Make: Electronics: Learn by Discovery

Having bought a Raspberry Pi last summer, I wanted to explore its potential to interface with the outside world and that meant, learn some electronics. After a couple of false starts, I found this book. Some of the reviews told me that this American book makes reference to American suppliers. This is true but in the real world, we need to source our own components. These all seem to be available from Amazon, Farnell or Maplin, I just need to trawl through their websites. Where American & European conventions differ, in the use of some symbols for instance, the book is careful to give both versions.This book needs to be read three times: First to find out what you will be doing and to order the components, second to rig up the circuit and actually do it and third, when you have moved on but need a reminder of how a technique worked. This is made easier by the many boxes, which give practical or historical insight but can be skipped over on subsequent reading. I like the progression which the book follows. For instance, Chapter 2 is on switching and starts with a simple switch, bringing in "pole" and "throw" before moving to a relay, a switch which is moved electronically. The flow brings in capacitors before moving to transistor switching and before you know it, you are building electronic circuits.Stick with this book and you will learn how to think about electronics. I already feel less daunted by the GPIO on my Raspberry Pi and by the end of the book, I expect to have the ability to build something to connect to it.

* IntroductionThis book is well bound with quality paper and the binding is excellent. The text is well sized for the pages.* Target audience?Its target audience i.m.h.o is anything from A level and upwards. To my mind this book has been written to help the following groups; the student who is coming to this for the first time and so is very well equipped with this book, or any student that's found these skills base is a bit rusty.* What's it best features?This book is another gem. There are places in your bookcases for down - to - earth, practical explanations of basic skills as explained within this rather wonderful book. Such as how to build discrete circuits on circuit boards with the ultimate in clarity using colour pictures and easier to comprehend explanations of, say, the well - known 555 timer using these skills and other designs, such as including transistors in circuits. The technical level has almost all the mathematical removed from the book, this to encourage the learner to concentrate on the clarity it going through to show. There are other books to help with the mathematical stuff. I read this book in two sittings and loved reading it.* SummaryThis book explains the fundamental electrical skills you need to know, but in the highly competitive studies you may feel embarrassed to admit you do not know already. I wish i had this book when i did my studies as it would have accelerated my progression in technical reports and practical circuit building and designing.

My 11 year old son received this as a birthday present as he had become interested in digital electronics - one of his school books had demonstrated a 'full adder' in comic-strip fashion and he decided he wanted to have a go and build one for himself.The book is well illustrated and has some excellent photographs of the components you'll be using. The writing style is easy to follow and in-depth background information is included in optional sections. I like the way that the circuits being built evolve from things held together with crocodile clips which are easy to put together quickly through the use of breadboards and on to soldered projects building skills and knowledge on the way. One minor criticism is that although the author lists the parts needed for projects at the start of each section it isn't always that clear how vital they are to the main thrust of the book, some are only there to be destroyed and some for one side project.As to the audience of the book, my son has loved it. We are about a third of the way through and he was thrilled with his first breadboard project, a siren with two stage amplification built from transistors. He is looking forward to the later parts where he starts to play with logic gates and can make his full-adder, but also to making a little amplifier for his MP3 player.As an American book it can be tricky to find the exact match for some of the parts and it is worth shopping around for internet based sellers for the components. I'd estimate that we've spent about £50 on parts so far (thank goodness he got some Birthday money!) and that should cover the first half to two thirds of the book. Costs can be cut by not buying project boxes and using bits and pieces from around the house.Overall I'd recommend this book, I've learned a lot from it and my son has thoroughly enjoyed it, more so than the Cambridge Brainbox style of clip together electronic kits that he had tried before.

Muito bom. A forma prática de ensino proposta pelo autor é estimulante. Um bom início para quem deseja aprender eletronica.

This book is excellent. Like a lot of other reviewers I too had delved into the theory side of electronics, for instance the Barron's Guide ELECTRONICS: THE EASY WAY, which although good is a bit on the dry abstract side. Platt gets right into hands on projects so that you can actually see and understand what is going on in the real world. And it is true that this is a beginner's book; that's why I bought it. I mean sure, I did skip over couple of the sort of goofy stuff like licking a battery and burning out a battery, but I might possibly go back and do the age-old, and yes children's science fair (or should that be Maker Faire?!), make a battery out of lemons, pennies, and zinc, only because that scenario was featured in the British science-fiction comedy show RED DWARF season 10 episode "Lemons"; it's a TV tie-in folks! I haven't opened up the relay yet either but I will do that because it's an excellent idea to actually see what is going on inside. As to some reviewers complaints about purchasing tools and components, right away that tells me they're just wannabes wasting everybody's times. Obviously if you are serious about this you will be purchasing your own equipment and if you can't afford basic stuff I don't know why you'd be interested in this area in the first place. Personally I've been slowly acquiring electronic, computer, and bicycle repairs 'cause I want to be, surprise surprise, actually fixing and making things. (I just also experienced this phenomenon at a local user group meeting for video/film editing in which we have a raffle of software and gear and one bonehead said he couldn't accept his prize because he "had an old computer that wouldn't run it" which of course is totally wasting everybody's time since it actually indicates that he wasn't even contemplating on buying on new Mac or PC to run the software the whole meeting was about!) And to answer the other camp of guys (it's always guys, have you ever noticed that?) who think they know everything who have complained the the book is too "basic," er it is a beginners book. If they already know so much why are they purchasing it in the first place? Also, the criticism is invalid anyway since although Platt starts out with basic concepts he gets into some pretty solid (state!) projects using 555 timers, logic circuits, etc. But maybe some of the other negative reviewers didn't get that far 'cause it was hurting their poor widdle brains! And to the criticism of using old school analog techniques in the beginning of the book, the whole point is to demonstrate basic electronic ideas instead of having them hidden inside a black box. I'm nearing the first half of the book and am really getting a lot out of actually assembling an amplifier out of transistors which finally makes a lot of the theory finally come to life for me. And at the TV station where I work I'm also helping our Assistant Engineer solder together transformer/rectifier boards that we are using to drop down nasty high voltage 3-phase power for our monitoring interfaces.And as a final plus, Platt does also have a lot of information about further books, web resources, and electronics suppliers in the book. Well done sir!

Best book I've ever read on electronics. A lot of books focus almost exclusively on theory with very little practical knowledge. What I really liked about the book is that it started with practical knowledge and without you realizing you're learning the theory.The book is extremely well written and the instructions and examples are really easy to follow. Each chapter also includes the list of items you will need to complete each chapter.I cannot say enough about this book. If you want to learn about electronics on your own, to me this is the starting book bar none. It's not a university textbook full of theory and diagrams, but rather a down and dirty into building actual circuits that do something. And everything is explained along the way. Great book!

it is good for beginers as it contains just experiments and teaches us with those experiments.its name suits it certainly.l really love it.its good but canbe best if contains some more information than experiments.l mean to say same amount of experiment and some more information so just 4 stars

Per un perfetto neofita questo manuale farà miracoli.La scuola anglosassone ti catapulta attraverso la pratica in mezzo alla materia.Provare, distruggere, riparare per capire i concetti base.Il libro è strutturato in base a esercitazioni di difficoltà crescente, che passo a passo guidano il lettore alla comprensione delle leggi base dell'elettricità, ai componenti più comuni dell'elettronica e al loro uso.Consiglio vivamente di reperire in anticipo una lista dei componenti che servono nel libro per poter da subito cominciare con gli esperimenti.Altrimenti prima di cominciare a leggerlo comprate i componenti in modo da non rovinarvi il piacere di seguire le esercitazioni quando ne avete voglia.