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Something I've always disliked about electronics instruction, is discussion of actual applications. Consider the esteemed Art of Electronics. By chapter, it co

Something I've always disliked about electronics instruction, is discussion of actual applications. Consider the esteemed Art of Electronics. By chapter, it covers Fundamentals, Transistors, Op Amps, Filters, and Oscillators. That's all well and good. Except, in my case, while these are all interesting in isolation, I don't know what I am supposed to do with these components. How do I turn these components in to, say, a radio, or a garage door opener, or whatever else folks do with electronics? No doubt it probably doesn't help to approach it without an application. That said, when learning programming, we had all of these contrived exercises to illustrate a programming concept. I remember an early Fortran exercise was computing the date for Easter in any particular year. Did I have a particular need to know where Easter fell? No, but it was nice to see math, and expressions, and variable, and input/output in operation vs just being presented with operators and precedence rules. We had to apply it to a "real world" task. I took an electronics class in High School. And, frankly, we didn't build anything. We wired components together and took measurements. I learned Ohms Law, the resistor color code, etc. I did build, I think, an AM transmitter kit. Discrete components, PC board, soldered it all up. But I had no idea how it worked. Just an array random components soldered together. Honestly, I think the success of modern hobby digital electronics, centered around mostly interfacing Things to a microcontroller, has such good velocity due to how little actual "electronics" knowledge you need to get your LED blinking or servo moving. It's mostly wiring up black boxes.

ffhhj 5y ago
> How do I turn these components in to, say, a radio The problem is that you have so many models of the same components, that can be connected together in so many configurations, to obtain so many results, that even if the book had a recipe to build a radio, it won't tell you a lot of how to build the radio for your given application (freq. range? power? bands? noise correction? etc.). It would probably be better to explain different components and how to use tools to probe them and tell whether they are behaving with the right voltage, current, resistance, frequency, timing, logic, etc.
buescher 5y ago
Radio is the traditional hobby application and is a good place to start. The ARRL publications vary in quality and level but are generally pretty good. You can go as deep as you want into RF design at the hobby level as a ham. It's sort of a new golden age with good-enough test equipment so cheap these days and the sheer range of parts available on the internet.

ffhhj 5y ago

> How do I turn these components in to, say, a radio The problem is that you have so many models of the same components, that can be connected together in so many configurations, to obtain so many results, that even if the book had a recipe to build a radio, it won't tell you a lot of how to build the radio for your given application (freq. range? power? bands? noise correction? etc.). It would probably be better to explain different components and how to use tools to probe them and tell whether they are behaving with the right voltage, current, resistance, frequency, timing, logic, etc.

buescher 5y ago

Radio is the traditional hobby application and is a good place to start. The ARRL publications vary in quality and level but are generally pretty good. You can go as deep as you want into RF design at the hobby level as a ham. It's sort of a new golden age with good-enough test equipment so cheap these days and the sheer range of parts available on the internet.