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Designing Electronics That Work
- gmassman 2y agoNice work Hunter! I’m starting a hardware side project so I’ll definitely be giving the book a read. Hopefully it helps me avoid some of the common electronic pitfalls.
- klysm 2y agoI bought and read this, would recommend.
- mouse_ 2y agoThanks for this!
- CamperBob2 2y agoThe page contains a link that says "If you want to get a copy, you can download a digital copy for free." Clicking this link either asks you to name a price (for something you haven't yet had a chance to evaluate) or takes you to a page that either has no actual .PDF download link, or has hidden it well enough to turn it into a puzzle. Either way, not an ideal first impression. Designing electronics that work is a lot like designing a web page that works: even if it doesn't end up simple, it should almost always start out that way.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TheAceOfHearts 2y agoYou can type in a price of 0, then it asks for your email and it takes you to a PDF download page.
- beryilma 2y agoAs much as I appreciate the author's effort, if I have to enter my email to get the "free" book, then the book is not free.
- lelandfe 2y agoLots of free things require identifying yourself, like healthcare. Those, just like this free book, are still free.
- speed_spread 2y agoHealthcare has expectations of privacy, legally enforceable. Random insert-email-here has expectations of a scale of getting spammed to getting fucked out of your online identity.
- lelandfe 2y ago"If I have to enter my email to get the 'free' book, then the book is not free" was the original assertion. I missed the implied footnote about privacy expectations.
- speed_spread 2y agoYou pay, personal information and lost time is the currency.
- antidumbass 2y ago"If I have to show my card to get into Costco, the free samples aren't free"
- yaheath 2y agoNo it doesn't. Looks like it's been removed because of the pending second edition, which will no longer be free.
- TheAceOfHearts 2y agoMaybe the author changed something. But when I saw the link, I put in $0 and my email and I received a PDF download link.
- nartho 2y agoMmh all you hate to do is enter 0 for the price and click on the huge pink button to get the pdf
- CamperBob2 2y agoMmh, OK, I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deskr 2y agoLord Jesus F Christ. The author writes a complete electronics book and gives it away for free, and your entitled rectum moans about having to type $0 to get it for free?
- sockaddr 2y agoLook, the flow is stupid and broken, he's not complaining about typing the $0. I had the same issue. It's a gumroad thing I think. Again. It's stupid and broken. Not entitlement
- II2II 2y agoWhile it does come off as self-entitled, it is worth considering that there are a lot of people in the world who are competing for our attention. Sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. Even in the legitimate cases, it is enough to overload most people. Perhaps it is better to make the point using more considerate words, something to the effect of: hey, we should be thankful that the author is providing the option to get the book for free.
- CamperBob2 2y agoIt's not about the book's merit or its price, it's about good faith. Bushwhacking the reader with unexpected hassles won't make them feel good about clicking the link, "free" or not.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wrycoder 2y agoYes. Think of it as a CAPTCHA. There’s a reason.
- vkaku 2y agoOkay, I'm one among the many users who experienced this exact same thing, and Gumroad seems to indicate this variant is 'Sold Out' and doesn't let me get anything by typing $0 (or any other number for that matter). The book is available on Z-Library by cursorily searching for the Title of the book. Sigh. Hope the author fixes this by putting it on GitHub (or) removing the link to the Gumroad site that doesn't work.
- dvh 2y ago> To give you an example of the cost of getting full FCC approval, a company like UL will charge around $15,00-$20,000 I hate typos like these
- Workaccount2 2y agoWhat is the typo? UL is an accredited lab for FCC certification. When we did CE certification we went to TUV who provides the lab needed to do those tests (at an even more eye-watering cost, which you have to pay again if you fail).
- btbuildem 2y ago15,00 instead of 15,000
- CamperBob2 2y agoAnd it doesn't even make sense. UL has nothing to do with FCC approval.
- meatmanek 2y agohttps://www.ul.com/services/fcc-testing-and-certification https://www.ul.com/services/fcc-testing-and-certification
- CamperBob2 2y agoThanks, TIL. UL is traditionally associated with safety testing.
- Workaccount2 2y agoI wonder if on the first page it says: Hardware is a money pit so be sure to be motivated by passion more than profit. I'm kidding, but only sort of.
- alias_neo 2y agoYou kid, but; from the supply-side perspective, when I graduated 15 or so years ago in Electronic Engineering, job options in the field weren't great, and salaries were much lower than I'd been led to believe they would be, with much harder work and more numerous hoops to jump through than going into the software field. I had been passionate about programming since single-digit age and decided to go into that field and am now an experienced developer of 15 years, starting client-side on "modern" smart phones (early Android, iOS and even Windows Phone), eventually moving to back-end where I've found my home. That said, I do still love electronics, and a book like this could probably help refresh my memory of much that I learned back then so I can get deeper into electronics for fun. Much of what I have done since university has only been tinkering, prototyping on veroboards etc, lots of MCU stuff, and the usual sort of build/repair of electronics you'd expect of someone with a cursory understanding. At some point I'll probably want to be designing/building my own PCBs; that's become a lot easier than it was back then when OSHPark was the only real contender, so I didn't get beyond some very basic PCBs with just a handful of components on a single or double layer back then; but this will be for "fun" and personal projects where I want something custom but more polished. I've never looked back when it comes to the Electronics as a career (profit) and I'm happy with that, but I would very much like to make use of those skills I did learn to a greater extent than I have (passion).
- Workaccount2 2y agoYeah it's sad because hardware is mostly competing with software for talent nowadays (EE degree's are easily acceptable for SWE work), and software work just blows EE work out of the water on pretty much every front. I cannot see right now how electronics in the US has a viable path forward, everyone in the industry who knows what they are doing is pushing 65-70 with almost no fresh blood taking the $75k/yr electrical engineering jobs to learn the craft. The pay is low because the margins are low, and the margins are low because...hardware is a money pit. The only reason I am here is because I have a passion for hardware that I don't get from software.
- btbuildem 2y agoI've begun playing around with "hardware design" recently and it's very humbling. I've been developing software for a long time, and I have a good amount of experience designing and making physical objects, both manually (well, with tools, but manually guided/used) and via digital means (mostly FDM). Making even a simple electronic device is a journey to say the least. The intersection of code and mechanism is a fascinating area to play in, but from PoC to Product, the amount of effort, expertise and iteration is hard to imagine until you try. Thanks for sharing your experience, looking forward to leafing through the pdf for some valuable insights.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI had the same experience. Eventually I think the next time I'm going to try something extremely simple, like a button that triggers some pre-recorded noise.
- moron4hire 2y ago"That was not easy"
- rickdeckard 2y agoyeah, but did you properly debounce that button, to not end up with multiple triggering events per button-press? /s
- glenngillen 2y agoMany many years ago I got to hear the founders of Fitbit come in and give a lunchtime chat about their journey. It was utterly fascinating to hear all the challenges, as a software engineer, you never even think to consider. Things like their attempts to optimise the layout of components effectively doubled the production cost because it would require someone to flip the PCB. Or that the adhesive used to temporarily keep the case attached to a tiny spindle during assembly was slightly too tacky, the residue of which would many months later cause stress fractures on the case and a whole raft of warranty replacements. Hardware is hard.
- unwind 2y agoWow, this looks very interesting and educational. Thanks! Also, I'm certainly no designer, but I wonder if it hadn't looked better if the title had been laid out like: Designing Electronics That Work rather than (as now): Designing Electronics That Work Is there any particular reason behind this (to me) off-balance design, like some kind of deeper connection with the content of the book? Or do I just lack taste and imagine things? Edit: actually praise the effort, since it looks really cool.
- tonymet 2y agojust what everyone loves to receive when announcing they published a book, unsolicited advice on the cover from an anonymous person on the internet.
- atoav 2y agoThe typsetting looks good. Balance is a matter of taste, unless you can really see the designer didn't have the eyes for it. This design works, say I as a former freelance designer with hardcore typographers education.
- HPsquared 2y agoYou could read it like a subtitle. "Designing Electronics (that work)"
- bombela 2y agoI would really like to purchase a hard copy. The hero picture of the book is enticing. Looks like it's not available right now sadly.
- StephenSmith 2y agoTrying to buy a physical copy. It says "This product is not currently for sale." Would love to buy this.
- mronetwo 2y agomight it be because the author is making a new version for no starch press? https://nostarch.com/designingelectronics https://nostarch.com/designingelectronics
- Animats 2y ago"The Art of Electronics" is the classic in this area.
- Aromasin 2y agoThis seems entirely more digestible than AoE though. Don't get me wrong, I've read that book probably 6 times over in my life - it's fantastic- but it's a university text book. This new book seems aimed at simply getting a product out the door, which is a different but useful niche.
- analog31 2y agoIndeed, and it was written for the typical electronics course that's part of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which is how I encountered it in the early 80s. A year later they switched to a different text because AoE was too hard. I don't think I've ever met an engineer who used it in college. Except it might be like Messiah's quantum mechanics book -- something you read after you already understand the subject matter. That's why the second through sixth readings are the best. ;-) But I think the physics students were learning electronics for a different purpose, to support laboratory research, which depends heavily on electronics. The course was expected to be accompanied by a lab, and we had a lot of chances to learn about making and breaking things throughout our degrees. Maybe the electronics course helped us figure out which ones of us became experimentalists, or theoreticians. And both Electronics and manufacturing were also much more primitive in those days. Real products were closer to our hacked-together prototypes than they are today.
- exmadscientist 2y ago> I don't think I've ever met an engineer who used it in college. Hey, I did! And I had to teach out of it... that was an experience. (I distinctly remember pulling it out in class one day, as a TA, to show the students a figure that was particularly good... and got yelled at by one kid because "that's not our book" and "we shouldn't have to read that". Even the other kids rolled their eyes at that one.) It really is a text that's made for physicists and hacker-types. There is a ton of great information on building one-offs and prototypes. Not so much for getting products out (so. many. trimmers.).
- juhanakristian 2y agoThis looks great! Exactly the kind of practical knowledge that is hard to come by.
- carlosdp 2y agoYou knocked it out of the park with the cover! I'll definitely be grabbing a physical copy because of that.
- BMc2020 2y agoPlease do not use leadless parts. Please do not use parts smaller than they need to be. Please make your BOM perfect. Please make your silkscreen perfect. Thank you.
- klysm 2y agoLeadless parts are getting more and more common, it saves board space
- BMc2020 2y agoYou can only check them with an x-ray machine. The only way to rework them is with hot air. They suck, suck, suck for (DFM), design for manufacturing. Always try to design with leaded parts if you can. They can be fixed with a soldering iron. Board space isn't the only consideration, by far. You don't need .4mm pitch BGAs on a giant pcb with acres of empty space either. PCBs are not built at the north pole by little magic elves.
- exmadscientist 2y agoBGAs and LGAs are the devil, sure. But anyone who can't handle QFNs and DFNs has no business calling themselves a modern electronics shop. (Regular QFNs, I mean. Dual-row QFNs are sick jokes, and I maintain that triple-row QFNs are just figments of my nightmares, and I won't listen to anyone who says otherwise.)
- the__alchemist 2y agoI will give you this anecdote: I find BGA easier to solder than QF[N|P]. Most soldering errors I make are due to inappropriate amount or uneven solder application. No factor if the solder is pre-applied.
- foldr 2y agoIn production manufacturing solder paste is generally applied to BGA pads. The amount of solder in the balls is less than the ideal amount for making a good joint, and the solder paste also helps to hold the component in position. That said, I have ‘successfully’ soldered small BGA components by just applying a sticky flux and then reflowing with a hot air gun. It can work fine for prototypes, but it’s not really how the packages are meant to be soldered.
- thebeardisred 2y agoI own a hard copy of the book. It's very valuable as a survey to speed run getting over "Peak of Mt Stupid", crossing "Valley of Despair", and beginning the climb of the "Slope of Enlightenment".
- exmadscientist 2y agoThis is an interesting book. I've been in this space for years now and could easily see myself writing something like this, but I don't think it would look like this book. I really don't like to see things like any sort of recommendation for use of n-propyl bromide. That shit's neurotoxic. The people who can use it safely will already know about it, know someone who knows about it, or find it on their own. Anyone who finds out about nPB here should not be touching it. Unfortunately, many of the parts of the book that I've scanned are like that. There's a lot of prescription, not a lot of background/theory/underlying details, and no way to tell when the prescriptions are inapplicable or straight-up wrong. Which, often, they are: one of the hallmarks of deep experience is knowing when "the rules" are useful and when they're not, but what we have here is mostly rules. That will get your product out the door, I guess, but it's not going to level you up as an engineer, if that's what you're needing. Another example: stackups are discussed, but there's no mention of slash sheets, which is how you get things done cheaply and correctly. Specifying Rogers material for anything but the nastiest designs is just going to get your pockets drained and your Asian fab annoyed because they have to special order that. If you need it, sure, you need it... but can you get away with something more universal? And then there's things like this: "Most SMPS datasheets will advise you on what bead to use and where to put it". Hahahaha no they won't. And if they will, there's a decent chance they get it wrong. Ferrite beads are so useful and so much trouble that you can't trust an IC datasheet to get it right, even if they want to do the same things you want to do. Which they might not! If you're a more junior engineer trying to level up, give this one a look instead: Analog SEEKrets: https://www.eevblog.com/files/seekPDF.pdf https://www.eevblog.com/files/seekPDF.pdf
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoIn general, people have to take a hazing at the certification lab before realizing something that "just works" is just not good enough. There are a lot of different processes for manufacturing electronics, different DFM strategies, and choosing the right path is often a trade secret. Usually made Jr staff read the NASA workmanship standards manual, cables and harnesses guide, and the tin whisker paper. Additionally, they would be expected to get their RF/ham technician license within the year, and practice coding test/boot-loader jigs in C/C++ in their assignments. There is also a tacit discussion about Metrology that lasts on average 3 months if you are smart... Book looks funny (AI slop?), as volume manufacturing is a different skill-set requiring designing to both a standard and factory capabilities. =3
- kazinator 2y agoIf you want your electronics to work: 1. Read the datasheets for everything and follow all restrictions, like on safe operating area (SOA), in regard to current and ambient temperature and so on. Use appropriate heat sinks. 2. Unless you have good reasons or confidence coming from somewhere, do not stray far from the example circuits in the datasheet. If they call for certain decoupling capacitors, have those. If something has a minimum and/or maximum load impedance, be in that limit (same as point 1). 3. Do not design anything to depend on the performance of an individual part, in regard to some performance parameter that has lots of variance in mass production of those parts. This is particularly a problem for analog components; e.g. current gain of bipolar transistors and such. In simulation, play with variances in part values to see how sensitive it is; you can choose tolerances accordingly. Maybe some resistors need only 5%. 4. Good PCB layout and so on. Careful breadboard work. Proper soldering practices. Solid power supply circuits operating well within their capacity range. Proper grounding. Safety devices: fuses, diodes, etc.
- creer 2y ago4b. If the datasheet provides a sample PCB layout, use it. If you have no idea what kinds of issues that PCB layout is potentially addressing - then you also are not competent to troubleshoot these issues in your own different layout.
- RataNova 2y agoSolid advice... especially the part about not relying on individual part performance.
- melson 2y agoWow
- olalonde 2y agoMaybe (2021) should be added to the title?
- vivzkestrel 2y agoI would love to see a book called "designing electronics for a person who has never touched electronics"
- user432678 2y ago“The Art of Electronics” by Hotowitz and Hill?
- vivzkestrel 2y agolooked it up, as a guy who knows very little about electronics, it is still an extremely complicated book. It ll be the equivalent of asking a guy who has never jogged more than a mile to climb mount everest. There has to be atleast one author in the world who has truly written a book taking absolute noobs into account for electronics and slowly but steadily taught them complex and practical ideas. This author is someone who introduces jargon only after explaining the concepts in the most non jargonish way possible
- user432678 2y agoSorry, didn’t mean to mislead you. Just remembered that this book helped me to get the basics pretty well when I was at the high school, but that was around 25 years ago, so my memories might be wrong that it was a “basics” material.
- Gracana 2y agoForrest Mims books were great for me as a kid who wanted to learn about electronics. I'd recommend Getting Started In Electronics, which you can still buy new. There's a copy on archive.org, but I'd recommend getting a copy.. the hand-written notebook format is much nicer in the book than it is here in scanned form. https://archive.org/details/getting-started-in-electronics/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/getting-started-in-electronics/m...
- RataNova 2y agoThat would be a fantastic resource!
- peterbraden 2y agoApparently the ebook has “sold out” so this is just marketing for the new paid ebook preorders.
- kragen 2y agoWell, that's some lying doublespeak if I've ever seen it. Hopefully someone reading this has access to some kind of machine that can duplicate a PDF file, thus putting an end to the shortage.
- Karsteski 2y agoWell, the author did specifically say that the reason it's no longer free is because others have worked on the book and want to get paid. That being said, this is literally just an ad, especially because they did not keep the old version free.
- supermatt 2y agoIt seems the hard copy is out of print, and they are sold out of the “free” digital downloads.
- yots 2y agoI've been doing some analog PCB layouts for the first time recently, it's the one thing I wish there were better resources on (going from schematic to layout). Even the best YouTube vids are mostly simple digital stuff with very few components.
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- beryilma 2y ago> Sold out, please go back and pick another option. Funny how a "free" PDF book can be sold out.
- greatgib 2y agoI flagged this entry because it looks like a marketing stunt. The description of the book was looking appealing, and I was amazed at the good spirit to have a free downloadable version. So I opened a new tab for the free and paid versions, because I was curious to see the inside but interested to have a hard-copy. But then, on one side you arrive on a page that says that the digital copy is "sold out"... lol... sold out. And on the other side, the hardcopy page says that it is not for sell anymore as a new version will arrive and here is a link to "pre order". And the funniest is that this link to nostarch does not even work...
- Workaccount2 2y agoMy guess is that the author learned a hard lesson that really only content creators can learn: If you offer something that is payment optional and on an anonymous basis, 95%+ of people will take it for free. It doesn't matter how virtuous your audience speaks, if you are going to offer something for free and it's not face-to-face, almost no one will pay you.
- Geee 2y agoMight be that he hasn't actually written the book yet. Once he has enough pre-orders, he can get financing and can hire a ghost writer to write the book.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 2y ago> I flagged this entry because it looks like a marketing stunt. He published this version in 2021. He's working on a second edition coming out later this year with No Starch. I suspect he had meant to take down the older PDF a while ago and the surge in interest yesterday from here reminded him it was still up. https://nostarch.com/designingelectronics https://nostarch.com/designingelectronics
- RecycledEle 2y agoThe web site says the digital copy us free, then links to another web site that says it is no longer free. Scam?