
All About Circuits - epenn
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
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Bo102010
I am an electrical engineer. I used this site as a reference all throughout my
schooling. Yes, it's incomplete, but it's a great resource nonetheless.

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okal
I'm surprised that this has never shown up on HN before. I can't think of any
ECE or EE students I know who haven't used the resources from this site. Maybe
there aren't as many of us here as I'd imagined.

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duncanj
Am I the only one who can work through electronics textbook after textbook and
still can't figure out how to wire a reasonably useful circuit?

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ImprovedSilence
I've found that with hardware design, at least at the beginner level, you can
read up and cram all the theory you can get into your brain, and not really be
able to build much. I think that by actually doing, and having someone show
you the basics of "this is the way we do something, and this is why we do that
something" is much more helpful, and opens up realms of possibility.

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duncanj
I remember from learning to program that there was a point where, probably
because of good teaching, I "got it" and then I was able to teach myself. But
I haven't yet gotten to the autodidact point in electronics. I've been looking
for the book that gives me this "got it" experience!

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femto
In my EE work, I tend to use formal analogies in my thought processes,
sometimes unconsciously. For example, water and electricity behave in same way
[1]. You don't design the whole circuit in the water domain, but you might
temporarily flip over to water to understand a particular aspect, then flip
back to electrical. Typically I won't write anything down in the alternative
domain, using it just enough to clarify my thinking in the electrical domain,
then recording things in electrical terms. There's all sorts of other domains
too: acoustics, mechanics, pneumatics, ... Pick the one you are most
comfortable with in the situation.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy>

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iano
In short: Learn constant coefficient 2nd order differential equations, and you
can design a whole slew of mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic contraptions.

A real application of this: before computers, mechanical systems control
engineers would write the equations of their mechanical systems, write their
controllers, and then implement their controllers around the electrical
circuit that duplicated the behavior of their mechanical system. Sort of an
analog computer way of simulating a system.

~~~
timclark
Or as in my experience as an EE, learn how to use Laplace transforms, find a
table for the 2nd order differential equations, use Laplace transforms, forget
how to solve differential equations.

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colanderman
<http://www.play-hookey.com/> is a similar site that has been helpful to me
over the years. It has interactive examples as well.

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anrope
I remember this from a few years ago; hopefully it's more complete now than it
was then. I stuck with Sedra and Smith.

Edit: looks like there are still a lot of missing and incomplete sections in
the semiconductor volume.

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JimmyL
Sedra/Smith was a classic - I remember I picked mine up used from the campus
bookstore, and it'd been cycled through the course so many times it was almost
perfectly annotated and highlighted for the way one particular prof taught the
material.

Of all the textbooks I used in my schooling, Sedra & Smith is on the short
list of ones I remember explicitly - along with Silberschatz & Galvin on
operating systems (with the ridiculous dinosaurs on the cover), Oppenheim and
Willsky's _Signals and Systems_ , EOPL, and Stewart's _Calculus_.

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anrope
I also had the Silberschatz (such a weird cover!) and Oppenheim books. I think
Sedra and Smith is pretty widely accepted as the canonical introductory
electronics book.

Most frustrating book I had to deal with: Random Variables and Stochastic
Processes by Papoulis and Pillai. I understand it's also very popular, but I
found it really hard to follow.

