Online resources for self-education

[DJPhil]

Hello everyone, it's time for another wall of text.

I just wanted to post a couple of resources I found useful as I've started back into electronics. There is a lot that can be found online with google, wikipedia, and on the websites of various companies about the specifics of any given topic, but I found it took some looking to find broad introductory instructional material that doesn't assume a great deal of prior knowledge. This is the sort of stuff that may be of dubious use to the professionals and those well trenched in education, but might be a good fit for someone who's attempting to make the leap from a more plug-and-play hobby level to a deeper understanding of electronics design.

On the topic of prior knowledge, it is very difficult if not impossible to begin in electronics (or programming) without a foundation in math. This has been an obstacle for me personally for most of my life, and has kept me in 'the shallow end of the pool' in regards to my love of science. In my effort to fix my math deficiency I stumbled upon the work of a fellow named Salman Khan. From his website: "The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere." His videos are bite sized chunks of six to ten minutes in length, and his style is easy to follow and relaxed. I find concepts easier to understand if I start first with one of these videos and go on to other sources for more depth. He covers a wide variety of topics aside from math as well. If you need a place to start your study of math, I strongly recommend starting here. I think the awesomeness of what this man is doing cannot be overstated, and if you should come to agree you may wish to consider donating to his organization.

I'd planned a more exhaustive list, but I came to realize I didn't stray far from these two resources as I was just beginning.

All About Circuits - Online textbook series
An absolutely huge, six volume online textbook series. Includes a complimentary video series, worksheets to go with the text, and a large and active forum.
Covers . . pretty much everything. Broad and shallow, a good place to start or refresh.

The main strength of this site is that it is an online textbook. This is an excellent resource for those who learn best by reading. I find it much easier to cross reference a concept in greater depth and return to text without breaking my train of thought as opposed to a lecture video.


Basic Electronics - Dr.Chitralekha Mahanta
This is a lecture series of 38 videos at about an hour each dealing with semiconductor electronics.
Covers basic material theory, diodes, BJTs, JFETs, MOSFETs, the basics of Opamps, power applications, and a bit on SCRs.

I discovered this series of lectures with a youtube search and it led me to the NPTEL channel, and eventually the NPTEL webpage. This program is funded by the Indian government, and contains a great deal of useful lecture material. The youtube channel can be a bit difficult to navigate, so I recommend going to the website itself to locate and organize a specific lecture series. These lectures are (so far as I've explored) all in english, and although some may have trouble with with the accents of the instructors I haven't had any difficulties myself. I found these lectures more accessible at my level of understanding than others that I have found on youtube, though my search was far from exhaustive. My thanks and respect go out to those in India who make this material available to a bozo like me, and I intend to write them and tell them so.

Now this isn't to say I've been through all this material, I'm still chugging along myself. With all the good advice on specific topics flying around, I figured I'd throw in what I found in the hopes that it would turn up useful to someone.

If anyone has any other resources that they've found useful, please add on. I tried to stick within the terms broad, instructional, and low prior knowledge, but anything goes.

A thought: should we attempt a 'sticky' post full of collected resources?

[VladKEasternTiger]

Hi Phil, thanks for the post, I was infact going to post something like this up, thanks yes Ive been a big fan of KhanAcademy on youtube for a long time, his chemistry playlist and Physics is the best, look at the comment section on his website, people from all continents off the world thanking KhanAcademy. Also I have seen the Lectures by NPTEL and the work they
produce is top and again helps many people from around the world. My friend who is from India but works in London is an Electronic Engineer and told me he is currently researching Electrical Power Engineering and doing research in Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) phenomena analysis in High Voltage Engineering.  He said they is actually a big shortage in western europe for EE and this is why many and himself come from abroad to do the work here

Thanks for the
message

[VladKEasternTiger]

Also let me add before I fall asleep yes its late here half past midnight, if you see this link it has a series of Lectues for free by Prof. Anant Agarwal



Search for Vinod Dham he is the Father of the Pentium chip and they are many great interesting articles on line, I didnt know who this fella was until today

 Smiley

[terriea]

Thanks all for your links, here is my little contribution.

Electronics Demonstrations: http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html
An interesting web site with a Java-based circuit simulator. It is very interesting for beginers (like me) as It show a lot of basic components and classical circuits working realtime. We can see the current flow and some oscilloscope-like diagrams, all "real-time". It is very intuitive, you can play with some values (tention/resistence/time/..) on most circuits to see what appends. A really nice toy to play with. I think it is possible to use the Java program to simulate you own circuits, but didn't really dig into it.

MIT open course ware 6.002 Circuits and Electronics: https://www.youtube.com/user/MIT#g/c/9F74AFA03AA06A11
MIT lectures are usually very good. I saw just the two first lectures for the moment and it's good. Maybe it get too complicated on the next ones, but still may be a good source of information.

[horzza]

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html

...I think it is possible to use the Java program to simulate you own circuits, but didn't really dig into it...

You can open all the example circuits using the toolbar at the top, which gives access to a blank circuit as well. From there you can right click and select what you wish to draw, the left click and drag and most things will appear. Right click to spec them and play around.

I also found it useful to play with the default values in the sample circuits, which may be handy for designing your own circuits.
I found it handy for trying to make a sawtooth generator from an op-amp and fiddled around to get the rise and fall times I wanted, for example.

[Simon]

I think we need a sticky topic like this with a little less chatter just the sites and an explanation, maybe Dave can start a new thread for this purpose ?

[jlcstrat]

MIT is part of the Open Courseware program.  They have a semester's worth of lectures for many of their courses:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/index.htm

[iqqy]

I came here to post the MIT videos. I watched the first two lectures this morning and they're really very good for a beginner/intermediate electronics hobbyist.

[johnboxall]

From here you can download the notes and lecture slides for an introductory electronics unit at University of Queensland (Australia)
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~elec1000/Lecture%20Notes%20Filled/

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[3roomlab]

i thought i list this video here, as the thread suggests -- self help stuff

ladies n gents. 6.5hours of instruction by ARRL ! (not my video, just a random chanced upon as i was watching something else)



anybody wanna do a 24hr series of electronics bits n bytes?

[Oskar]

Gates to FPGAs Series - CMOS Electrical Properties I
HOW CMOS WORKS: MOSFETS, JFETS, IGFETS AND MORE
August 3, 2015 by Bil Herd
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/03/how-cmos-works/

[ProBang2]

I think we need a sticky topic like this with a little less chatter just the sites and an explanation, maybe Dave can start a new thread for this purpose ?

+ 1

[seabell]

What's wrong with the top 'sticky'?
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/electronics-primers-course-material-and-books/

[obiwanjacobi]

Followed a few courses on coursera.com

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=electronics&languages=en

[2c]

[JP16A60]

Eugene Khutoryansky has created some beautiful visuals and associated commentary that helped me to (finally!) solidify my mental model of some of the most basic principle of electricity and circuits.

Without exaggeration, I've learned more from watching the first six videos of this playlist than I got out of two evening courses and hundreds of hours of self-study.

Playlist: Electric Circuits

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkyBCj4JhHt8DFH9QysGWm4h_DOxT93fb

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this resource (and no, I'm not related to Eugene in any way--just a very satisfied viewer).

JP

[ez24]

I think we need a sticky topic like this with a little less chatter just the sites and an explanation, maybe Dave can start a new thread for this purpose ?

I wonder if a sticky can be inside a sticky ie here is the sticky

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/electronics-primers-course-material-and-books/

so I added this to this sticky  boy is this complicated trying to add all this stuff

little less chatter

this will never happen

[casterle]

You can open all the example circuits using the toolbar at the top

Excellent program. You can also download the app to run locally. Windows, Mac & Linux support, still being updated as of 10-06-2020.