Ask HN: How to seriously learn analog electronics?
I want to seriously learn electronics and how to repair electronics, unfortunately going back to school is not an option at my age and situation. What paths, books would you suggest ?
My background is in computer science.
Thank you !
PS. I'm well aware of The Art of Electronics.
11 comments
I’ll second the question: “What kinds of things do you want to be able to fix?” There are so many classes of repairs: electrical appliances, for which there are books, or wiring - read the code and don’t try anything dangerous, small gadgets, power adapters, and so on, but most things are on complex circuit boards with hard to identify parts, often custom chips, and many are encapsulated.
Old TV repairmen could swap tubes and look for charred parts, but when transistors and I.C.’s took over, you basically swapped out whole boards.
Other than simple things, a lot of stuff is black box in nature.
As an example, I had a Breville oven quit on me. There was an inline fuse (looks like a resistor) Simple. But I had to take out some 30 screws, and then I couldn’t find the part inside the cramped the case. So, even dead simple can be hard. A tension switch in my drier is obviously at fault, but it’s in the back, which is not accessible, so the entire drum and whatevers need to be removed to access it. Computers (not all of them) and phones are designed to be unrepairable. There are sites (forgot the names) that show teardowns and offer special tools, but good luck finding info on anything smaller than an entire logic card.
There may be books on how to build and test PC’s, if that’s what you are looking for. Make Magazine is back, and you might look at sparkfun, lilypad and any number of Arduino and Raspberry Pi publications for ideas, but other than the educational value of these publications, (I learned a ton from reading Popular Electronics), nothing specific about repairs that I know of, mostly new projects.
The more specific your question, the more specific answers you’ll get. Good luck.
Old TV repairmen could swap tubes and look for charred parts, but when transistors and I.C.’s took over, you basically swapped out whole boards.
Other than simple things, a lot of stuff is black box in nature.
As an example, I had a Breville oven quit on me. There was an inline fuse (looks like a resistor) Simple. But I had to take out some 30 screws, and then I couldn’t find the part inside the cramped the case. So, even dead simple can be hard. A tension switch in my drier is obviously at fault, but it’s in the back, which is not accessible, so the entire drum and whatevers need to be removed to access it. Computers (not all of them) and phones are designed to be unrepairable. There are sites (forgot the names) that show teardowns and offer special tools, but good luck finding info on anything smaller than an entire logic card.
There may be books on how to build and test PC’s, if that’s what you are looking for. Make Magazine is back, and you might look at sparkfun, lilypad and any number of Arduino and Raspberry Pi publications for ideas, but other than the educational value of these publications, (I learned a ton from reading Popular Electronics), nothing specific about repairs that I know of, mostly new projects.
The more specific your question, the more specific answers you’ll get. Good luck.
I agree with starting with a specific repair is ideal. One thing about electronic repair is devices that need repair and are easier to repair will often have walkthroughs on forums, blogs, or YouTube. Starting with projects that others have solved will be an easier ramp up than starting with an obscure repair.
For example, I had a pair of Samsung LCD monitors that stopped working. I looked up how to repair them and found that they suffered from leaking capacitors. Some video showed how to identify the capacitors and how to desolder an solder replacements. I followed the instructions and got the monitors working again. Another example is I have a Delco car radio from the 90s with burnt out illumination bulbs. Again there are walkthroughs on repairing these.
For example, I had a pair of Samsung LCD monitors that stopped working. I looked up how to repair them and found that they suffered from leaking capacitors. Some video showed how to identify the capacitors and how to desolder an solder replacements. I followed the instructions and got the monitors working again. Another example is I have a Delco car radio from the 90s with burnt out illumination bulbs. Again there are walkthroughs on repairing these.
ifixit is probably the website you talked about.
Get an Arduino kit, and start playing around with series/parallel circuits driving LEDs, using coils and capacitors, etc.
Really old stuff, with vacuum tubes, can have a "hot chassis" with mains voltage on it, and/or 200-300 volts on the plates of the tubes, be careful. Tube testers can be had, and so can tubes, for the most part.
Newer stuff, with transistors, usually has dead electrolytic capacitors that need to be replaced, and sometimes there will be other issues, most of the time it's a matter of tracing signals through a system to see which stage is at fault.
When you get to the newer stuff, with surface mount components, you'll need to have schematics and block diagrams in order to even start to figure out what's going on. The really new stuff has transistors and other passive parts so small you'll have to have a microscope to work on them with. You'll need hot air reworking gear to repair that type of stuff.
But first.... as I said earlier, start with the basics... programmers don't have good intuition about parallel and series circuits, etc. You can get multimeters and oscilloscopes very cheap these days.
If you want to get into radio, investing and playing with an RTL-SDR dongle and GNU Radio is a great way to get a feel for how things work, and to learn about negative frequencies, and all things signal processing related.
Really old stuff, with vacuum tubes, can have a "hot chassis" with mains voltage on it, and/or 200-300 volts on the plates of the tubes, be careful. Tube testers can be had, and so can tubes, for the most part.
Newer stuff, with transistors, usually has dead electrolytic capacitors that need to be replaced, and sometimes there will be other issues, most of the time it's a matter of tracing signals through a system to see which stage is at fault.
When you get to the newer stuff, with surface mount components, you'll need to have schematics and block diagrams in order to even start to figure out what's going on. The really new stuff has transistors and other passive parts so small you'll have to have a microscope to work on them with. You'll need hot air reworking gear to repair that type of stuff.
But first.... as I said earlier, start with the basics... programmers don't have good intuition about parallel and series circuits, etc. You can get multimeters and oscilloscopes very cheap these days.
If you want to get into radio, investing and playing with an RTL-SDR dongle and GNU Radio is a great way to get a feel for how things work, and to learn about negative frequencies, and all things signal processing related.
That's a good reply, although I can't conceive of "negative frequencies".
It's easy.... imagine a motor spinning at 10 turns / second... then reversing... it's now turning -10 turns/second.
When you have I and Q (Information and Quadrature of it), you can tell which way a signal is "spinning"... and there are many things you can't do if you don't have both parts of the signal.
If you have two antenna near each other, you can look at the phase and tell where the signal is coming from, in terms of which is closer to the source, by that rotation direction.
When you have I and Q (Information and Quadrature of it), you can tell which way a signal is "spinning"... and there are many things you can't do if you don't have both parts of the signal.
If you have two antenna near each other, you can look at the phase and tell where the signal is coming from, in terms of which is closer to the source, by that rotation direction.
>> PS. I'm well aware of The Art of Electronics.
If you think that may be too much to begin with, you are not mistaken! Often recommended is Practical Electronics For Inventors to begin with.
You may also want to evaluate these: https://hackernewsbooks.com/search?q=electronics
If you think that may be too much to begin with, you are not mistaken! Often recommended is Practical Electronics For Inventors to begin with.
You may also want to evaluate these: https://hackernewsbooks.com/search?q=electronics
Make: Electronics by Charles Platt is an excellent book for learning electronics. It will provide foundational knowledge about what components what up a circuit and how they affect current and voltage at different points.
I actually think the only "serious" way is either going to a school to getting a job and learn as apprentice. That is how one shows the seriousness.
I am studying for a degree very close to EE. What taught me intuition was the falstad circuit simulator (website). You can start from very simple circuits with voltage sources and resistors. Then you can move to capacitors/inductors and start thinking about frequency. Then work on op amps and transistors.
Well, if Horowitz and Hill aren't doing it for you I'm not sure what can help, short of trade or professional training.
What kinds of things do you want to be able to fix?