Are you struggling to understand circuits and see how currents flow?
I wrote this based on an interaction I had with Gary.
And maybe it can help you.
I was developing some new material for a course.
And I used Gary as my test subject. He’s an adult British gentleman with no electronics background whatsoever.
He told me that if he could understand this, then anyone could.
There are a bunch of places to buy electronic components.
Myself, I love to go to a brick-and-mortar store to buy components, because then I can get them without waiting. Unfortunately, many cities don’t have these anymore. So what do you do?
“How to combine components to get a specific function?”
Many people ask me this.
But that’s like if you want to learn the piano and ask:
“How to combine notes to play a specific song?”
What you need to do to learn to play the piano is to practice playing the piano.
The inductor is a simple component, and how it works is also pretty simple. The only problem is that most explanations do not explain it in a simple way.
So, what is an inductor? Well, it’s kind of a strange component. At the most basic level, it is just a coil of wire. And it’s easy to make one — just make some loops with a wire.
But wires actually create magnetic fields. And that means the inductor behaves in an interesting way and can do interesting stuff.
Everyone can learn how to solder. And it’s an important skill to know want to build electronics.
Basic soldering is easy. All you need is a soldering iron and some solder. When my dad taught me as a teenager, I remember picking it up quite fast.
In this soldering guide, you’ll learn first learn to solder two wires. Then you’ll learn to solder components on a circuit board. If you’re already familiar with this, consider jumping over to my guide on SMD soldering or reflow soldering.
Also, check out my article on the soldering tools you need to get started.
Electronic schematics are like recipes for electronics. They tell you what ingredients to use and how to mix the ingredients. But instead of using text to explain the recipe, a drawing is used.
They are also called circuit diagrams. Read how to read schematics here.
Circuit ideas are everywhere! There are many places to find cool circuits.
The greatest sources for my inspiration are hacker/maker/electronics blogs, schematic webpages, hobby project pages, and open-source hardware companies.
Or you can also check out some electronic kits for inspiration.
Sometimes I just want to try to replicate an electronic circuit I’ve found on the web. Either because it is something I need or just to prove to myself that I can do it. Like this amplifier circuit diagram.
Sometimes I find something cool that I want to modify and improve on. And other times I get completely new circuit ideas out of the blue that I want to build.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build an automatic night light circuit that turns on when it gets dark. It’s a simple circuit that you can build on a breadboard.
This circuit shows you how to do it with an LED. But you can use the same principle to turn on bigger and brighter lights too.
Find the breadboard diagram and parts list below the video.
In this episode, we start out with the idea of building a buck converter with a microcontroller. We realize that we’ve never built a buck converter before, so we go through our thought process live to figure out what we need to do. We built one buck converter each. Elias used a Bluepill and Oyvind
Electric current is what you get when electric charge moves around a circuit. It’s pretty simple when you finally get it. But there are some common pitfalls that can give you the wrong idea when learning.
And if you don’t know what current is and how it works, it’s a huge source of confusion when learning electronics.
My goal is that after reading this article, you’ll understand what current is. And you’ll understand that a resistor must have the same amount of current going into it as going out from it.
In this short tutorial, you will learn how to build an Arduino Theremin. You only need three components plus the Arduino, wires, and breadboard.
Use the breadboard diagram or the video below to see how to connect everything.
We talk about a custom NAS build that hooks up a screen and buttons to an Odroid, Øyvind has been developing for nRF52-something and finally we discuss some basic electronic stuff that we ought to know.
The difference between Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC) is simple: AC vs DC comes down to how the current flows. AC is a current that alternates its direction. It goes back and forth continuously. DC is a current that flows in one direction.
For example, a battery provides direct current. The current only flows one way out of a battery.
We talk about the new Arduino Polenta and how DisplayPort over USB C might be implemented. We also talk about the $42 Etepon scope vs the $3500 Siglent SDS5034x scope.
I put together this Voltage Unit (VU) meter using LEDs on a breadboard the other day. It only has 4 LEDs, but can easily be expanded to more:
It’s basically a simple display for showing a value. It’s originally for showing signal level in audio circuits, but there’s no reason you can’t use it to show temperature, rain intensity, light level, or whatever other value you are measuring.