8 ms·

Resources for electronic engineers and hobbyists

183 points by kasbah 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gjkood 10y ago
Wow, this is a very good list and eminently bookmark worthy. I would also include sites like Adafruit.com and Sparkfun.com for prototyping supplies and the blogs they host. I know Octopart or the other Parts searches would cover these. Another useful link would be to lists of electronics tools/instrumentation such as Oscilloscopes, Logic Analyzers, Spectrum Analyzers, plain vanilla Multimeters. EEVBlog has fantastic blog posts/equipment reviews and is already included in the list. This would help build your own little electronics workshop and would be useful to folks who are not formally trained in EE and want to self study and practice. I especially loved the 'All About Circuits' tutorial site. I am too lazy to pore over my old Millman & Halkias or Horowitz and Hill text books. This gives me the information in bite-sized chunks. Edit: I just noticed the 'contributing.md' link. Good work. "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions." eh?
- Etheryte 10y ago
  Seconding your instrumentation post, I always have a very hard time when I need to buy a new tool, a simple up-to-date guide would be super helpful.
- kasbah 10y ago
  Yeah, sounds good, as you already discovered: pull-requests welcome.
madengr 10y ago
Electrical vs electronics engineering is also differentiated by those who take electromagnetics, thermodynamics, and those who don't. Perhaps there is too much to pack in, especially since EE is often merged with the CS department, but students are getting off too easy these days.
donquichotte 10y ago
Nice list! I also recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It is quite encyclopedic, but often very clear and well illustrated.
- Animats 10y ago
  Yes. The Third Edition came out last year, after a delay of about 20 years, and now they're up to date. This matters, because they mention lots of specific part numbers. Horowitz and Hill haven't accepted that everything is surface mount now. Read their chapter on soldering, where they whine about surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it. There are lots of surface mount soldering videos, most of which are by people who have much better than average tweezer dexterity.
  - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
    That's unfortunate about the surface mount. As a word of encouragement, I know one can do complex surface mount soldering with just a few specialized tools. I picked up a good stereo zoom microscope from craigslist. Mine is a Leica but I also recommend the amscope and similar models you can get online. They're a chinese rebrand but I've used those models and the optical quality is great. I recommend the models with a boom arm if you have the space. Then you need a hot air rework station. You can apply solder paste manually from a tube - just squirt the paste onto the pads. This is uneven and will require clean up with an iron and sometimes multiple tries. Get a no clean flux pen also. If you want to do more than one PCB, I highly recommend using a solder stencil. I recommend getting PCBs from Seeed studio in china - 10 PCBs starts at $20 (total) plus shipping (around $40). Throw in a solder stencil for another $20. When the stencil arrives use heavy scissors to cut out about two inches/50mm around your design, take one of the pieces of stiff board that the PCBs are packaged with, tape down some extra PCBs around one free PCB, and then tape the stencil on the top so it lines up. Get some solder paste from Digikey or Sparkfun and use an old gift card to squeegee it onto the PCB. Then lift the stencil up using one piece of tape as a hinge. Super easy to do this at home. Now place on parts using tweezers and the microscope. Then use the hot air gun to slowly heat up the PCB till it's all about 260C, and then turn it to 360C and briefly melt the solder at all locations. Then let it cool. If you want to do this regularly, invest in a T962A soldering oven from ebay for ~$300 from ebay. I did a kickstarter for a little wireless internet of things board, and this is my process for home assembly. When you want to do mass assembly, consider Seeed studio. I had them assemble 4000+ boards and it mostly went well. I did have an issue with an incorrectly substituted part so be very clear about what work you expect done and be clear about which parts you will accept substitutes for. They did make good on their error and I would use them again. My email is in my profile if you want more tips on SMT soldering. For reference, here are two board that I soldered using the above techniques: http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_edited_sm.jpg http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_e... http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_edited_sm.JPG http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_e... EDIT: For PCB design I previously would have recommended EAGLE, but now I would recommend KiCAD. I have not yet used KiCAD, but this is just a learning curve issue (new software versus a busy schedule). If you're learning from scratch and want a tool you can use forever, I'd recommend KiCAD based on recommendations from others.
brandmeyer 10y ago
A couple of things to add: TI's Opamps for Everyone goes into great detail on various opamp circuits and their design criteria. If you have a mind for designing your own filters, GNU Octave's signal and controls packages more or less replicate commercial Matlab's controls and signal processing toolboxes (console mode only, of course). LTSpice is a free SPICE with built-in schematic capture. It is very much tuned for selling Linear's catalog, since it contains models for many of their parts, but is also generally useful.
- kasbah 10y ago
  LTSpice is already on the list! Have started reading over the TI book: http://web.mit.edu/6.101/www/reference/op_amps_everyone.pdf http://web.mit.edu/6.101/www/reference/op_amps_everyone.pdf Do you have a link or more info on working with Octave in this way?
  - brandmeyer 10y ago
    Any introductory text on SISO (single input/single output) control theory will be a good start, since the same underlying tools are used for signal processing as well as active control systems. The Wikibook on control systems is OK, and will at least get you a feel for some of the mathematics. Modern Control Systems by Dorf and Bishop is a great SISO textbook. Modern Control Theory by Brogan is a great MIMO (multi-input/multi-output) text, too. For just noodling and doodling around, the functions 'tf', 'ss', 'bode', 'freqz', 'butter', 'tf2sos', 'besself', and 'c2d' are a decent start. https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/filters/filters.html https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/filters/filters.html and http://dspguide.com/ http://dspguide.com/ are great online references for digital signal processing, and you'll find that many of the underlying mathematical tools for discrete-time analysis carry over into the continuous domain, too.
jwr 10y ago
I would like to shamelessly submit PartsBox.io (https://partsbox.io/ https://partsbox.io/) as a solution to keep track of your components once you start designing & building something. It's free for Hobbyists/Makers with single-user access, multi-user access is in paid plans. (I'm the founder/creator)
- kasbah 10y ago
  Hi jwr, I have been considering adding a section with Partsbox.io and Partkeepr but have been hesitating because I don't have any personal experience with them yet. But given I got this review from a redditor I should probably add it: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5oc84d/a_curated_list_for_awesome_resources_for/dciobw4/?context=3&st=iyhm2b2m&sh=41599414 https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5oc84d/a_curat... On a side note I would love to pick your brain sometime about starting a business in this area as I am considering the avenues for turning my project sharing site https://kitnic.it https://kitnic.it into one.
  - jwr 10y ago
    Well, try it your self and see if you like it :-) As for brain picking, no problem, please contact me directly — I will gladly talk to a fellow entrepreneur.
    - kasbah 10y ago
      I _have_ checked out the web interface a bit and it seemed really nice. I think the main problem for me is the time investment required to input all the parts to give it a real go. Will be in touch soon about the business side.
kasbah 10y ago
If anyone hear could vouch for Qucs simulator and explain a bit why it's good I would love to add it. It was recommended before but without reasoning and I haven't had a chance to try it. http://qucs.sourceforge.net/ http://qucs.sourceforge.net/
- blackguardx 10y ago
  Qucs is trying to emulate Keysight's ADS software. It is mainly RF focused, but can do a lot more. ADS is awesome. Qucs has great potential, but needs some work. It is still useful, though.
anfractuosity 10y ago
I found https://www.snapeda.com/instapart/ https://www.snapeda.com/instapart/ recently. I just requested a part via their free plan, as I've never made a footprint for a part before (something which I do need to learn). I'd be interested to know of other people's experience with them. Also I found http://pcbshopper.com/ http://pcbshopper.com/ pretty handy.
- kasbah 10y ago
  Yes, PCBshopper.com is really nice and I forgot about it! There is a PR open for SnapEDA but I am a bit reluctant as I don't have enough experience with using it. If you jump in on that I might change my mind: https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics/pull/1 https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics/pull/1
  - teaBOT 10y ago
    Great list! Thank you! I agree with @anfractuosity, that I'd like to see SnapEDA on this list. There my go-to source for CAD packages. I don't even create CAD parts anymore; if it's not in their DB already, I just request it. I've had great success with them.
- elihu 10y ago
  Thanks, I hadn't heard of pcbshopper.com before. That's very useful.
brandmeyer 10y ago
A few more for PCB work: For prototyping work in the US, I've used http://ohararp.com/stencils/ http://ohararp.com/stencils/ for laser-cut Kapton stencils, and https://oshpark.com/ https://oshpark.com/ for PCBs. For professional turn-key work in the US, I've found Advanced Assembly (http://aa-pcbassembly.com/ http://aa-pcbassembly.com/) to be absolutely fantastic. They've managed to produce a pick-n-place automated process for low-volume fully-assembled prototype quantity PCB assemblies. The service is priced a little too high for amateur work, but its worth every penny for nimble startup work.
- antoniuschan99 10y ago
  How are pcbassembly compared to chinese fabs like SeeedStudio? Their prices are cheap and they do fast turnaround.
  - Leoooeee 10y ago
    https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html
compumike 10y ago
https://www.circuithub.com/ https://www.circuithub.com/ for short-run turn-key manufacturing (hobbyist friendly at small quantities) https://www.circuitlab.com/ https://www.circuitlab.com/ for browser-based circuit simulation and schematic capture (now used for teaching EE in dozens of US universities and growing -- note: wrote it!) http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ for Q&A, beginner to intermediate level topics
dthal 10y ago
This listing seems to be missing https://upverter.com/ https://upverter.com/.

183 points by kasbah 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Wow, this is a very good list and eminently bookmark worthy. I would also include sites like Adafruit.com and Sparkfun.com for prototyping supplies and the blogs they host. I know Octopart or the other Parts searches would cover these. Another useful link would be to lists of electronics tools/instrumentation such as Oscilloscopes, Logic Analyzers, Spectrum Analyzers, plain vanilla Multimeters. EEVBlog has fantastic blog posts/equipment reviews and is already included in the list. This would help build your own little electronics workshop and would be useful to folks who are not formally trained in EE and want to self study and practice. I especially loved the 'All About Circuits' tutorial site. I am too lazy to pore over my old Millman & Halkias or Horowitz and Hill text books. This gives me the information in bite-sized chunks. Edit: I just noticed the 'contributing.md' link. Good work. "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions." eh?

Etheryte 10y ago
Seconding your instrumentation post, I always have a very hard time when I need to buy a new tool, a simple up-to-date guide would be super helpful.
kasbah 10y ago
Yeah, sounds good, as you already discovered: pull-requests welcome.

madengr 10y ago

Electrical vs electronics engineering is also differentiated by those who take electromagnetics, thermodynamics, and those who don't. Perhaps there is too much to pack in, especially since EE is often merged with the CS department, but students are getting off too easy these days.

donquichotte 10y ago

Nice list! I also recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It is quite encyclopedic, but often very clear and well illustrated.

Animats 10y ago
Yes. The Third Edition came out last year, after a delay of about 20 years, and now they're up to date. This matters, because they mention lots of specific part numbers. Horowitz and Hill haven't accepted that everything is surface mount now. Read their chapter on soldering, where they whine about surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it. There are lots of surface mount soldering videos, most of which are by people who have much better than average tweezer dexterity.
- TaylorAlexander 10y ago
  That's unfortunate about the surface mount. As a word of encouragement, I know one can do complex surface mount soldering with just a few specialized tools. I picked up a good stereo zoom microscope from craigslist. Mine is a Leica but I also recommend the amscope and similar models you can get online. They're a chinese rebrand but I've used those models and the optical quality is great. I recommend the models with a boom arm if you have the space. Then you need a hot air rework station. You can apply solder paste manually from a tube - just squirt the paste onto the pads. This is uneven and will require clean up with an iron and sometimes multiple tries. Get a no clean flux pen also. If you want to do more than one PCB, I highly recommend using a solder stencil. I recommend getting PCBs from Seeed studio in china - 10 PCBs starts at $20 (total) plus shipping (around $40). Throw in a solder stencil for another $20. When the stencil arrives use heavy scissors to cut out about two inches/50mm around your design, take one of the pieces of stiff board that the PCBs are packaged with, tape down some extra PCBs around one free PCB, and then tape the stencil on the top so it lines up. Get some solder paste from Digikey or Sparkfun and use an old gift card to squeegee it onto the PCB. Then lift the stencil up using one piece of tape as a hinge. Super easy to do this at home. Now place on parts using tweezers and the microscope. Then use the hot air gun to slowly heat up the PCB till it's all about 260C, and then turn it to 360C and briefly melt the solder at all locations. Then let it cool. If you want to do this regularly, invest in a T962A soldering oven from ebay for ~$300 from ebay. I did a kickstarter for a little wireless internet of things board, and this is my process for home assembly. When you want to do mass assembly, consider Seeed studio. I had them assemble 4000+ boards and it mostly went well. I did have an issue with an incorrectly substituted part so be very clear about what work you expect done and be clear about which parts you will accept substitutes for. They did make good on their error and I would use them again. My email is in my profile if you want more tips on SMT soldering. For reference, here are two board that I soldered using the above techniques: http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_edited_sm.jpg http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_e... http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_edited_sm.JPG http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_e... EDIT: For PCB design I previously would have recommended EAGLE, but now I would recommend KiCAD. I have not yet used KiCAD, but this is just a learning curve issue (new software versus a busy schedule). If you're learning from scratch and want a tool you can use forever, I'd recommend KiCAD based on recommendations from others.

brandmeyer 10y ago

A couple of things to add: TI's Opamps for Everyone goes into great detail on various opamp circuits and their design criteria. If you have a mind for designing your own filters, GNU Octave's signal and controls packages more or less replicate commercial Matlab's controls and signal processing toolboxes (console mode only, of course). LTSpice is a free SPICE with built-in schematic capture. It is very much tuned for selling Linear's catalog, since it contains models for many of their parts, but is also generally useful.

kasbah 10y ago
LTSpice is already on the list! Have started reading over the TI book: http://web.mit.edu/6.101/www/reference/op_amps_everyone.pdf http://web.mit.edu/6.101/www/reference/op_amps_everyone.pdf Do you have a link or more info on working with Octave in this way?
- brandmeyer 10y ago
  Any introductory text on SISO (single input/single output) control theory will be a good start, since the same underlying tools are used for signal processing as well as active control systems. The Wikibook on control systems is OK, and will at least get you a feel for some of the mathematics. Modern Control Systems by Dorf and Bishop is a great SISO textbook. Modern Control Theory by Brogan is a great MIMO (multi-input/multi-output) text, too. For just noodling and doodling around, the functions 'tf', 'ss', 'bode', 'freqz', 'butter', 'tf2sos', 'besself', and 'c2d' are a decent start. https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/filters/filters.html https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/filters/filters.html and http://dspguide.com/ http://dspguide.com/ are great online references for digital signal processing, and you'll find that many of the underlying mathematical tools for discrete-time analysis carry over into the continuous domain, too.

jwr 10y ago

I would like to shamelessly submit PartsBox.io (https://partsbox.io/ https://partsbox.io/) as a solution to keep track of your components once you start designing & building something. It's free for Hobbyists/Makers with single-user access, multi-user access is in paid plans. (I'm the founder/creator)

kasbah 10y ago
Hi jwr, I have been considering adding a section with Partsbox.io and Partkeepr but have been hesitating because I don't have any personal experience with them yet. But given I got this review from a redditor I should probably add it: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5oc84d/a_curated_list_for_awesome_resources_for/dciobw4/?context=3&st=iyhm2b2m&sh=41599414 https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5oc84d/a_curat... On a side note I would love to pick your brain sometime about starting a business in this area as I am considering the avenues for turning my project sharing site https://kitnic.it https://kitnic.it into one.
- jwr 10y ago
  Well, try it your self and see if you like it :-) As for brain picking, no problem, please contact me directly — I will gladly talk to a fellow entrepreneur.
  - kasbah 10y ago
    I _have_ checked out the web interface a bit and it seemed really nice. I think the main problem for me is the time investment required to input all the parts to give it a real go. Will be in touch soon about the business side.

kasbah 10y ago

If anyone hear could vouch for Qucs simulator and explain a bit why it's good I would love to add it. It was recommended before but without reasoning and I haven't had a chance to try it. http://qucs.sourceforge.net/ http://qucs.sourceforge.net/

blackguardx 10y ago
Qucs is trying to emulate Keysight's ADS software. It is mainly RF focused, but can do a lot more. ADS is awesome. Qucs has great potential, but needs some work. It is still useful, though.

anfractuosity 10y ago

I found https://www.snapeda.com/instapart/ https://www.snapeda.com/instapart/ recently. I just requested a part via their free plan, as I've never made a footprint for a part before (something which I do need to learn). I'd be interested to know of other people's experience with them. Also I found http://pcbshopper.com/ http://pcbshopper.com/ pretty handy.

kasbah 10y ago
Yes, PCBshopper.com is really nice and I forgot about it! There is a PR open for SnapEDA but I am a bit reluctant as I don't have enough experience with using it. If you jump in on that I might change my mind: https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics/pull/1 https://github.com/monostable/awesome-electronics/pull/1
- teaBOT 10y ago
  Great list! Thank you! I agree with @anfractuosity, that I'd like to see SnapEDA on this list. There my go-to source for CAD packages. I don't even create CAD parts anymore; if it's not in their DB already, I just request it. I've had great success with them.
elihu 10y ago
Thanks, I hadn't heard of pcbshopper.com before. That's very useful.

brandmeyer 10y ago

A few more for PCB work: For prototyping work in the US, I've used http://ohararp.com/stencils/ http://ohararp.com/stencils/ for laser-cut Kapton stencils, and https://oshpark.com/ https://oshpark.com/ for PCBs. For professional turn-key work in the US, I've found Advanced Assembly (http://aa-pcbassembly.com/ http://aa-pcbassembly.com/) to be absolutely fantastic. They've managed to produce a pick-n-place automated process for low-volume fully-assembled prototype quantity PCB assemblies. The service is priced a little too high for amateur work, but its worth every penny for nimble startup work.

antoniuschan99 10y ago
How are pcbassembly compared to chinese fabs like SeeedStudio? Their prices are cheap and they do fast turnaround.
- Leoooeee 10y ago
  https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html

compumike 10y ago

https://www.circuithub.com/ https://www.circuithub.com/ for short-run turn-key manufacturing (hobbyist friendly at small quantities) https://www.circuitlab.com/ https://www.circuitlab.com/ for browser-based circuit simulation and schematic capture (now used for teaching EE in dozens of US universities and growing -- note: wrote it!) http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ for Q&A, beginner to intermediate level topics

dthal 10y ago

This listing seems to be missing https://upverter.com/ https://upverter.com/.