Ask HN: Good resources for learning electronic curcuits and PCB design
<i>Meta</i>:<p>You can open an account at:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.electro-tech-online.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.electro-tech-online.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.allaboutcircuits.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.allaboutcircuits.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edaboard.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edaboard.com&#x2F;</a><p>These are forums with <i>extremely</i> helpful members. The format is different than Stack Overflow&#x27;s &quot;Question&#x2F;Answer&quot;. It is built on the &quot;Post&#x2F;Thread&quot;. You can have threads that go on for 40 pages and span a year, when someone is doing a project, and these magnificent creatures will accompany the users with feedback.<p>One thing I&#x27;ve done when starting to do PCB is submitting the design to electro-tech-online.com asking for feedback and how I could improve it. You&#x27;ll have people there with decades of experience go through it, make actionable suggestions on the design stinks and why they&#x27;re not good.<p>You can also share a project you&#x27;re doing as you are doing it, and they can help with the brainstorming&#x2F;ideation and implementation, they would ask questions and question assumptions.<p>If you write firmware for microcontrollers, they can also chime in and help you refine the code. If you get into that community, you&#x27;ll be on a fast track because you&#x27;ll have people who can do that in their sleep help you in the nicest way.<p><i>PCB Design</i>:<p>You can get yourself CadSoft EAGLE or KiCad, print the tiny documentation in a booklet format, then read the whole documentation, page by page, annotating it, trying every functionality. Making routes, ground pour, layers, with commands and with the mouse.<p>Dave Jones&#x27; &quot;PCB Design Tutorial&quot;[0], will also be very helpful.<p><i>Soldering</i>:<p>Check out Dave Jones&#x27; multi-part videos on soldering[1][2][3]. Part 3 is for surface mount, don&#x27;t bother with that just yet.<p><i>Electronics</i><p>Depending on where you&#x27;re starting from.<p>Absolute beginner? Take a look at Tony Kuphaldt&#x27;s &quot;<i>Lessons in Electric Circuits</i>&quot;[4]. It is split into multiple volumes (DC, AC, Semiconductors, etc...)<p>Somehwat beginner? Take a look at &quot;<i>The Art of Electronics</i>&quot; by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill. It&#x27;s one of the books one has to have just in case civilization is destroyed.<p>Fun trivia: The chapter on transistors explains them by introducing a figure called &quot;Transistor Man&quot;. That figure was drawn by Edward Purcell, which you may have heard of from CPMG (Carr-Purcell-Meyboom-Gill). He also won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonnance.<p>You can get an electronics test board like [5] on which you can experiment circuits without soldering them, and with fewer flying wires. The ones that have the screws that hold power input are nice. Then you can buy a bunch of operational amplifiers, LED, logic cates integrated circuits, resistors&#x2F;capacitors&#x2F;inductors and play with that.<p>A bit more advanced or not:<p>- Texas Instruments&#x27; &quot;Op Amps For Everyone&quot;[6]<p>- &quot;Op-Amp Concepts&quot; by Greg Kovacs<p>- &quot;Op-Amp Applications Seminar&quot;<p>In depth:<p>- &quot;Troubleshooting Analog Circuits&quot;, by Robert Pease.<p>More in depth:<p>Application notes from manufacturers to get ideas for designs.<p>But to sum it up:<p>- Getting on dedicated forums<p>- Getting the test board and components (to tinker)<p>- Getting software for PCB design (just for the design)<p>- Share the design on forums to improve <i>fast</i><p>- Print the board at a PCB shop<p>- Solder the components following the tutorial<p>- Learn more and more and go deeper at every phase after every win<p>So you may first start by getting components and assembling them on the board to make a circuit work, then designing a PCB for them and soldering them to make a working &quot;prototype&quot;, but you will also learn more reading the books, exchanging with others, reading application notes or resources from manufacturers.<p>All the best,<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alternatezone.com&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;files&#x2F;PCBDesignTutorialRevA.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alternatezone.com&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;files&#x2F;PCBDesignTuto...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J5Sb21qbpEQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J5Sb21qbpEQ</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fYz5nIHH0iY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fYz5nIHH0iY</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=b9FC9fAlfQE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=b9FC9fAlfQE</a><p>[4]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibiblio.org&#x2F;kuphaldt&#x2F;electricCircuits&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibiblio.org&#x2F;kuphaldt&#x2F;electricCircuits&#x2F;</a><p>[5]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static-resources.imageservice.cloud&#x2F;4858576&#x2F;breadboard-is-also-called-universal-circuit-board-or-integrated.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static-resources.imageservice.cloud&#x2F;4858576&#x2F;breadboa...</a><p>[6]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;e2echina.ti.com&#x2F;cfs-file&#x2F;__key&#x2F;telligent-evolution-components-attachments&#x2F;00-52-01-00-00-04-59-46&#x2F;OP-amp-for-everyone.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;e2echina.ti.com&#x2F;cfs-file&#x2F;__key&#x2F;telligent-evolution-c...</a>