HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Try Practical Electronics for Inventors:

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Third...

BTW if you are interested in learning some of the theory, check out Practical Electronics for Inventors:

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-S...

Are there any books for non-engineers, that go from basic concepts up to PCB design?

UPDATE: Not sure if it's going up to PCB design but apparently this one[1] seems to be the most praised on Amazon UK.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0071771336?psc=1&redirect...

⬐ malcolmputer

I can recommend Practical Electronics for Inventors. It is very helpful in getting practical prototypes designed pretty quick. I sometimes still refer to it when I need something simple I haven't designed in a while.

⬐ tdicola

Check out Chris Gammell's Contextual Electronics course about board design with KiCad: https://contextualelectronics.com/ The KiCard course is now free and great at walking through how to use KiCad to design boards: https://contextualelectronics.com/course/kicad-tutorial/

⬐ malcolmputer

1. Contextual Electronics does have a really good course on kicad.

2. Kicad is a very good PCB software package.

Word of warning though, kicad is currently in a state of "flux" with the latest stable from 2013, and the bleeding edge versions having all of the features you want to use. I personally use nightly builds and the 2013 version quite often, and neither are what I would call professionally stable.

⬐ technomancy

One cool thing about the new version is that it uses s-expressions for its file format. I was disappointed to find that I couldn't perform rotation on a group of footprints at once, but once I took a look at the file format I found it was easy to load into Racket, do a little trig, and spit out the rotated forms: https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/blob/master/atreus.rkt...

⬐ digitaljunky

I learned a lot about the basics with "Getting started in Electronics" by Forrest M. Mims III, it's very (very) accessible and I find the drawings very amusing.

Or else you have the Bible of the trade, or "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill that just came out for a third edition. It's an incredibly comprehensive guide but you'd better have some free time ahead if you want to read through it all :)

⬐ bliti

Agree with you. The Forrest Mims books are concise and written in a very simple manner without dumbing things down. His collection of the basics which is about four small volumes, will cost you about $50 in total. Money very well spent.

It is a fantastic book. I'd also like to recommend Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk (http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-S...).

I'm in the crowd that's getting into analog electronics and digital circuits backwards, as it were, by starting with programmable microcontrollers (Arduinos etc.) and moving outward from them on the circuit board. I found the latter book was particularly well suited for self-learning. It is also huge and, as far as I can tell, vastly comprehensive. The writing is clear and concise. Explanations of concepts often draw on analogy, classical electrical theory, and quantum physics alike. This multitude of approaches has helped me grasp the fundamentals more firmly than other books. It also keeps an eye on practical applications. Sections on, say, power rectifiers or op amps or timers or debouncing circuits or whatever all show you many variations on a theme, with discussion of what you would want to use in which situations.

Also, if I'm speaking to anyone else like me, software engineers who want to know hardware, buy all the books you can, but get an oscilloscope. I waited far too long for this purchase. I wouldn't write code without a debugger; this is the hardware equivalent. I recently got this little Rigol model: https://www.adafruit.com/products/681 . It costs the same as a few big electronics books, and it's the difference between stumbling around a room in the dark and having illumination everywhere.

Speaking as someone who picked up hobby electronics not too long ago, I recommend Paul Scherz's "Practical Electronics for Inventors" [1]. Good mix of theory as well as practice.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Paul-S...

I find hackaday inspirational, but not informative enough for newbies.

In no particular order, I suggest:

Check out makezine.com.

Find a local makerspace[1]

Work through tutorials and references for beginners (great hands on electronics book [2], more in-depth info to augment an electronics tutorial [3], arduino [4])

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=makerspace

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Make-Electronics-Learning-Through-Disc...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Third-...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Workshop-Hands--Introduction-P...