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Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition

Paul Scherz, Simon Monk · 6 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition" by Paul Scherz, Simon Monk.
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Amazon Summary
Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. A Fully Updated, No Nonsense Guide to Electronics Advance your electronics knowledge and gain the skills necessary to develop and construct your own functioning gadgets. Written by a pair of experienced engineers and dedicated hobbyists, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, lays out the essentials and provides step by step instructions, schematics, and illustrations. Discover how to select the right components, design and build circuits, use microcontrollers and ICs, work with the latest software tools, and test and tweak your creations. This easy to follow book features new instruction on programmable logic, semiconductors, operational amplifiers, voltage regulators, power supplies, digital electronics, and more. Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition, covers: Resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers Diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits Optoelectronics, solar cells, and phototransistors Sensors, GPS modules, and touch screens Op amps, regulators, and power supplies Digital electronics, LCD displays, and logic gates Microcontrollers and prototyping platforms Combinational and sequential programmable logic DC motors, RC servos, and stepper motors Microphones, audio amps, and speakers Modular electronics and prototypes
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
I found the book "Practical Electronics for Investors" by Paul Scherz [0] to be one of the better ones.

My problem with learning electronics, and, to a lesser extent, electricity, was that most of the guides gave an 'ad-hoc' approach, giving "rules of thumb", recipes, etc. without really going into the reasons for it. They would start off with an (imo) overly technical explanation of quantum effects, then jump the more fundamental Ohm's law, etc., then jump into all the tips-n-tricks of circuit design.

For me, the two major factors to learning electronics were getting enough math sophistication that I could do calculus and linear algebra and being able to program (microcontrollers). The calculus and linear algebra gives tools for the 'passive' analysis and once you realize that most 'practical' electronics nowadays are basically routing power and signal, being able to program is the "meat" of it.

After understanding how to do passive steady-state circuit analysis, I briefly looked at how to do non-passive simulation (transistors, etc.) just to see how it was done (aka, learned how SPICE et. all do it).

Anyway, I found the "Practical Electronics for Inventors" book to be one of the few books that was practical from the outset and actually went into the theory, even if only briefly, without assuming I would get frightened by complex numbers.

There's obviously a path that doesn't involve calculus, linear algebra and programming, because people do it and have been doing it for many years, but these were the tools that helped me understand.

I would also recommend not doing this in the abstract. Arduino's [1] are, in my opinion, one of the better places to start. You can get an LED blinking within 5 minutes of onboxing. Adafruit [2] has many tutorial but they're more focused on using pre-built modules and I guess programming, to a lesser extent, than underlying theory.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...

[1] https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-uno-rev3

[2] https://learn.adafruit.com/

For Biology, and especially for Molecular biology I'd go for:

- Albert's Molecular Biology of the cell - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0815344325/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... - It introduces basic Biochemistry, a lot of Genetics and Gene-regulation and Developmental biology. The book also touches other areas (but very vaguely) like Immunology... I think if you read this book you will be able to understand modern Molecular Biology papers.

- Biochem: Legninger's Principles of Biochemistry https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K0PYUYQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... - Our prof taught us from this, it has great visuals and covers a lot of areas.

- Developmental biology: Gilbert's - https://www.amazon.com/Developmental-Biology-Tenth-Scott-Gil... - it introduces more genetic regulation and development for all walks of life

- Human developmental biology: Bruce M. Carlson - Human Embryology and Developmental biology - https://www.amazon.com/Human-Embryology-Developmental-Biolog... - Again it's the choice of my prof, but I loved it, great images and visual explanations.

- Anatomy: I'd definitely go for anything by Netter -> https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Netter-Science/dp...

- Cancer: Robert A. Weinberg - The biology of cancer - https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Cancer-2nd-Robert-Weinberg/dp...

- Plant biochem: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Plants - https://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Molecular-Biology-Plants... - A very good book with great illustrations.

For electronics and Embedded:

- Art of Electronics by Paul Horovitz - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/d... - I saw that others also suggested it, great book

- Paul Scherz - Practical Electronics for inventors - https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt... - I was introduced to electronics via this book. Not really a textbook but it's I think it's a great book to get started, it covers almost the same topics as the Art of Electronics but not as deep and with better visual explanations.

- Embedded systems - Michael Barr - Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++ - I was introduced to embedded software development by this book, when I was working for an IoT company and only had experience with systems and web programming.

Programming (my cherry picked favourites):

- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation - I love this book. I've read it after I had a few years of professional programming experience with C#. It introduces programming via C, also every example program is disassembled with GDB. It gives the reader an intuition of how C code compiled and what happens on the register level.

- C in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference - Usually when you search for good books to learn C from, you get titles like The C programming language, Deep C Secret. But I think C in a Nutshell beats all other C books. (Especially when you read it together with C related chapters from The Art of Exploitation).

- Functional Programming in Scala - https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scal... - I saw that other people suggested SICP, and I agree with that, it does a great job introducing to some parts of functional programming. But FPIS also introduces a strictly typed aspect of FP, functional parallelism, functional designs patterns... It's a great book.

- Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers - https://www.amazon.com/Concurrency-Go-Tools-Techniques-Devel... - I love the Go language and how it handles concurrency. This book does a great job of describing how the go runtime works, and does a great job explaining concurrency in general. Also there are a lot of good design patters in it.

- Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming - https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide - It's not a textbook. This is the book that introduced me to FP. I love it, great book.

- Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective - https://www.amazon.com/dp/9332573905/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... - This was the suggested textbook for https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse351/ that was also available on Coursera. Great book.

I really loved this one:

Paul Scherz & Dr. Simon Monk's "Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition" [1]

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...

There's not a huge difference between modular electronics and plain old electronics. When you dig into it a bit you still need to understand the same sort of stuff.

Practical Electronics for Inventors is a really good book to get started with this sort of stuff: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fou...

Once you realise that under the modules there's the same MOSFET input stages, MOSFET output stages, diodes and voltages that you get in discrete electronics, it all becomes pretty clear how to make things talk and interact.

Posibyte
Did a search just to make sure this book is mentioned. It's a treasure of just-enough-of-everything to help you understand basic electronics and protocols, as well as little gotchas and things to look out for. I highly recommend it.
mrspeaker
It's really a great book, but as a warning that got me if you're more of a paperback fan: it's GIGANTIC. I bought it planning to read it on the train to work. It never even occurred to me that the thumbnail might be hiding its true size ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...

Going to throw another book in the ring. I generally recommend this book for people getting started, because it teaches them how to solve specific problems with real examples. The theoretical side of electronics can be quite daunting because of the sheer number of concepts and understanding of mathematics that are required.

Practical Electronics for Inventors covers a large number of important circuit/electronic concepts but grounds them in real world application. Perfect for getting your hands dirty while learning the most pragmatic aspects of electronic theory.

zrobotics
I would agree, but with the caveat that the math sections of this book should only be skimmed (i.e. just plug numbers into the given formulas). The derivations & explanations are brief enough they will just be more confusing, but that is what art of electronics is better at. Although both books are excellent repositories of building block circuits, but I think for a hobbyist practical electronics for inventors is more approachable and easier to stick with.
jcrabtr
Seconded. While Art of Electronics is the classic text, this one is a bit more accessible. It has less depth but more breadth, and is less intimidating because of it.
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