Practical Electronics: Components and Techniques

Preface

So, how much electronics do you need to know to be able to create something interesting, or creatively modify something that already exists? Well, that depends on where you start in the creative process. It also depends on your willingness to seek out new knowledge and acquire new skills as you go along.

The primary purpose of this book is to give you a reference for some of the more arcane (and possibly mundane) but essential aspects of electronics. These include things you would typically learn on the job and from years of experience, such as how to read the datasheet for an electronic component, determining how many things can be connected to an interface pin on a microcontroller, how to assemble various types of connectors, how to minimize noise and interference on a signal interface circuit, how to determine the resolution of an analog-to-digital converter, how various types of serial and network interfaces work, and how to use open source tools for schematic capture and PCB layout. And, of course, we will also cover the tools used in electronics work and how they are used, and we’ll examine what’s available in terms of test equipment beyond the garden-variety digital multimeter.

We’ll start off with an introduction to the underlying physics of electricity that dispenses with the water-flowing-in-a-pipe analogy and gets right to the heart of the matter with a look at how atoms pass electrons around. We’ll then examine the basic concepts of voltage and current. For ...