Electronics Explained: Fundamentals for engineers, technicians and makers (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by tuatoru » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #79

andi999 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agr…

I'm in the same position more or less. I recently discovered a book that looks to be a good "intermediate" theory text: Passive Circuit Analysis with LTSpice: an Interactive Approach.

Only have the kindle sample at present, as it's a fair chunk of money for my budget.

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

#82

Post by tuatoru » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

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…

Very large and expensive textbooks have been written on the subject of power protection and grounding.

A good (at the no-mathematics level), cheap but somewhat older book on power protection is Protection of Electronic Circuits from Overvoltages, Ronald B Standler, published by Dove. Focused more on whole-device protection rather than individual-IC protection though.

NB. Capacitors on supply pins of ICs are usually more for 1. mitigating noise emission from the IC onto the power rails, affecting other circuit components; 2. stabilising the power supply to the IC (and so its operational parameters) while it deals with signal transients.

If you are worried about an individual IC getting voltage spikes on its power supply pin(s), then you're probably doing it wrong. If not, use TVSes (transient voltage suppressors).

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

#83

Post by tuatoru » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #33

I'm wondering if there is a minimum book of analog electronics for embedded electronics (and especially the hacking of). I dabbed into a Tiva launchpad from last Dec to Feb and went through a beginner textbook, but put the project to suspend as I failed to bit bang a few peripherals so got discouraged. Nevertheless I noticed that I only need a minimum amount of analog electronics, basically: 1. Resistors (of course,…

If you are getting analog signals into digital circuits there is quite a bit more to know. Sensor characteristics, signal conditioning and level shifiting, anti-aliasing, grounding, input protection, circuit layout, power supply effects.

Arduino For Scientific Measurement covers many of these in a straightforward, somewhat chatty way, for low frequency and DC signals. It's by a guy who has done a lot of well/bore measurement for the oil and gas industry and it is very focussed on the practice--there's no theory at all (except a very brief qualitative sketch of an ADC, IIRC).

Radio frequency is a whole other kettle of lobsters. Lots more to learn there.

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

#84

Post by mcnugget » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

cushychicken wrote: post #44

mcnugget wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real world effects of parasitics are underated. Found out the hard way that there's a whole lot of pain involved with hot plugging a battery into a board when there's a modular switch mode power supply onboard. Oh, you have a low esr ceramic cap on the input? Lol, the parasitic inductances of your wire and traces have formed a tank circuit and pushed the input voltage well above the unhappy voltage of something. K, y…

Inrush is a real bitch. I make it a rule to include simple inrush current control circuits whenever I do DC input that sinks more power than, say, a USB cable. Lotsa surprise inductances out there. I've felt your pain re: inductance + input cap creating a resonant tank, too. That's a nasty surprise when you manage to create that resonance with your wiring.

The worst is when the other guys think you're crazy because they're not suffering the same problems because either the smps they have had a soft start or they overspeced the living crap out of their input stage. I gave up and just spend the 5$ for the IC that provides slew rate control, single IC with a single fet? Oh hell yeah.

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

#85

Post by troydavis » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

If anyone else wants to read this book, it's available as an ebook through O'Reilly Complete Public Library (formerly Safari Books Online). In the US and Canada, many public libraries include access to O'Reilly's service as part of having a library card.

Cincinnati, Denver, Edmonton, Kansas City, and Seattle are among those libraries: https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/public-libraries-workfo... . Search your local library for this title and see what you find.

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

#86

Post by entropicgravity » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

dasudasu wrote: post #74

qualifiedeephd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Actually I found that almost no one mastered fundamentals properly when I was an EE undergrad, at least with respect semiconductor physics (and an antenna theory). The "holes and electrons" stuff fundamentally violates conservation of charge because at first the "holes" are stationary but later, with the Hall Effect, suddenly they're moving, that's a bit of sleight of hand that no one cottoned on to. Not the profs, not the legions of grad students. It really does go to show how much of education is cargo cult learning. It turns out that in fact both the 'holes' and the 'electrons' of semiconductor theory are statistical virtual particles and not the fundamental particles that they are purported to be. (Somewhere in my past comments is the similar bit about antennas if anyone is interested)