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Learn electricity and electronics fundamentals without taking a formal course
- nxpnsv 2y agoWhat's wrong with taking formal courses? I think that is a perfectly legitimate way of learning stuff.
- hashstring 2y agoI think it was not implied that there is something wrong with it. It’s just that, that requires having access to it and being available to take it.
- wobfan 2y agoIn addition this is maybe a good option (haven't looked into it) for people (like me, actually) who are just not interested in the formal aspects. I profesionally have nothing to do with electronics whatsoever, but am still naturally interested in it. Learning stuff with formal literature takes away all that natural interest for me and makes it work, so I would eventually stop doing it. Learning it in a practical way though would work way better and keep me interested and motivated.
- hashstring 2y agoTrue, same here. There needs to be a good balance of formal and practical/general information.
- nxpnsv 2y agoI agree options are good as no single solution fits everyone, but I feel I too often hear the sentiment that school/uni/courses is useless. And that is just not true.
- YZF 2y agoI can also highly recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill.
- Syzygies 2y agoThat's what I learned from!
- analog31 2y agoI learned from the 1st edition, in 1984. It's worth noting that the book was actually written for scientists rather than engineers. I was a math and physics major. By a long standing tradition, an electronics course is a standard part of the undergrad physics curriculum. My dad had "Electronics for Scientists" by Malmstadt et al., 1962. His employer put a bunch of scientists through an electronics course. The contrast was pretty remarkable. It's all about vacuum tubes, with some introduction of transistors. The 1st edition of AoE had a reasonable amount of material on digital circuits for back then, but I imagine a similar contrast between 1984 and today. The span of 40+ years has certainly changed how I do electronics.
- WalterBright 2y agoAfter The Cat passed, I found a book under her bed entitled "Electronics for Cats". I wonder what she had been plotting.
- weard_beard 2y agoThumbs. They all want thumbs!
- trogdor 2y agoI volunteer at an animal shelter. A few months ago, while entering kitten weights into a database, I looked at the bookshelf above the desk I was sitting at. The first book I saw was “How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety.”
- masto 2y agoI found it impenetrable.
- e28eta 2y agoI really liked Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. I’m definitely interested in more electronics books for self study though.
- rramadass 2y agoDesigning Embedded Hardware: Create New Computers and Devices by John Catsoulis. Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems by Jerry Twomey. There are lots more with varying levels of basics/advanced but the above two are what came to my mind immediately for self study.
- e28eta 2y agoThanks!
- rramadass 2y agoTwo more of my favourites for Embedded Microcontroller based systems are; Introduction to Embedded Systems: Using Microcontrollers and the MSP430 by Manuel Jimenez et al. An excellent textbook with an emphasis on interfacing to a MCU from a hardware perspective. The chapter titled "The Analog Signal Chain" is by itself worth the price of the book. Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems by Michael Pont. Full of C code for 8051 which you can study and then adapt to your specific MCU family. Free book available at https://www.safetty.net/publications/pttes https://www.safetty.net/publications/pttes Also checkout all of his other books since they are also full of C code examples.
- ohgr 2y agoIt’s a fucking awful book. Sorry. It’s just terrible. It looks good but it’s mostly useless.
- 000ooo000 2y agoPointless comment without some detail.
- osigurdson 2y ago"Don't bother learning anything. AI will do all of this grunt work soon. You will be free to do what you really want" It kind of misses the point that many people actually want to know how things work and how to design and build things. This isn't going to go away.
- jambutters 2y agoIs this a random quote? Or something said on the page or this thread?
- Jtsummers 2y agoIt seems to be random as neither the discussion here nor the submitted page has anything like it to either be a quote or paraphrasing of something.
- colesantiago 2y agothere will be new jobs.
- connectsnk 2y agoI have been wanting a tutorial like this. Thanks
- calibas 2y ago[removed]
- frontfor 2y agoWhat are you trying to convey?
- calibas 2y agoIs it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist.
- Jtsummers 2y ago> Is it not obvious? The number of protons is the atomic number. If "c" was the answer, ions couldn't exist. The answer key, unless it has changed since you wrote your comment, has the correct answer of (a) for that question (midway down page 3). You seem to have scrolled to the very end of the document which has the answers to a completely different section.
- rabidvermin 2y agoAnswers: 1. a
- lowdest 2y agoThe answer key to the first quiz says "1. a"
- tayo42 2y agoI keep putting off looking for something along his topic. Mostly becasue I want to learn to repair electronics. I have audio equipment that doesn't work right that I'm pretty sure just needs a small repair, but I'm stuck thinking about throwing it away becasue idk how to fix it. Pro repairs cost almost as much as what I have for some of them.
- VTimofeenko 2y agoI was in the same boat. Had a pair of speakers go bad about a month ago, opened em up, saw a bunch of bulged capacitors. Tried my hand at replacing them, wasted way too much time doing it; in the end I didn't fix them. I either burnt something while desoldering or something else was borked. I bought a new pair, but I walked away from it with more or less of a warm and fuzzy feeling that I did what I could. And a semi-decent soldering station, so next time this happens I will try again.
- neuroelectron 2y agoWill I finally understand transistors?
- njstraub608 2y agoHonestly just spend a few hours talking to Claude about them, I had a few breakthrough moments doing that.
- geekodour 2y agoput this prompt and share the response: You summarize the past convestion in this thread. - Start with a overall summary in a single paragraph - Then show a bullet pointed list of the most interesting illustrative quotes from the piece - Then a bullet point list of the most unusual ideas - provide a longer summary that covers points not included already - Finally, Step by step/phase by phase understanding of the ideas discussed above
- whartung 2y agoI actually have the 3rd edition of this book, and, yea I think it explained transistors pretty well. Mind, I don’t remember any of it, I never applied it, but at the time, it explained it to me.
- blackguardx 2y agoWhat is the most challenging concept about transistors? I think the classic valve analogy (AKA Art of Electronics "Transistor Man") works to a large extent. To fully understand the physics requires a lot more but in between, there are relatively simple equations that describe the main current flow as related to the control terminal's voltage or current depending on the transistor type. To go from single transistor to multi-transistor circuits was a big leap for me, but most of it is understanding how particular subcircuits work and recognizing them as blocks of a larger circuit.
- bee_rider 2y agoBJTs were a real pain. Uncooperative exponentials fighting each other, or something like that, if I haven’t managed to forget successfully…
- snvzz 2y agoSo, is this book any good?
- jaggederest 2y agoI found Moritz Klein's videos very interesting to help me understand practical aspects of circuit design as related to analog synthesizers: https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/playlists
- mwlp 2y agoI haven't watched any of the lectures, but there's also Georgia Tech's Analog Circuits for Music Synthesis https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOunECWxELQS5bMdWo9VhmZtsCjhjYNcV https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOunECWxELQS5bMdWo9Vh...
- diggan 2y agoHear hear! I'm currently learning DIY synths from that very channel too, currently on episode 3, very good videos for laymen. Although some extra resources are needed if you want to have further understanding, as he doesn't go too deep into theory, but for being video instructions/tutorials, I find that the balance is good on that.
- leke 2y agoAre advertisements like this allowed on HN?
- gsf_emergency_2 2y agoIs Simon on HN?
- mindcrime 2y agoFrom what I've seen, generally speaking, yes. Even more so if the site wasn't submitted by the owner. Self-promotion has even always been explicitly allowed here, but I believe the guidelines contain some verbiage to the effect of "your primary activity here should not be self-promotion". I have no official info, but just from observing things over the years, it appears that accounts who promote their own content overly frequently, and/or only post self-promotional content, are the ones that get shadow-banned or set to auto-dead status.
- htk 2y agoYou can submit anything, the community decides if it's interesting enough.
- dartharva 2y agoProbably needs (2022) in the title. The book is available on libgen for anyone who wants to take a look.
- ueeyuruekajz 2y ago[flagged]
- mcshicks 2y agoI don't know, it's hard for me to know what the author means by "fundamentals". I looked at the table of contents from the amazon website, and somethings that I consider pretty fundamental like Thevenin's Theorem didn't seem to be listed there. By comparison it's in Chapter 1, page 9 on my copy of "The Art of Electronics". I'm not trying to knock the book, it could be very handy, but I would use the term "basics" as opposed to "fundamentals" to describe the content as I understand it.
- magic_hamster 2y agoSlightly baffled why this is on HN and especially as the no.1 link. For this to be upvoted so high I expected to find a spectacular interactive learning experience someone has made for fun, or at least a substantial free book. But it's just another book on Amazon like a dozen other books on the same subject.
- silisili 2y agoWhen I was a teen, I applied to be an ATT lineman. At that time at least, they sent you a giant study guide that has everything one might want to know about electricity. I was actually blown away by the material. I've since lost it, but wonder if it exists on the Internet somewhere. My cursory search didn't return anything.
- spit2wind 2y agoThis page lists several ATT publications and has a link to a 1953 publication that could fit your description (and could have been a subsequent editini). Otherwise, maybe you'd recognize the name as one of the other publications? https://www.long-lines.net/sources/ATT_tech_books.html https://www.long-lines.net/sources/ATT_tech_books.html
- silisili 2y agoNice! I browsed through the 1953 edition quickly, and it's very similar. So probably some updated version of that. I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying. This would have been before the internet was big, so probably isn't as exciting now.
- ozfive 2y agoIt is exciting! I used to read the Ma-Bell manuals in the science and math library at the University of Oregon. Edited for emphasis.
- inejge 2y ago> I was just blown away they send you all that material for free by simply applying. It was a hangover from their days a quasi-socialist, monopolistic enterprise ("We're the Phone Company"), when they could afford to be "inefficient" in that way -- scare quotes because it's difficult to calculate the cost of preparation and dissemination against all the high-value careers the material may have inspired. These days, an accountant would glance at the cost and cut it out without thinking twice.
- greatgib 2y agoIs the top link just an advertisement for a book to be bought or is it something I'm missing with the link? There are countless of books and website with that kind of content, but Google is good enough to find them...
- trod1234 2y agoThis is just an advertisement for buying the book. It was someone's idea of a shameless plug.
- iancmceachern 2y agoThe best way to learn this stuff is hands on, build kits, those 200 in one things RadioShack used to sell, etc
- defraudbah 2y agowhat build kits are available now?
- iancmceachern 2y agoAnything you want! Check out Sparkfun and Adafruit, they have kits for everything!
- urda 2y agoReminds me of those old RadioShack hobby electronic boards with all the different components to try and work with.
- jlcases 2y agoKnowledge structuring is key for self-taught learning. I've found that organizing resources using MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) significantly improves the learning curve, especially for complex technical topics.
- andy_ppp 2y agoThis looks cool! I’ve been looking for a good valve amp to build from a kit, ideally I want it to be integrated, EL34 tubes and at least 25 watts, anyone know of anything? Bonus points for designed/supplied in the UK.
- anthk 2y agoI've got "Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series" as a PDF from a gopher hole: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/neetsmodules_202003 The whole directory it's amazing too: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/links/ Also, there's Usenet. Subscribe to to sci.electronics.repair and sci.electronics. Outdated? Delayed answers? ok, but you will get correct ones and if you set your learning at a slower but dedicated pace, with no distractions (turn the notifications off), with either PDF or Physical books and a electronic simulator like TkGate, you will get the theory at really fast speeds.
- belter 2y agoThe best suggestion to get a core review of the basic concepts as starter, and that Dave from the EEVblog [1] recommended several times, is the section Fundamentals of Radio Electronics from [2] - "The Arrl Handbook for Radio Communications" . Plus you get all the other stuff around Radio. It will cover all the basics. Old ones can be found on the intertubes. It is now a classical. Even used 2015 versions go for $300 dollars or more. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@EEVblog/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@EEVblog/playlists {2] https://www.arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023 https://www.arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023
- sunshine-o 2y agoAny recommendation for open source software or website where one can learn about electricity in an interactive or gamified way?
- zabzonk 2y agoBack when I was about 12 (so 60 years ago, or so) you could get Phillips kits with a couple of transistors which allowed you to breadboard things like an amplifier, a radio, or a moisture detector. Had fun with them, but didn't really learn so much theory, and never have. Though I do know quite a bit about software.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- checker659 2y agoI wish someone would write an electronics book for hobbyists solely using simulators like Falstad and PCB design using KiCad.