Author Topic: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?  (Read 16049 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline saturation

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4787
  • Country: us
  • Doveryai, no proveryai
    • NIST
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #25 on: February 22, 2011, 02:41:46 pm »
Some schools are fielding entire courses online, a good example is MIT:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-spring-2007/video-lectures/

Follow the links to their labs, and it often includes a parts description, a full syllabus and exercises. 
Best Wishes,

 Saturation
 

Offline metalphreak

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 815
  • Country: au
  • http://d.av.id.au
    • D.av.id.AU
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #26 on: February 23, 2011, 01:15:03 am »
Some schools are fielding entire courses online, a good example is MIT:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-spring-2007/video-lectures/

Follow the links to their labs, and it often includes a parts description, a full syllabus and exercises. 


If you have iTunes installed, check out the iTunes U (University). Has heaps of videos on various things and its usually MIT, Harvard etc who put up entire courses. Same thing as going to the link above, but its all in one convenient place :)

Offline mga1103

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 2
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #27 on: March 16, 2011, 11:37:53 am »
...
I also recommend a mains powered DC supply otherwise you'll find yourself wasting money on batteries or waiting ages for them to recharge. I would recommend buying a wall plug DC adaptor, rather than spending loads of money on an expensive power supply. If you buy a 15V wall plug, you can create a 5V supply and a 1.2V to 12V variable PSU using the LM7805 and LM317 respectively. For a bipolar +/-12V supply for op-amp circuit you could, use a 12VAC mains adaptor, an LM78L12 and LM79L12.

I can post some circuits for mains PSUs if you like.

Please do post them!  I definitely need a variable PSU...  ;)
 

Offline david77

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 934
  • Country: de
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #28 on: March 16, 2011, 04:43:21 pm »
No don't post it  ;).

Just have a look at the LM317 datasheet. There's all you need to know, basic circuit, detailed description of the regulator and how it works.
The basic circuit consists of only 3 components, it won't get much simpler.
You can throw it together on a piece of veroboard or even as a rats nest without any board - it will work.

I find datasheets incredibly helpfull, there are often some good tips and guidelines in there, too.

 

Online Zero999

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19345
  • Country: gb
  • 0999
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #29 on: March 16, 2011, 09:23:11 pm »
Try to find the Forrest Mims Engineers Notebook and / or Mini Notebooks.

Not bad advice but make sure you read from a broader range of authors than that. I'd recommend reading Getting Started in Electronics, then moving on to content written by more respected authors.
 

Offline johnwa

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 255
  • Country: au
    • loopgain.net - a few of my projects
Re: Best way to learn how to design your own circuits?
« Reply #30 on: March 20, 2011, 02:54:47 am »
See if you can get access to a library of electronics magazines. As I was learning about electronics, I started building up a collection of "Electronics Australia" and "Silicon Chip" magazines. Even if you don't build the projects, the articles usually have good descriptions of how the circuits work, and there are often articles on various aspects of theory as well.

Start off by building up some of the designs as published. This won't necessarily teach you very much at first. But, like Dave said, if the circuits don't work, you are lucky! - you will have the opportunity to learn some troubleshooting skills. Once you are on top of this, you can try modifying the designs to do something different, or interfacing two circuits together. I found there was a fairly steep learning curve at this point, but you will get better at it over time. You can start off fairly simple, such as replacing a switch in one circuit with a relay controlled by another circuit - this is generally a fairly inelegant way of doing things, but it will get you started.

Over time, you can build up a substantial library of "building blocks" that are used in various published designs. Then, when you want to design your own circuit, you can copy these blocks out of the different designs into your own circuit. You will probably find that a bit of trial and error is required at this stage, and it would be a good idea to build the circuit up on a breadboard before you make a PCB. This way you can optimise the circuit for your particular application. After a while, you will be able (mostly) to go straight from a circuit to a working PCB. You will probably find the size of the circuit sections you are using is getting smaller, and you are using many more of them in your designs. If you find that the building blocks have shrunk down to individual components, then I think you can consider yourself capable of designing circuits from scratch!

« Last Edit: March 20, 2011, 02:58:08 am by johnwa »
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf