Electronics Design Resources

We use electronics to link computation with sensing and actuation. This pragmatic guide is intended to provide basic theory and sample circuits to solve our practical problems.

• Summary Guide: Basic Circuits
• Electronics Part Guide
• Electronic Schematics
• Voltage Dividers
• Electrical Safety
• Tips and Tricks
• Oscilloscope Guide

Exercises

The exercises are intended to be quick, simple introductions to technique. Part of the exercise is absorbing a set of technical terms; the meaning will become apparent in time through immersion in practice.

• Bench, Battery, Grid. Electrical safety, voltage measurement.

• Continuity Tests. Resistance measurement.

• Power Switch and LED. Voltage and current measurement, controlling current with a switch.

• Voltage Divider Basics. Introducing Ohm’s Law via our essential analog circuit: the voltage divider.

• Smoke a Resistor. Testing Ohm’s Law empirically by destroying a resistor.

• Sensor Switch Basics. Applying the voltage divider to the simplest sensor: the switch.

• Photocell Sensor. Applying the voltage divider to a light sensor.

• LED Current Limiting. Applying the voltage divider to regulating LED current.

• Reflective Photointerrupter. A sensor circuit with both current-limited LED and biased phototransistor.

• Electrical Theory Practice. Paper self-test for solving basic circuits.

• Voltage Regulation. Creating stable power supply voltages.

• Capacitance. Basic capacitor dynamics and simple RC timing circuit.

• Op-Amp Level Translation. Applying gain and offset to analog signals.