11 ms·

Ultimate Electronics (2021)

242 points by mutant_glofish 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago
I am thinking about recreating the Oberheim SEM module based on the available schematics. This resource, along with the Art of Electronics, appears very helpful.
- alfiedotwtf 3y ago
  In case you didn't know already, check out Eurorack SEM modules from e.g. Studio Electronics, and Doepher
- al2o3cr 3y ago
  TBH I suspect the most useful resource for that would be a semiconductor cross-reference, because the SEM-1A schematic on the Internet Archive has a lot of obsolete parts: * the "standard NPN" (2N5172) is mostly discontinued; a few places have them for ~$1 apiece * the "standard FET" (2N4302) is very discontinued; SynthCube has a few NOS parts for $5(!) apiece * the CA3080 OTA is so discontinued that the first reissue by Rochester has also been discontinued; Alfa has cloned it as the AS3030E but compatibility is not 100% guaranteed. Some of these are overlapping - for instance, many of the FETs are used as buffers because the CA3080 has a weak output - but resolving them will practically be redesigning the circuit from scratch...
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Is there a PDF version of this somewhere? I looked for a link to one on the site but didn't find one.
smcleod 3y ago
Nice site and explanations, I think there would be value in adding a few more analogies / examples where it gets math heavy - my brain borks at some of the equations as while I'm good with logic - I'm pretty terrible with math - but maybe it is simply required understanding. Also - a way to download it as a epub and / or PDF would be excellent.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  I do actually like that they don’t resort to water analogies like a lot of electronic instruction tends to. The hydraulic analogies I think only work to a point and then become more of a hindrance to deeper understanding, so you eventually have to un-learn it to progress. I guess there is probably an ideal middle ground where it can be presented as a “you can think of it kind of like this analogy, but then here’s the actual concept you should learn instead of learning the analogy” kind of way.
  - dhc02 3y ago
    I submit that electricity adheres approximately as closely to the colloquial "water in pipes" model as actual water in pipes does. Which is to say not very well beyond a certain level of detail. But in neither case is there a more useful first order approximation to use.
  - atoav 3y ago
    As someone who teaches electronics my experience is that analogies (including the hydraulic one) are immensely helpful to students as long as they understand them as analogies. I always tend to say, that in reality one has to look closely at transfer curves and formulae, but this would be true for actual hydraulics as well. My goal in the use of analogies is to give them a basic "if there is more of that, there must be less of this"-kind of intuition. This is a really, really useful skill that helps you in practise, because you will automatically do a double-check if you miscalculate or if the result doesn't fit your intuition (and thus sharpening it). After understanding the basic systemic relationships one can go and have a more accurate look, but depending on who we are talking about and what they want to achieve that might not be needed. Many electronic calculations could also be done on a deeper physical level, which would be more accurate, but also much more expensive to calculate. This is not practical for the typical electrical engineer, which is why they go for the simplified calculations. Similarily there are amateur tinkerers which will be able to do most of what they want by relying mostly on analogies and that is okay as well. The math is there if you wanna go deeper as an amateur, just as physics is there if you wanna go even deeper as an electrical engineer. That being said the analogy also serves a purpose for the electrical engineer. Everything is quicker if you intuitively know that voltage has to rise at point x and less current goes through point y etc. Sometimes you don't even need to know how much
asicsp 3y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315899 (624 points | Feb 13, 2020 | 85 comments)
- niklasjansson 3y ago
  And it's still the same "coming soon" status on most subjects.
  - Animats 3y ago
    Right. It stops at the point it becomes useful. They covered the basic theory of EE, and then got stuck. The project has apparently been stuck there since 2020. "The Art of Electronics", by Horowitz and Hill, is far more useful. It's not an easy book, but it teaches you how to actually design and build stuff. The original target audience was physics grad students who need to build some piece of hardware for their research. Their explanations of how to think about what transistors do are very useful. Horowitz and Hill get across some basic useful concepts, such as: * Components are not ideal, but today, many of them, operated within their limits, are pretty close to ideal. So, if you're not doing something that requires very high speed or very high power or very low noise, you can often use off the shelf parts in a straightforward way, without getting too clever. Arduino is this concept taken to the max. * Learn to read data sheets. That tells you what you can buy and what problems you can get pre-solved. * Design and build well-behaved sub-assemblies and connect them up. Don't try to do the whole thing at once. * Learn to design PC boards. It's not that hard, and the tools are quite good.
    - oytis 3y ago
      Maybe that's why I couldn't learn anything useful from TAoE: I wasn't a physics student. It seemed to be neither an good introductory text nor a good reference, and the choice of topics is not very practical too.
    - rerdavies 3y ago
      Looking at the table of contents, I think it might be exactly what I need. I have a degree in pure math (lots of cs), which puts me one degree further removed than physicists from being able to do practical things. It looks very practical.
photonbeam 3y ago
Id be interested when the book is nearer completion
- octagons 3y ago
  This “book” has been in a “coming soon” state for several years now.
konschubert 3y ago
Is Electronics a trending topic on HN or is this just my personal frequency illusion because I am currently stuck with an electronics problem?
- cookieperson 3y ago
  Computers originated from geeks who were interested in electronics. Now days useful electronic components can be acquired easily and cheaply. Makes the hobby much more approachable.
- chongli 3y ago
  I have no idea. I started learning electronics as a hobby last fall and now I’m seeing the posts everywhere. I dismiss it as my personal frequency illusion.
- Aromasin 3y ago
  There's definitely been an uptick from my experience. I'm an EE, so I generally skim read the top 50 articles to pick out the ones that are of interest to me, and skip over anything especially "WebDev" which traditionally made up most of the HN content. I've been favouriting links much more over the last 2-3 months.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  We're all planning a transition around post-LLM software development ;)
- synergy20 3y ago
  yes the trend is that some of those outsourced EE stuff is now back from overseas, we're going to make more devices here hopefully before the last generation of EE engineers die out.
cushychicken 3y ago
Don’t bother with this. It’s half finished SEO fodder, and while most of it is pretty good, it’s probably never going to get done due to competing incentives (i.e. running a business) on the owners’ time. Spend $125 on Horowitz and Hill’s The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition. It’s the last electronics text you’ll ever need.
- Arcanum-XIII 3y ago
  I have it and it's not helping me a lot as a beginner. Maybe there should be something between the "paint by the number" and "get a master in electronic" levels.
  - FL410 3y ago
    I'll admit I haven't read the full thing, but I have and like Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
    - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
      I second this, I have both this and art of electronics and they truly complete one another
      - moffkalast 3y ago
        Do you guys read the whole thing from start to finish or just look up things you want to understand more from time to time? It's like the thickness of LOTR, so that would take extraordinary patience.
        cushychicken 3y ago
        LOTR wishes it was the density of AoE. I use AoE as a reference, but I’ve read full chapters from time to time when I’ve worked on relevant projects. I’ve never done an end to end read. Maybe I will when I retire lol. I want to set aside time to read chapter 5 at some point. The precision electronics chapter is supposed to be bomb. Culminates in a design review of the autoranging circuit of one of the common handheld DMMs.
joezydeco 3y ago
Am I so old that I'm the only one that remembers the Forrest M Mims books that you could pick up at Radio Shack? He really did a great job of making some of this understandable without getting into complex math. https://hackaday.com/2017/01/18/forrest-mims-radio-shack-and-the-notebooks-that-launched-a-thousand-careers/ https://hackaday.com/2017/01/18/forrest-mims-radio-shack-and... Example: http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Getting_Started_in_Electronics_-_3ed_-_[Forrest_M.Mims].pdf http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Getting_Started_in_Ele...
- tanseydavid 3y ago
  I still have a copy of the Mims/Radio Shack book. Compulsion and nostalgia have kept me from tossing this one (and also its neighbor on the shelf): Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide.
compumike 3y ago
"Ultimate Electronics" author here -- waking up and seeing this on HN this morning! Reading the comments here, it seems like the summary of feedback is simply "please write more sections". It's true that I haven't had much time to devote to this project lately due to other work commitments, my apologies. Adding any new section involves three major intertwined components: 1. the conceptual explanatory text, 2. the equations and algebraically-solved examples, and 3. the schematics and interactive simulations. Right now my focus is on building out all three (probably roughly equal in time demand) and I am wondering if that is a style that is working? Any other feedback on the content or style itself? Thanks -- your feedback is encouraging :)

I am thinking about recreating the Oberheim SEM module based on the available schematics. This resource, along with the Art of Electronics, appears very helpful.

alfiedotwtf 3y ago
In case you didn't know already, check out Eurorack SEM modules from e.g. Studio Electronics, and Doepher
al2o3cr 3y ago
TBH I suspect the most useful resource for that would be a semiconductor cross-reference, because the SEM-1A schematic on the Internet Archive has a lot of obsolete parts: * the "standard NPN" (2N5172) is mostly discontinued; a few places have them for ~$1 apiece * the "standard FET" (2N4302) is very discontinued; SynthCube has a few NOS parts for $5(!) apiece * the CA3080 OTA is so discontinued that the first reissue by Rochester has also been discontinued; Alfa has cloned it as the AS3030E but compatibility is not 100% guaranteed. Some of these are overlapping - for instance, many of the FETs are used as buffers because the CA3080 has a weak output - but resolving them will practically be redesigning the circuit from scratch...

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

Is there a PDF version of this somewhere? I looked for a link to one on the site but didn't find one.

smcleod 3y ago

Nice site and explanations, I think there would be value in adding a few more analogies / examples where it gets math heavy - my brain borks at some of the equations as while I'm good with logic - I'm pretty terrible with math - but maybe it is simply required understanding. Also - a way to download it as a epub and / or PDF would be excellent.

stephen_g 3y ago
I do actually like that they don’t resort to water analogies like a lot of electronic instruction tends to. The hydraulic analogies I think only work to a point and then become more of a hindrance to deeper understanding, so you eventually have to un-learn it to progress. I guess there is probably an ideal middle ground where it can be presented as a “you can think of it kind of like this analogy, but then here’s the actual concept you should learn instead of learning the analogy” kind of way.
- dhc02 3y ago
  I submit that electricity adheres approximately as closely to the colloquial "water in pipes" model as actual water in pipes does. Which is to say not very well beyond a certain level of detail. But in neither case is there a more useful first order approximation to use.
- atoav 3y ago
  As someone who teaches electronics my experience is that analogies (including the hydraulic one) are immensely helpful to students as long as they understand them as analogies. I always tend to say, that in reality one has to look closely at transfer curves and formulae, but this would be true for actual hydraulics as well. My goal in the use of analogies is to give them a basic "if there is more of that, there must be less of this"-kind of intuition. This is a really, really useful skill that helps you in practise, because you will automatically do a double-check if you miscalculate or if the result doesn't fit your intuition (and thus sharpening it). After understanding the basic systemic relationships one can go and have a more accurate look, but depending on who we are talking about and what they want to achieve that might not be needed. Many electronic calculations could also be done on a deeper physical level, which would be more accurate, but also much more expensive to calculate. This is not practical for the typical electrical engineer, which is why they go for the simplified calculations. Similarily there are amateur tinkerers which will be able to do most of what they want by relying mostly on analogies and that is okay as well. The math is there if you wanna go deeper as an amateur, just as physics is there if you wanna go even deeper as an electrical engineer. That being said the analogy also serves a purpose for the electrical engineer. Everything is quicker if you intuitively know that voltage has to rise at point x and less current goes through point y etc. Sometimes you don't even need to know how much

asicsp 3y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315899 (624 points | Feb 13, 2020 | 85 comments)

niklasjansson 3y ago
And it's still the same "coming soon" status on most subjects.
- Animats 3y ago
  Right. It stops at the point it becomes useful. They covered the basic theory of EE, and then got stuck. The project has apparently been stuck there since 2020. "The Art of Electronics", by Horowitz and Hill, is far more useful. It's not an easy book, but it teaches you how to actually design and build stuff. The original target audience was physics grad students who need to build some piece of hardware for their research. Their explanations of how to think about what transistors do are very useful. Horowitz and Hill get across some basic useful concepts, such as: * Components are not ideal, but today, many of them, operated within their limits, are pretty close to ideal. So, if you're not doing something that requires very high speed or very high power or very low noise, you can often use off the shelf parts in a straightforward way, without getting too clever. Arduino is this concept taken to the max. * Learn to read data sheets. That tells you what you can buy and what problems you can get pre-solved. * Design and build well-behaved sub-assemblies and connect them up. Don't try to do the whole thing at once. * Learn to design PC boards. It's not that hard, and the tools are quite good.
  - oytis 3y ago
    Maybe that's why I couldn't learn anything useful from TAoE: I wasn't a physics student. It seemed to be neither an good introductory text nor a good reference, and the choice of topics is not very practical too.
  - rerdavies 3y ago
    Looking at the table of contents, I think it might be exactly what I need. I have a degree in pure math (lots of cs), which puts me one degree further removed than physicists from being able to do practical things. It looks very practical.

photonbeam 3y ago

Id be interested when the book is nearer completion

octagons 3y ago
This “book” has been in a “coming soon” state for several years now.

konschubert 3y ago

Is Electronics a trending topic on HN or is this just my personal frequency illusion because I am currently stuck with an electronics problem?

cookieperson 3y ago
Computers originated from geeks who were interested in electronics. Now days useful electronic components can be acquired easily and cheaply. Makes the hobby much more approachable.
chongli 3y ago
I have no idea. I started learning electronics as a hobby last fall and now I’m seeing the posts everywhere. I dismiss it as my personal frequency illusion.
Aromasin 3y ago
There's definitely been an uptick from my experience. I'm an EE, so I generally skim read the top 50 articles to pick out the ones that are of interest to me, and skip over anything especially "WebDev" which traditionally made up most of the HN content. I've been favouriting links much more over the last 2-3 months.
nkozyra 3y ago
We're all planning a transition around post-LLM software development ;)
synergy20 3y ago
yes the trend is that some of those outsourced EE stuff is now back from overseas, we're going to make more devices here hopefully before the last generation of EE engineers die out.

cushychicken 3y ago

Don’t bother with this. It’s half finished SEO fodder, and while most of it is pretty good, it’s probably never going to get done due to competing incentives (i.e. running a business) on the owners’ time. Spend $125 on Horowitz and Hill’s The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition. It’s the last electronics text you’ll ever need.

Arcanum-XIII 3y ago
I have it and it's not helping me a lot as a beginner. Maybe there should be something between the "paint by the number" and "get a master in electronic" levels.
- FL410 3y ago
  I'll admit I haven't read the full thing, but I have and like Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
  - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
    I second this, I have both this and art of electronics and they truly complete one another
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Do you guys read the whole thing from start to finish or just look up things you want to understand more from time to time? It's like the thickness of LOTR, so that would take extraordinary patience.
      - cushychicken 3y ago
        LOTR wishes it was the density of AoE. I use AoE as a reference, but I’ve read full chapters from time to time when I’ve worked on relevant projects. I’ve never done an end to end read. Maybe I will when I retire lol. I want to set aside time to read chapter 5 at some point. The precision electronics chapter is supposed to be bomb. Culminates in a design review of the autoranging circuit of one of the common handheld DMMs.

joezydeco 3y ago

Am I so old that I'm the only one that remembers the Forrest M Mims books that you could pick up at Radio Shack? He really did a great job of making some of this understandable without getting into complex math. https://hackaday.com/2017/01/18/forrest-mims-radio-shack-and-the-notebooks-that-launched-a-thousand-careers/ https://hackaday.com/2017/01/18/forrest-mims-radio-shack-and... Example: http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Getting_Started_in_Electronics_-_3ed_-_[Forrest_M.Mims].pdf http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Getting_Started_in_Ele...

tanseydavid 3y ago
I still have a copy of the Mims/Radio Shack book. Compulsion and nostalgia have kept me from tossing this one (and also its neighbor on the shelf): Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide.

compumike 3y ago

"Ultimate Electronics" author here -- waking up and seeing this on HN this morning! Reading the comments here, it seems like the summary of feedback is simply "please write more sections". It's true that I haven't had much time to devote to this project lately due to other work commitments, my apologies. Adding any new section involves three major intertwined components: 1. the conceptual explanatory text, 2. the equations and algebraically-solved examples, and 3. the schematics and interactive simulations. Right now my focus is on building out all three (probably roughly equal in time demand) and I am wondering if that is a style that is working? Any other feedback on the content or style itself? Thanks -- your feedback is encouraging :)