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Analog circuit design is very very secretive because the semiconductor industry is so cutthroat. I would definitely get fired if I posted about any of my design

by kayson 6y ago

Analog circuit design is very very secretive because the semiconductor industry is so cutthroat. I would definitely get fired if I posted about any of my design work on a blog. And to be fair, anything specific enough to be interesting could be copied easily enough. For a website, there is an enormous amount of visibility into the final product. You can even look at the source. For circuits, though, all you get is a tiny piece of plastic and metal with a silicon die inside. Even if you decap it, analyze it, and produce a netlist, the information is still limited and very hard to use. If anyone has any questions about analog design in general, though, I'd be happy to answer them. Maybe a Q&A blog would be interesting enough?

cptnapalm 6y ago
I've tried a few times to get started learning, but I always hit serious snags. I've tried Practical Electronics for Inventors, but got lost in all the electrons. I got decently far in Art of Digital Design (culminates in making a PDP-8) but hit a part too hard for me and got stuck. Any suggestions?
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  My canonical answer to this question for the last 2 decades+ has been The Radio Amateur's Handbook. It will take you from zero to basic electronics with a healthy dose of radio theory and it is eminently approachable. I haven't read an edition in years, so I don't know how much it's changed. My recommendation would be the pre 1995 editions. Usually easy to find at libraries, but not these days... I think I also have this book https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400 https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E... Or some other similar book from Jim Williams. It's not as much about electronics as it is about the engineers who came up with interesting ideas and designs. Which brings up another idea: google Analog Devices Analog Dialog. They put out this newsletter for like 50 years and it pretty much tells the history of precision analog design. Yeah, I'm paid to program, but I'm still an old school analog circuit design pretender at heart :-)
- kayson 6y ago
  For a practical understanding of electronics, there's no need to go so far deep into the theory that you'd get "lost in all the electrons". I really like HyperPhysics for the basic, basic theory - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html#emcon http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html#emcon I would go through the Circuit Elements tree first, then the Electric Circuits. If you want to go further, there are tons of college courses with lecture notes available online. You're probably looking for something like an EE201/Electronic Circuits. Here's one I found that seemed to have all the important topics: http://tuttle.merc.iastate.edu/ee201/topics.htm http://tuttle.merc.iastate.edu/ee201/topics.htm Unfortunately, sometimes the lecture notes are hard to understand since they're not meant to be a standalone tutorial. You may also check MIT or Stanford for their free course versions, which probably have the entire lecture. From there, to be honest, I'm not sure what to suggest. One thing I usually recommend to people interested in electronics is to pick up a breadboard kit/tutorial like one by Elegoo on Amazon. It's slightly more programming focused, but it covers a lot of other circuit topics and it's a great way to get started with experimentation. I find that being able to actually produce something as you're learning makes it a lot more engaging. Art of Digital design is a 2nd or 3rd year college level textbook so you might be missing some context there. I would say if you want to go further, look into a transistor-level circuit course (which I took after EE201). That covered both analog and digital transistor circuits, which supported the digital design class I was taking at the same time.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  This is my favorite circuit book: https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400 https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E... It is written from zen-level experts in a very ELI5 way. The examples start off with a naive approach, and step by step explain how they were improved, in some cases over decades. Plus it focuses on how analog really is an art. Circuits have so many competing design parameters, and the canvas is so wide open, that it really takes a different kind of brain to approach the problem. This book gives a peak into that process in a comical, light-hearted way.

by kayson 6y ago

cptnapalm 6y ago

I've tried a few times to get started learning, but I always hit serious snags. I've tried Practical Electronics for Inventors, but got lost in all the electrons. I got decently far in Art of Digital Design (culminates in making a PDP-8) but hit a part too hard for me and got stuck. Any suggestions?

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
My canonical answer to this question for the last 2 decades+ has been The Radio Amateur's Handbook. It will take you from zero to basic electronics with a healthy dose of radio theory and it is eminently approachable. I haven't read an edition in years, so I don't know how much it's changed. My recommendation would be the pre 1995 editions. Usually easy to find at libraries, but not these days... I think I also have this book https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400 https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E... Or some other similar book from Jim Williams. It's not as much about electronics as it is about the engineers who came up with interesting ideas and designs. Which brings up another idea: google Analog Devices Analog Dialog. They put out this newsletter for like 50 years and it pretty much tells the history of precision analog design. Yeah, I'm paid to program, but I'm still an old school analog circuit design pretender at heart :-)
kayson 6y ago
For a practical understanding of electronics, there's no need to go so far deep into the theory that you'd get "lost in all the electrons". I really like HyperPhysics for the basic, basic theory - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html#emcon http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html#emcon I would go through the Circuit Elements tree first, then the Electric Circuits. If you want to go further, there are tons of college courses with lecture notes available online. You're probably looking for something like an EE201/Electronic Circuits. Here's one I found that seemed to have all the important topics: http://tuttle.merc.iastate.edu/ee201/topics.htm http://tuttle.merc.iastate.edu/ee201/topics.htm Unfortunately, sometimes the lecture notes are hard to understand since they're not meant to be a standalone tutorial. You may also check MIT or Stanford for their free course versions, which probably have the entire lecture. From there, to be honest, I'm not sure what to suggest. One thing I usually recommend to people interested in electronics is to pick up a breadboard kit/tutorial like one by Elegoo on Amazon. It's slightly more programming focused, but it covers a lot of other circuit topics and it's a great way to get started with experimentation. I find that being able to actually produce something as you're learning makes it a lot more engaging. Art of Digital design is a 2nd or 3rd year college level textbook so you might be missing some context there. I would say if you want to go further, look into a transistor-level circuit course (which I took after EE201). That covered both analog and digital transistor circuits, which supported the digital design class I was taking at the same time.
staycoolboy 6y ago
This is my favorite circuit book: https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400 https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E... It is written from zen-level experts in a very ELI5 way. The examples start off with a naive approach, and step by step explain how they were improved, in some cases over decades. Plus it focuses on how analog really is an art. Circuits have so many competing design parameters, and the canvas is so wide open, that it really takes a different kind of brain to approach the problem. This book gives a peak into that process in a comical, light-hearted way.