.ca/practical-electronics-for-invento... Also a free one: https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/linear...

Thanks! Still looks a bit generic than I hope for. What I have in mind is sort of best practice cookbooks for embedded developers but focused on the analog part. It should provide formulas if needed but avoid any mathematical explanation if possible. It should also be based on scenarios instead of components, in a "You should use an X component parallel/serialized between point a and b for the purpose of Y". For exam…

You can learn a lot of that kind of thing from reading app notes and data sheets carefully when you're starting out. For analog, the old applications handbooks from National, Burr-Brown, Analog, Linear, etc. are all available scanned to pdf if you look for them.

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#77

Post by markus_zhang »

buescher wrote: post #76
markus_zhang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Still looks a bit generic than I hope for. What I have in mind is sort of best practice cookbooks for embedded developers but focused on the analog part. It should provide formulas if needed but avoid any mathematical explanation if possible. It should also be based on scenarios instead of components, in a "You should use an X component parallel/serialized between point a and b for the purpose of Y". For exam…

You can learn a lot of that kind of thing from reading app notes and data sheets carefully when you're starting out. For analog, the old applications handbooks from National, Burr-Brown, Analog, Linear, etc. are all available scanned to pdf if you look for them.

Got it. Now that you said, I did remember reading a few app notes. There was one written by TI regarding ALL their chip X (IIRC it's a RAM chip) that did speak about how to protect the Vcc by connecting a capacitor as a best practice.

Thanks! Yeah I probably should read more of those app notes. I'm mostly interested in digital though.

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#78

Post by cmehdy »

tinco wrote: post #75
dale_glass wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an absolutely trivial "how do you use a transistor" sort of example, though. If that's not covered I'd say it's because you're not learning electronics at all. You're just learning how a CPU talks to the RAM at a logical level, and what exactly you're actually doing when you're fiddling with the CAS latency setting in the BIOS.

That's my point exactly, that my entire curriculum from highschool until my CS degree I always have gotten away with only logic design. I'm pretty sure at some point we've learned what a FET is and how it works, but I guess designing a circuit that involved one was deemed either too advanced, or not advanced enough. I even had courses in verilog. I'm pretty sure I'd do better designing a CPU in verilog, than designin…

CS and EE are very different fields, there's lots to learn in each field.

My curriculum was a blend of EE and applied maths/phys: I made carbon nanotubes in a lab, used quantum tunneling microscopes to look at atoms of gold, used VHDL to write games and generate the signals to display them in VGA, used control theory and electromechanical models to make a webcam rotate and move to track a face via PID, applied Kalman filters, etc..

But at no point did I learn how a compiler works, how linting works, what are fundamental differences between main programming paradigms, what data structures to pick for different kinds of problems, what are the fundamentals of an OS, how to be comfortable with LISPs, etc..

Once I was out of the academic environment without a PhD or a strong specialization (and just struggling to find any work), it was much more valuable to know binary trees and SQL than all of the EE stuff. So I was on the other end of what you experience, where at one point we covered without gaps quantum physics/chemistry --> barebones CPU, yet I wouldn't have known how to make something robust with it afterwards.

And obviously, despite doing 'some' applied mathematics, any mathematician would look at what I did and probably roll their eyes at the amount of convenient assumptions made.

There's just so much to learn out there that most of what we do in our lives is rely on abstractions, and it doesn't even have to be specific to computers: most people can use a bicycle without being able to draw a functional one[0].

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3059089/it-turns-out-its-almost-...

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#79

Post by mindcrime »

andi999 wrote: post #20
fxtentacle wrote: post #16

I found that electronics are very difficult to learn from books, but easy to learn as an apprentice. Maybe just visit your local hackerspace, they'll have the tools around and ideas for easy starter projects.

Thats why 'the art of electronics' has a lab companion book.

As an electronics teacher, I don't think it is specifically that learning from books is difficult but that it is hard to strike the balance between theory and practice, the high level and the low level.

As a hobby electronics enthusiast who has been dabbling with this stuff basically my whole life, and is currently lodged firmly somewhere in the gap between "total n00b" and "advanced beginner", I would absolutely agree. The gap between practice and theory in this field is so large, and so many books are all the way at one end of the spectrum or the other, that it's very hard (in my experience) to find material in the "sweet spot" between theory and practice.

The reality is, you can learn a lot, and do a lot, with a moderately superficial knowledge of the underlying theory. But at the same time, there's a lot you can't do, or a lot of mistakes you can make unknowingly, without knowing the theory. Learning it incrementally, piece-meal as needed, is somewhat doable, but it's a slog. I wish I had a good answer for people who want to "do some electronics" but don't want to go get an E.E. degree.

Re: Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018)

#80

Post by samhw »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #55
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really two separate things because of the way they're taught. They're separate things because they're actually separate. A fully qualified EE understands circuits at a deep mathematical level. Analog circuit design is basically a variant of the same theory used to model masses/springs and various other equivalent systems. (Of which there are many.) It's based on diff eqs with various simplifications (spec…

When I was young I loved magazines like Popular Electronics. After getting my EE, I looked back at those magazines in my collection I immediately thought "That's so wrong!" or "That omits so/too much" or "I can't believe I thought this was electronics" or "Baby project! How lame!". :-) So it's very much about what can be absorbed and tailoring to the audience. You can't start with the math load that an EE student get…

> You can't start with the math load that an EE student gets with a broad, general audience.

Yeah, it's Wittgenstein's 'ladder', from the Tractatus:

> My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has climbed out on them, over them. (He must - so to speak - throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

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