Electronics Course (45 episodes, YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7qUW0KPfsIIOPOKL84wK_Qj9N7gvJX6v

by childintime • 3 years ago

161 45 3 years ago

pizzaknife3• 3 years ago

This is exactly what I need right now. I have a rudimentary understanding but I have a large project on the wipeboard which I don't yet have the knowledge to begin - this is the material i need. Thank you for sharing!

hbrav2• 3 years ago

What's the project?

pizzaknife3• 3 years ago

im admittedly embarrassed to mention it because I know its very rudimentary but here goes - small solar array //and// an exercise bike transformed into a generator - both going to same battery store - stretch goal: generation and draw telemetry dashboard. What will it power you might ask? automated garden system (water delivery essentially), a nintendo switch and accompanying TV/peripherals. "Why a stationary bike?" Make the kids work for video game time lmao - EDIT: my current electrical engineering experience is limited to RC and full sized vehicle troubleshooting, like an RC servo or a motorcycle's stator etc...

znpy3• 3 years ago

An hour-long video on the PN junction... This is going to be good.

analognoise• 3 years ago

Then I'd need to watch three hours of videos to refresh the bits of rusty calculus. At least.

whartung• 3 years ago

So, this course seems to be about going into the depth, I guess the chemistry and physics, of solid state electronics. Diodes, transistors, etc.

But do I need to spend 45 hours watching this to empower me to successfully design, say, a microcomputer board? A Z80? 6502? Even an 8088? Do I need this level of depth to get a microcontroller to make a stepper motor do what I want to do (whatever that may be)? Or a power circuit to drive a higher power motor controller? (Do I need relays for that? Power transistors? Big capacitors?)

Because that's what I think many who are interested in "electronics" want to do. Will the lack of understanding of a PN junction cause those kinds of projects to fail? Or be more difficult to do?

For someone interested in these kinds of projects, is there a better place to put 45 hours of study? Perhaps just wiring stuff together, stamping out fires, and tracing down the smoky parts?

epolanski2• 3 years ago

45 hours of watching is not the hard part, it is actually learning and understanding and exercising.

I've followed few MIT courses (mostly on algebra, category theory and some more CS-related) and while a video took me 1 hour, the actual amount of time around it (writing down the important things, summarizing, exercising, finding answers about the topics touched) was much more.

Between twice and 4 times the amount.

On that front in-person education has definitely two benefits: you have peers in your same situation with whom you can discuss the topics and obviously access to teachers and their assistants.

chongli3• 3 years ago

Do I need this level of depth to get a microcontroller to make a stepper motor do what I want to do (whatever that may be)

Dave over at the EEVBlog likes to draw a distinction here. He distinguishes between people who want to learn electronics (build power supplies, radios), that is, analog circuits, from people who want put together Arduino projects. He refers to the latter as more of embedded programming rather than electronics.

The linked course definitely leans way over to the side of the former. If you’re more interested in the latter, there are tons of YouTube channels out there about building projects with the Arduino.

joshvm• 3 years ago

I'd argue as a hobbyist you can get away with "block level" design - understand enough to know what you need, read datasheets and implement a reference design. For example making a stepper motor do what you want - probably not, just buy a driver board and look at example code and a reference circuit. Same goes for a high power motor: either you buy a pre-made board that has the right spec, or you look up a reference circuit with a common control IC. Most digital design can be done in this way; you need to know how to program as well.

Analog is in some ways more complicated. But there are lots of reference designs for blocks like filters and amplifiers and you can look at the pros/cons of different circuits. A good companion to this sort of design work is Horowitz and Hill. Even high frequency board design can mostly be achieved around by following best practices unless you're doing stripline RF stuff.

The difference lies in things like designing extremely efficient circuits (optimize for part number, cost, etc) and designing boards that can be certified. You can get away with a lot if you're not designing to a tight spec.

znpy3• 3 years ago

Sure you’re right, go watch something else.

mcshicks• 3 years ago

It's interesting that he started with that topic. As opposed to voltage, current , RC circuits, etc. He's got quite a few topics, like emitter followers and op amps. But I think he's a bit below the level of what people need in order to create useful PCB level electronics. I think something like this would be so much more useful if it was tied to an existing book on the subject, like for instance "The Art of Electronics". Which actually doesn't cover device physics but start with just transistor and diode models presented as facts.

znpy3• 3 years ago

It makes perfect sense to me, as this looks more like an university-level course rather than a tutorial.

In my university there were two main course around electronics (past the electromagnetism part pf the physics course) circuit theory (all things voltages, currents, various laws like thevenin, transformations, capacitors, resistors, inductances and ideal diodes) and then there was the electronic course (all things transistor, basic signal analysis etc). My university was a proper (and major) engineering-centered university though.

PennRobotics• 3 years ago

This seems more like a quarter of Sedra/Smith[1]---which, at over 1200 pages, could very well be three courses---and half of an electronic materials/semiconductors course.

[1] https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/microelectronic-circuits...

When I did a Sedra/Smith course, it was after two semesters of passive linear circuit analysis, so it makes sense to skip the basics in lecture 1.

-----

Personally, I found 6.002 (MIT's Circuits lecture[2]) very good for getting through electricity basics and into amplifier modelling, and then using Falstad's simulator to explore real amplifiers and diode circuits. I wish the lecture audio was better, because at one point he moves from the I-V bend of a crude amplifier into the linear region (by applying a bias voltage and shrinking the signal input) while playing music[3], and that sounds really cool live.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F74AFA03AA06A11

[3] https://youtu.be/JqvKtMNz3RQ?t=1480

It's old content, so 240p. At one point, they had better lecture videos from a more recent year, but those are maybe on edX or MIT DSpace or their Digital Learning server.

sheepshear4• 3 years ago

Razavi has authored several well-known textbooks, one of which is on introductory microelectronics, the subject of these videos. Linear circuits are covered in prerequisite courses.

hbrav2• 3 years ago

This is the sort of thing that is solid gold for a well-motivated hobbyist. Lots of content together in one place that takes a (I hope) coherent journey through the "what's important" of a subject.

If anyone knows of something similar for mechanical engineering I would be very interested. (Thanks in advance from a physicist who should probably have been an engineer instead :-) )

epolanski2• 3 years ago

I'm a chemist who should've went for Informatica (computer science) or Ingegneria Informatica (computer engineering) too, I can relate.

While I don't think that a degree would've added much to my professional life as I learned what I wanted/needed I can't but say that chemistry gave me even less (aside of being generally good at theoretical and practical sciences).

spacemadness2• 3 years ago

A well-motivated hobbyist with a physics degree maybe. As someone who studied EE, I wouldn’t recommend most hobbyists sit through all this unless they have a solid background in basic engineering math. He assumes some knowledge of the Laplace transformation for instance. Really, you don’t need to know this stuff to do hobby electronics. You can get pretty far in thinking about circuits at a higher level. Of course, if you want to build your own amplifiers and know exactly what’s going on everywhere you will need sit down and learn and get a more in-depth foundational understanding.

fumoto• 3 years ago

What do you recommended for non-EE major hobbyist?

friend_and_foe5• 3 years ago

This reminds me, off topic but I once found a YouTube channel or playlist of this African women teaching how to read. Apparently a lot of African women can't read and she wanted to solve the problem by making a video course to teach them. I can't for the life of me find it, when I search its either kids ABCs videos or TED talks about empowered black woman authors. I wonder if any video course aficionados might know what channel I'm talking about.

hathawsh• 3 years ago

Is it this channel?

https://www.youtube.com/@adultliteracyandenglishlang

Here is the reading/writing playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9RaD1SLwSoZhMNz7pqRw...

I like her pacing (not fast, not too slow) and the way she presents herself. It seems like a high quality course, even if the audio and video quality are not perfect. I wonder how we could bring more awareness to this great work and others like it.

friend_and_foe5• 3 years ago

No, the one I was looking for was a west African woman in Africa, teaching people to learn to read English from scratch.

sourcepluck• 3 years ago

https://invidious.flokinet.to/playlist?list=PL7qUW0KPfsIIOPO...

Here's the same course, but on invidious, for those who don't go onto Youtube "proper".

Is there a HN policy on this? Seems more "neutral" to post the non-youtube link to me. There are people who don't go on to youtube, whereas I don't know of anyone with a moral issue with invidious?

Anyway, course looks cool, I'm bookmarking for after doing a few more practical fun things first to build motivation. Cheers.

cinntaile• 3 years ago

I'd bookmark the Youtube link though, I expect them to stick around for longer.

helmette• 3 years ago

thanks

seabass-labrax• 3 years ago

I always prefer to have plain YouTube links, because then my LibRedirect extension for Firefox redirects me to my self-hosted Invidious instance, or another one of my choice. If someone posts a link to a specific Invidious instance, the extension can't detect it to redirect me to my own.

philipov• 3 years ago

I love finding full course lecture series like this, although I'm usually looking more for History or Political Science lectures these days.

reachtarunhere• 3 years ago

You do NOT need this as a hobbyist. I will go as far to say it will be counter productive. Pickup Art of Electronics or the lab manual that comes with it instead.

Electronics Course (45 episodes, YouTube)

Related Stories