| Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff |
| Best viritual Breadboard software? |
| << < (4/5) > >> |
| rstofer:
OP, what are you trying to achieve and, no, this isn't intended as a criticism? I'm trying to follow along with why you want a virtual breadboard when you have a real one. Components 'fit' together when they make up a circuit but there are an awful lot of circuits that can be built with just a few components. So, find a circuit that interests you and build it up. Were it me, I would be spending a LOT of time with w2aew's videos as he does almost everything on breadboards. There's a lot of really well done educational material on his site. Of course, this site has a lot of material as well. I like the Fundamental's Friday series. Learning electronics is a pretty broad statement because the field is so wide. Are you interested in analog electronics? If so, you want to understand transistors and op amps. If you are interested in digital electronics, you might as well start out with an Arduino and use the breadboard for add-on components. The normal progression is to start with resistors in series and parallel - Ohm's Law. Then networks of voltage sources and resistors - Kirchhoff's Laws followed by equivalent circuits (Norton and Thevenin). The next thing up will be an RC circuit viewed in terms of frequency response (measuring in the frequency domain) and step response (measuring in the time domain). These terms probably won't make any sense until you get to that point in circuit analysis. Next up: inductors. These will be studied in the same manner as capacitors. Finally, RLC circuits where everything is thrown in the box. Around here, we usually get into AC circuit analysis. The math gets ugly so perhaps just skim the subject at first. After that, it is time to take up active circuits (transistors and op amps). There is a pretty good EE program over at Khan Academy. Search the site for Electrical Engineering. I would recommend LTspice as a circuit simulator. It works really well and it's free! In fact, when you get to RC circuits, it may be quite helpful to simulate the circuit as well as building it. At some point, you're going to need a signal source and a scope. Were I a student, I would be looking carefully at Digilent's Analog Discovery 2. It's a lab full of stuff in a single box. It's particularly useful in a breadboard environment. When I want to demonstrate something (like the frequency response of an RC circuit), I reach for the AD2 because I have no other tool that will produce a printed Bode' Plot. If I want to talk about the harmonic content of a square wave, the AD2 is the easiest way to get a large scale printed plot of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) with annotations. There is simply nothing like the AD2 for students or beginners. Yes, it's expensive, but so is a decent Arbitrary Waveform Generator and a decent Dual Channel Oscilloscope. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on November 21, 2019, 04:41:24 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on November 21, 2019, 04:26:49 pm ---tggzzz really needs to stop with his anti-breadboard crusade. (Literally every thread about breadboards, he comes in to “warn” people about the pitfalls of solderless breadboards, hyperbolically making it sound as though they don’t ever work for anything.) He’s utterly convinced they’re of no value, --- End quote --- Please point to where I wrote that in this thread. Be explicit. --- Quote --- and doesn’t understand that his suggestions of “quick” Manhattan soldering and studying datasheets aren’t sensible for every situation. His recommendations clearly expect levels of knowledge that a beginner will not have, not to mention eradicating the fun and delight of instant gratification and quick experimentation. :palm: --- End quote --- Solderless breadboards aren't the only way to achieve "instant gratification and quick experimentation". Which bits of "Depending on the circuit you build you may not encounter those" "Use what is best for you" "Fun is fine" did you not understand? Those are all from this thread. Sure, there are caveats. So what? --- End quote --- I will grant that in this thread, your wording has been quite restrained. But taken as a whole, your posts about breadboards make it clear that you don’t think they’re worth the effort in any situation. It’d be nice for you to, frankly, just stop pissing in everyone’s Cheerios every time you see the word “breadboard”. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: tooki on November 21, 2019, 05:34:25 pm --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on November 21, 2019, 04:41:24 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on November 21, 2019, 04:26:49 pm ---tggzzz really needs to stop with his anti-breadboard crusade. (Literally every thread about breadboards, he comes in to “warn” people about the pitfalls of solderless breadboards, hyperbolically making it sound as though they don’t ever work for anything.) He’s utterly convinced they’re of no value, --- End quote --- Please point to where I wrote that in this thread. Be explicit. --- Quote --- and doesn’t understand that his suggestions of “quick” Manhattan soldering and studying datasheets aren’t sensible for every situation. His recommendations clearly expect levels of knowledge that a beginner will not have, not to mention eradicating the fun and delight of instant gratification and quick experimentation. :palm: --- End quote --- Solderless breadboards aren't the only way to achieve "instant gratification and quick experimentation". Which bits of "Depending on the circuit you build you may not encounter those" "Use what is best for you" "Fun is fine" did you not understand? Those are all from this thread. Sure, there are caveats. So what? --- End quote --- I will grant that in this thread, your wording has been quite restrained. But taken as a whole, your posts about breadboards make it clear that you don’t think they’re worth the effort in any situation. It’d be nice for you to, frankly, just stop pissing in everyone’s Cheerios every time you see the word “breadboard”. --- End quote --- It is good that you have now read what I wrote. The next step is to override your kneejerk reflex and not to invent strawman arguments, which are likely to confuse beginners. |
| SiliconWizard:
I'm not convinced of the virtue of any virtual breadboard software. Whereas real breadboarding (provided you know the limitations) can be a pretty useful learning tool, the effect of physically experimenting is a tremendous addition IMO. If you're going for software tools, I personally think you should aim, logically, for something that really takes advantage of being virtual, such as, as suggested above, analog and/or digital simiulation for instance. And, on the other end of the spectrum, learning to use some EDA software for schematics and layout editing. Both approaches would be complementary. Just my opinion. |
| Zero999:
I've never heard of virtual breadboarding software. Do you mean real-time simulation? Like this: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/ If so, then yes it can be handy, since it makes the circuit easy to visualise. On the other hand it tends to be less accurate than proper simulator i.e when the schematic is entered, the simulation is run and the results are displayed in the form of a plot or table, showing voltages and currents at different nodes in the circuit. By all means play around with real-time simulators, but for more in-depth and accurate simulators use something like LTSpice. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |