Basic Electronics tutorials?

spiritgreywolf

Would anyone have any good recommendations of a Basic Electronics course that one could take at home before embarking on the Microcontroller course? Something similar to what Heathkit offers? I'm wondering if there were any plans by Parallax to offer such an animal that covers basic AC and DC electronics with a little more in-depth training?

Thanks!

Ryan

StarMan

Try "Getting Started In Electronics" by Forrest Mims

Chris I.

Morrolan

www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/mar97/basics.html

That's a good site for the very basics of electronics if you ask me.

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Flying is simple. You just throw yourself at the ground and miss.

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
Stephen Hawking

spiritgreywolf

Thanks for the feedback!

RDL2004

The Forrest Mims books are a great introduction to electronics. "Getting Started in Electronics" (which I bought at Radio Shack back in the '80s and still have) was what got me interested in the hobby.

The ARRL has an intro course you can buy, includes a book and other stuff. If you don't already have a meter and breadboard, it might be worth looking into. www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=1155

Here are a couple of links with more introductory level information:

Electronics Club, Kelsey Park School

Tony Van Roon's pages

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- Rick

kjennejohn

Hi.

Forget Mims (although he did write great·guides 20 years ago). Forget "The Art of Electronics" at $80 or more, another classic tome on all things electronics.

You want Andre Le Mothe's (spell?) introduction to writing game programs and game station construction:

http://www.xgamestation.com/view_product.php?id=30

Yeah, it's $30 before shipping costs, and it's only a CD, but it's all in here. The first half covers everything I learned in two and a half years of community college to get my AS in Electronics. The next half covers most of the courses I paid for dearly to·get instruction in embedded circuits and their programming. And the stuff I never got in school, like schematics; board layout; board prototyping, including wire wrapping; and programming tricks to get stuff to move around a screen, detect collisions, keep score,·audio techniques and a·lot more. You'd spend an awful lot of time in expensive classes to get this knowlege else where.

I reccomend you just print out one chapter at a time. When finished, put it in a binder, then do the next chapter. It's a long slog to do the whole thing, but you could just do the chapters you need, then come back later to learn the next steps as needed.

End Two Cents,

kenjj

Mike Green

I'd go for the Understanding Basic Electronics text from the ARRL without the PowerPoint presentation (follow the link from the one that kenjj posted.

RDL2004

Here's the link to the book alone:

www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=3983

The course documentation (Powerpoint and Word docs) can be downloaded for free. For $15 more than the cost of the book you get a cheap meter, a decent breadboard and a handful of parts. Not a bad deal if you don't already have them.

Also, another very good basic training course is "NEETS", Navy Electrical and Electronic Training Series. Originally published by the US government, this is a large (about 56 MB) series of pdf files that is available many places on the web. Here is a link to one place you can download them:

www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm

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- Rick

pwillard

Links I've collected and have used:

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/· Really nice introduction in a unique format

http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/electron/elecindx.htm· <-- University Teachers Intro... quite throurough

http://www.play-hookey.com/· <-- Basic electronics intro - When you want to know how a flip flop works... play hookey·

http://www.rollanet.org/~n0klu/Ham_Radio/·· <-- kind of crazy (and DEEP)·but loaded with stuff to read (note: some links are broken)

http://www.bcae1.com/· <--Basic Electronics


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---

There's nothing like a new idea and a warm soldering iron.

Post Edited (pwillard) : 11/13/2007 1:53:34 PM GMT

Javalin

www.allaboutcircuits.com

J

spiritgreywolf

This is awesome! Thank you for the information.

I've been in programming for some time (I interface software at hospitals), and I keep getting drawn to the whole world of embedded systems. The part that I am missing is the whole world of HARDWARE to go along with the SOFTWARE. I mean, I've piddled with some small circuits as part of the game, but never understood WHY i am doing what I'm doing when I work on the hardware.

I dunno - I just think the whole concept of knowing the programming part and actually _building_ something to go along with it is amazing.

Again, thanks for all of the tips!

Ryan

RDL2004

An interesting page related to embedded systems is The Ganssle Group page. There are some good articles to read that are very informative even if some are kind of old, and Jack Ganssle is a pretty good, easy to read writer.

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- Rick