Do any of these books have a purchase list of components to purchase?
Learn electronics by practice
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably the wrong way to look at it. Digital electronics doesn't really exist outside of theoretical spaces. It's all analogue underneath and any experienced digital designer will know that and what the consequences for things like signal integrity, noise immunity and latency.
It’s all about layers of abstraction. A web developer doesn’t need to know about analog circuits to program computers
It's better to describe analog and digital electronics as a subset of electronics. For the most part, they look at different domains. Even though they are based upon the same underlying principles, the simplifying assumptions are different. A more dramatic example is with RF electronics. While it may look like you are dealing with the same sort of things as the more common low frequency analog electronics, you are going to have a difficult time coaxing an analog circuit to work in the RF domain.
Contrast that to web developers. They are dealing with very different principles from web browser developers, who are mostly working with different principles than operating system developers, who are working with entirely different principles from those who design hardware. It's not that they are working with a different subset of the same thing because one layer of abstraction is directly on top of the one below it and (ideally) the layers below completely hide how they work from the layers above.
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#23If I learned this way, it would have been off-putting.
So much nicer to grab an ardunio, motor, led, some sensors, etc...
Then graduate to esp8266/esp32.
But maybe I'm thinking embedded and my 2 years as an electrical engineer filled in some of the gaps when calculating things.
Eh, just my opinion.
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#24I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph...
> In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately notice that the chip performs the addition of two 4-bit binary words, A and B.
...and the associated diagram, just immediately left me feeling like I was standing in a room full of people who were smarter than me. Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics?
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#25It goes without saying that Ben Eater's 8-bit computer kits [1] are like Legos for wannabe-electronics nerds. The kits themselves were the response of the outpouring of requests from viewers of his amazing YouTube channel where he first rose to notoriety for his breadboard CPU and computer.
I am currently assembling his 6502 breadboard computer (with the 16 x 2 LCD character display).
Someone put together an awesome "1-100 Transistor Projects" as a PDF [2] for learning how transistor circuits work. The PDF + breadboard + a dozen or so transistors and small parts will keep you busy.
There's a sequel "101-200 Transistor Circuits" [3], one on IC circuits [4] and one on the venerable 555 timer chip [5].
The above should keep you busy for the rest of the year. If not, be sure to skim through some of the electronics hobbyist magazines [6].
[2] https://archive.org/details/1To100TransistorCircuits
[3] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/101-20...
[4] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/100%20IC%20Circu...
[5] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/50%20-%20555%20C...
[6] https://worldradiohistory.com/Popular-Electronics-Guide.htm
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#26I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…
Nope, here: https://youtu.be/wvJc9CZcvBc
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#27I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…
In my experience in a university ECE program, you'd start with understanding the high level properties of transistors, then combining transistors to make AND and OR gates, then XOR and other gates, then MUXes and half/full adders, then flip-flops and eventually into synchronous (clocked) logic.
The lab component of such coursework did start with TTL chips but the timing of the coursework was such that you'd have most of the asynchronous logic theory taught by the time the chips came out.
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#28If I learned this way, it would have been off-putting. So much nicer to grab an ardunio, motor, led, some sensors, etc... Then graduate to esp8266/esp32. But maybe I'm thinking embedded and my 2 years as an electrical engineer filled in some of the gaps when calculating things. Eh, just my opinion.
I agree that learning with an Arduino/Pi Pico is personally more fun and gets you to the stage of making something practical, or at least interesting, much more quickly. That said, doing things fully at the resistor and diode level still has its place, since someone has to understand stuff well enough at that level to design the Arduinos and Picos that the rest of us play with.
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#29I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…
I think this is mostly poor writing on the part of the author. You being able to "immediately notice" is contingent upon having read the data sheet, which was not linked nor reproduced, but the way it was presented made it seem like the diagram was sufficient. If you were to have read the data sheet, it would have stated up front that the circuit performs four-bit addition. But the page did not facilitate that...
Re: Learn electronics by practice
#30I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph... > In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately noti…
I think this is mostly poor writing on the part of the author. You being able to "immediately notice" is contingent upon having read the data sheet, which was not linked nor reproduced, but the way it was presented made it seem like the diagram was sufficient. If you were to have read the data sheet, it would have stated up front that the circuit performs four-bit addition. But the page did not facilitate that...
> this is mostly poor writing on the part of the author
Indeed. The correct way is:
"It is trivially obvious to the most casual observer that the chip performs the addition of two 4-bit binary words"