← Parminces
Paul Scherz & Simon Monk, 2016

Practical Electronics
for Inventors

From the electron to the embedded system. Voltage, current, and reactance; diodes, transistors, and op amps; filters, oscillators, and power supplies; digital logic, microcontrollers, and FPGAs; motors, audio, and modular builds. Every concept derived from a problem, visualized, and made interactive.

17
Chapters
160+
Simulations
0
Assumed Knowledge
Part I: Foundations
Chapter 1

Introduction to Electronics

The map: how theory, components, devices, circuits, and chips stack into a smart gadget.

Chapter 2

Theory

Voltage, current, resistance, Ohm & Kirchhoff, AC & RMS, capacitors, inductors, reactance, resonance.

Chapter 3

Basic Circuit Components

Wires, batteries, switches, relays, resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, and fuses.

Part II: Active Devices & Sensing
Chapter 4

Semiconductors

Doping, the PN junction, diodes, rectifiers, Zeners, BJTs, MOSFETs, and thyristors.

Chapter 5

Optoelectronics

LEDs and current limiting, photons & wavelength, photoresistors, solar cells, optoisolators.

Chapter 6

Sensors

Transducers, thermistors, RTDs, thermocouples, IC sensors, Hall effect, strain gauges, the divider.

Part III: The Workbench & Analog Circuits
Chapter 7

Hands-on Electronics

Safety, multimeters, the oscilloscope, triggering, probes, breadboarding, and soldering.

Chapter 8

Operational Amplifiers

The golden rules, virtual short, inverting/non-inverting gain, summers, integrators, comparators.

Chapter 9

Filters

RC low/high-pass, decibels & Bode plots, filter order, bandpass & Q, Butterworth/Chebyshev/Bessel.

Chapter 10

Oscillators & Timers

Positive feedback, the 555 astable & monostable, the diode trick, Wien-bridge, LC & crystal.

Chapter 11

Voltage Regulators & Power Supplies

Rectify, filter, regulate. Ripple, the LM317, dropout, heat & efficiency, switching converters.

Part IV: Digital & Programmable
Chapter 12

Digital Electronics

Binary & hex, logic gates, Boolean algebra, De Morgan, Karnaugh maps, adders, flip-flops, ADC/DAC.

Chapter 13

Microcontrollers

A computer on a chip. Digital I/O & pull-ups, ADC, PWM, interrupts, serial (UART/I2C/SPI), Arduino.

Chapter 14

Programmable Logic

PALs, CPLDs & FPGAs, the lookup table, configurable fabric, Verilog, and true parallel hardware.

Part V: Systems
Chapter 15

Motors

DC motors, PWM speed control, the H-bridge, back-EMF & flyback, RC servos, and stepper motors.

Chapter 16

Audio Electronics

Microphones, the decibel, preamps & the LM386, speakers as loads, crossovers, impedance bridging.

Chapter 17

Modular Electronics

Compose, don't reinvent. Breakout boards, level shifting, bus sharing, power budgeting, the maker ecosystem.