Tutorial books: to read beginning to end. "Make: Electronics" is the best introduction to electronics I've ever seen in any form, a must read!
Reference books: to jump around and get more details as necessary.
If you're new to electronics and microcontrollers and want to learn about them, here's my recommended reading list, in order (Amazon links)
- Tutorial books:
- Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery, 2nd ed, by Charles Platt
- Make: More Electronics: Journey Deep Into the World of Logic Chips, Amplifiers, Sensors, and Randomicity, by Charles Platt
- Hacking Electronics: Learning Electronics with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, 2nd ed., by Simon Monk
- Reference books:
- Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 1: Resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Switches, Encoders, Relays, Transistors
- Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 2: LEDs, LCDs, Audio, Thyristors, Digital Logic, and Amplification
- Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 3: Sensors for Location, Presence, Proximity, Orientation, Oscillation, Force, Load, Human Input, Liquid Light, Heat, Sound, and Electricity
- Practical Electronics for Inventors, 4th ed., by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk
There's been an evolutionary leap forward in the affordability and ease of use of microcontrollers as a result of inexpensive open-source hardware and free open-source software.
These have removed many of the traditional roadblocks that made learning to use microcontrollers daunting. Working with them is now within reach of everyone from elementary school children to adults.
Microcontrollers are then excellent platforms for learning to code, because they allow you to interact directly with the physical world. Making the hardware do what your code told it to do is very satisfying.
Tutorial Books
These have removed many of the traditional roadblocks that made learning to use microcontrollers daunting. Working with them is now within reach of everyone from elementary school children to adults.
Microcontrollers are then excellent platforms for learning to code, because they allow you to interact directly with the physical world. Making the hardware do what your code told it to do is very satisfying.
Tutorial Books
These cover basic electronics, and make an outstanding starting point. You can read my review of them to see why I like them so much (as well as information on components kits for the experiments in the first book).
They don't focus on microcontrollers. Instead, they focus on the other parts that surround microcontrollers, as well as projects that don't need microcontrollers.
If you're impatient to get on to the microcontroller information, save Make: More Electronics until later. But you should definitely start with Make: Electronics no matter what.
Third Book
This briefly covers some of the same basics as the first two, then covers some other useful basics. The first two and this one complement each other very well.
It then gets into working with Arduino and Raspberry Pi microcontrollers. It includes a number of simple projects for working with external modules and sensors.
Arduino is programmed in C on "bare metal", i.e. without an operating system, and Raspberry Pi is programmed in Python on embedded Linux, so the two illustrate the variety of programming and runtime environments for microcontrollers.
I found this to be a nice gentle introduction to the practicalities of working with microcontrollers and the huge array of third-party modules available. While it only skims the surface of a vast topic, it makes an excellent jumping off point for learning about embedded systems.
Reference Books
It then gets into working with Arduino and Raspberry Pi microcontrollers. It includes a number of simple projects for working with external modules and sensors.
Arduino is programmed in C on "bare metal", i.e. without an operating system, and Raspberry Pi is programmed in Python on embedded Linux, so the two illustrate the variety of programming and runtime environments for microcontrollers.
Reference Books
First Three Books
These gather in one place information from a wide array of resources on how to use a wide array of electronic components. They focus on practical concerns rather than theory, and are illustrated with the same excellent color diagrams and photos as Make: Electronics.
For each component, they contain the following sections: What It Does, How It Works, Variants, Values, How To Use It, and What Can Go Wrong.
Fourth Book
These gather in one place information from a wide array of resources on how to use a wide array of electronic components. They focus on practical concerns rather than theory, and are illustrated with the same excellent color diagrams and photos as Make: Electronics.
For each component, they contain the following sections: What It Does, How It Works, Variants, Values, How To Use It, and What Can Go Wrong.
Fourth Book
This is like multiple smaller books bound into one. It starts with an extensive chapter on theory and related math. The authors point out that much of the math throughout the book is simply to prove the theory, so if you're not interested in that level of detail, you can skip over it.
The remainder of the book covers a broad range of devices, providing both theory and practical material. It has a chapter on microcontrollers that makes a good follow-up to Hacking Electronics.
The remainder of the book covers a broad range of devices, providing both theory and practical material. It has a chapter on microcontrollers that makes a good follow-up to Hacking Electronics.
Using The Books
The tutorial books are meant to be read from beginning to end as you tinker with their projects. They are easy reading with hands-on experiments, where each chapter builds on previous material.
The reference books are meant to read here and there, jumping around as you need more details on a specific topic.
The reference books are meant to read here and there, jumping around as you need more details on a specific topic.
Even though some of the topics are duplicated between all the books, each author and each book has a different perspective. Each has a different emphasis and presentation.
They complement each other to give a more complete picture because one author may delve deeper into details that another glosses over. You may prefer one author's explanation over another's. No single resource is ever able to give the whole story, so it helps to have multiple perspectives.
These books will give you a good foundation so that you'll be able to understand other books and resources.
If you're interested in doing embedded systems software development, see So You Want To Be An Embedded Systems Developer.
Electronics Suppliers
There are two outstanding suppliers of discrete electronics, microcontrollers, tools, modules, sensors, and breakout boards that cater to the small-scale needs of hobbyists, students, and experimenters:
You can read my paean to Adafruit at Limor Fried Is My New Hero,which includes the shopping list for setting up my small-scale electronics lab. For a simple example of using this equipment, see First Use Of New Tools.
There are several suppliers for industrial scale, but who also supply at small scale (do you need 10 pieces, or 10 million?):
All these suppliers have extensive online learning resources. However, the industrial suppliers don't have much for the absolute beginner; they're good once you've built up some background knowledge.
Adafruit Learn and SparkFun Learn resources are in both written and video form. You can scan through videos for a quick overview pass by setting the speed in the YouTube window settings (the gear icon) to 2x, then come back and watch at normal speed for a second pass.
There's a lot of duplication between them (and between these resources and the books above), but it's useful to see how different people approach the same topics. Just like reading books by different authors, they provide additional perspectives to help fill in the gaps.
Both sites can be a bit overwhelming to dig through, so I've selected a number of beginner resources below, organized by supplier and then type of resource. Many of them have links to additional information.
These Adafruit videos by Collin Cunningham cover basic electronics lab skills:
If you're interested in doing embedded systems software development, see So You Want To Be An Embedded Systems Developer.
Electronics Suppliers
There are two outstanding suppliers of discrete electronics, microcontrollers, tools, modules, sensors, and breakout boards that cater to the small-scale needs of hobbyists, students, and experimenters:
You can read my paean to Adafruit at Limor Fried Is My New Hero,which includes the shopping list for setting up my small-scale electronics lab. For a simple example of using this equipment, see First Use Of New Tools.
There are several suppliers for industrial scale, but who also supply at small scale (do you need 10 pieces, or 10 million?):
- Digi-Key Electronics
- Mouser Electronics
- Newark element14 (for the curious, element 14 is Silicon (chemical symbol Si), a major element in electronics)
- McMaster-Carr: not for electronics, but for all other mechanical parts, supplies, raw materials, and tools.
Supplier Learning Resources
All these suppliers have extensive online learning resources. However, the industrial suppliers don't have much for the absolute beginner; they're good once you've built up some background knowledge.
Adafruit Learn and SparkFun Learn resources are in both written and video form. You can scan through videos for a quick overview pass by setting the speed in the YouTube window settings (the gear icon) to 2x, then come back and watch at normal speed for a second pass.
There's a lot of duplication between them (and between these resources and the books above), but it's useful to see how different people approach the same topics. Just like reading books by different authors, they provide additional perspectives to help fill in the gaps.
Both sites can be a bit overwhelming to dig through, so I've selected a number of beginner resources below, organized by supplier and then type of resource. Many of them have links to additional information.
These Adafruit videos by Collin Cunningham cover basic electronics lab skills:
- Soldering and Desoldering: how to solder components together properly, and how to pull them apart for salvage and rework.
- Surface Mount Soldering: how to solder surface-mount components.
- Multimeters: how to use a meter for basic measurements.
- Oscilloscopes: how to use an oscilloscope for advanced measurements and waveforms.
- Hand Tools: the basic hand tools used for assembling and disassembling electronics.
- Schematics: how to read schematics (no, they're not Greek!).
- Breadboards and Perfboards: how to combine the parts on a schematic into a functioning circuit.
- Ohm's Law: understanding the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance.
- Batteries: the basics of using batteries to supply DC power to projects.
- Solar Cells: using solar cells to keep the batteries charged.
- Power Supplies: using an AC power supply to supply DC power to projects.
- Pulse Width Modulation: using a PWM converter to change DC input voltage to lower effective DC voltage, or as a simple digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
- Switches: understanding the different types of switches for manually controlling projects.
- The Transistor
- The Capacitor
- The Diode
- The Inductor
- The Resistor
- The LED
- The Integrated Circuit (IC)
- The Arduino
- Adafruit Guide To Excellent Soldering
- Multimeters
- Wires and Connections
- All About Batteries
- Power Supplies
- All About LEDs
- How to Use a Multimeter: how to use a digital multimeter (DMM) to make basic measurements.
- How to Use a Power Supply: how to use a bench power supply unit (PSU) to power a project instead of batteries.
- How to Use an Oscilloscope: how to use an oscilloscope to look into circuit operation.
- Ohm's Law
- What is Voltage?
- What is Electric Current?
- What is a Battery?
- Series and Parallel Circuits
- Electric Power
- Voltage, Current, Resistance, and Ohm's Law
- Resistors
- Capacitors
- Diodes
- Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
- Transistors
- Integrated Circuits
- How to Read a Schematic
- Analog vs. Digital
- Switch Basics
- Working with Wire
- Connector Basics
- How to Use a Breadboard
- PCB Basics
- How to Solder: Through-Hole Soldering
- How to Use a Multimeter
- How to Power a Project
- Battery Technologies
- Logic Levels
- Pulse Width Modulation
Another great YouTube resource is Dave Jones' EEVblog.
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