Electronic Projects for Beginners – Components (Part I)

Oh dear, I fear you may have stumbled at the first hurdle by confusing Electrical and Electronic.
Maybe it's just me but I thing the two disciplines are distinctly different.
Dunno what the rest of CR4 thinks...
Other than that I applaud the concept and the blog.
Del

You are correct. They are two distinct disciplines.

My interchanging of the terms comes from my college experience where we have two branches of engineering concerning electronics. There is electrical engineering which main concentration is electronics. We also have a separate electric power engineering which refers mainly to electricity as you are probably referring to. When I refer to "electrical" with my fellow peers, it is known that I am referring to electronics and not to power engineering.

If the non-distinction bothers people, I will change it. To specify: This blog will not teach you how to wire your house. This blog will teach you about wiring small electronic circuits on breadboards.

Del, I rarely disagree with you, because I lack the expertise, experience and training, but here you are treading on my home territory, ignorance of electricity. I still don't know why the stuff doesn't leak out of the socket when you take the plug out.

So let Jaxy use the words that make it easy for him to explain, and let him get us ignoramuses building something that works, even if it is boring and pointless. We will have finally cracked it and actually done something with electricity.

If we don't need fuses, don't lets get into discussing them, if somebody carries a bigger range of breadboards, great, but I'm still trying to work out whether a motherboard eats a breadboard, or uses it for making sandwiches.

This is the area where ignorance rules, and all we want to do is make something. Once we have got over that hurdle, we will be a lot more likely to learn, and to want to learn.

We almost need a parallel discussion for the guys at the next level up and so on ad infinitum, hey i've just had a really good idea, why don't we get groups of kids and get people who are keen on this sort of stuff to teach them, and don't say that's what schools are for, it may be what they are for, but it isn't what they are.

Jaxy, keep plugging along for guys like me, and pretty soon, we will be intelligent enough to argue with Del, which is always educational and a pleasure. But keep hanging in there Del because when confusion starts you are great at sorting it.

What i am trying to say here is that this is a topic where the questions have to come from the ignorant. Jaxy is dealing with the dumb so he has to dumb it down for us. Let's keep this really simple.

Simon

Thank you for your support.

But I hate to burst your bubble: I am a girl.

You have now made this blog even more interesting than it was before , more power to your elbow Jaxy and keep up the good work....

I know you mean well, I also understand where you are coming from but Del is still right!!

When I started my education, it was wrong generalities just like the one Del mentioned, that made it hard for me (and others).

I eventually learnt in the end that the person teaching the class simply does not know everything.....I could certainly tell you of some hair raising arguments that went to a phsyical proofing, that came out to show I was correct.

Professor with red face and blustering......it may not have improved my relationships with a few of the faculty members, but it certainly helped me get good marks......why? BECAUSE I UNDERSTOOD CORRECTLY AND NOT WRONGLY.....

Many errors are just a result of bad habits by the teacher concerned.....

Del and many others (I include myself) will tend to correct any "errors" we see, for the good of the uneducated who may get a wrong impression......which may make learning something correctly even more difficult.

Thats the way things work here, its as simple as that.

When it happens to me, I put a good face on it and be good enough mannered to thank the person concerned.......at the end of the day, it was my error not theirs!!!

Think of it as "assisting", not criticising.....

I work with ponies predominantly, and I am permanently depressed that a "good judge of a horse" is the person who can find faults with them. I work with a pony called Obama and am proud of showing "He can do it". He does everything, but he is easy to fault if that is what floats your boat.

I did point out that this blog is about getting idiots like me to build something. If Jaxy is telling me the wrong way to build it, or if there is a simpler way to explain the concept, that is really helpful. But if the terminology is sloppy, but i can still build the thing, so what.

Simon

you know, the first electrical computers were made with relays! funny isn´t it...

Wow...love the images. It really helped explain what you were talking about. This was informative and very well explained. It makes me wish I paid more attention in high school physics class instead of saving all of my energy for double block AP biology which I had right after physics.

I look forward to expanding my knowledge base from this series. Nice job, so far, Jaxy.

I am glad that you are learning. I tried to explain the best that I could and it seems that images may be the best way to accomplish this.

Thank you for the support!

There is just a lot of terminology to absorb for the novice and visuals help make the connection of what you are talking about.

Radio Shack used to be a good place to get parts ten or fifteen years ago. Today their selection is pretty limited.

Mouser and Digikey are good for all sorts of parts.

Locally, in the Capitol District Trojan Electronics and E. E. Taylor have a good selection.

While Radio Shack may have had a better selection of quality components at one time, I am still using them as a reference. They are still one of the only local (and widely known) stores that I can walk into and walk out of with electronic components.

That being said, I agree that Digikey and Mouser are good places to find parts if you are looking for something specific. I am trying to keep it simple and make sure people can find the parts without confusion. Also, I wanted to point people to a place where you don't have to use a credit card online and can walk into a store instead, with the online security threats these days.

"Radio Shack used to be a good place to get parts ten or fifteen years ago. Today their selection is pretty limited."

I was thinking the same thing... the decline of useful electronic bits and pieces to be found at Radio Shack was noticeable when I was in High School, working on projects for the Science Olympiad. By the time I was a Senior, you were lucky if you could find a decent battery holder there!

Nice article, Jaxy-- wish I remembered more about electronics from too-long-ago physics classes. I look forward to reading your next entry.

Jaxy, great blog. Hopefully you will inspire some budding young engineers to take interest!

Thanks that you put your time and effort on this.

It's a good effort. But don't forget fuses....

For the projects I am going to be doing, fuses aren't a part of them. We won't be dealing with such an extremely high voltage to where fuses would be necessary to prevent injury.

Fuses generally speaking, do not protect directly from high voltages, only high currents. They are a current activated device only.....

Naturally there are fuses down to 250 ma or less as well, but they still do not protect from high voltages. Sorry......

The Blog is otherwise really great.....

Hi Jaxy,

This is good idea. Although Radio Shack is the only local store here for these kinds of parts, they don't have a very good selection. Here are more links that my son and I have found useful in addition to the ones mentioned:

http://www.allelectronics.com/

http://www.alliedelec.com/

http://www.electronicsurplus.com/

http://www.electronix.com/

http://www.parts-express.com/home.cfm

http://www.bgmicro.com/

http://www.goldmine-elec.com/

http://www.jameco.com/

I have more for mechanical and special needs, but this is a good start for a beginner.

regards,

-S

Thank you for contributing links. I am sure that people will find them useful when trying to find parts.

I have limited to no experience in this field and this is very much appreciated. How often are you going to be posting?

Dan

I am going to be posting every Tuesday.

Jaxy, (Nice sketch)

I dusted this off.

Got parts cabinets with various parts too.

Jon

Interesting topic, and one that I am not very familiar with. I was curious whether anyone knows if there is a 'virtual' breadboard that can be used for these experiments. I realize it is not quite the same as physically building something. It just seems like someone would have come up with this by now and it could save on time and money.

DM:

There are some, but none that are worth using are cheap. Probably the best known is called Spice, with another version of which I've heard called PSpice (that may be a Linux version of it. I don't know). But the Spice circuit simulator has been around for a long time. I don't know how well it works, but it must have SOME value, to have survived this long in the commercial marketplace. I know that through the years there have been some others, also, and some were reasonably inexpensive, but most that I knew of, and used, are only useful for drawing the circuit, and the board-etching art, for circuit board making, both of which require you to build and debug the circuit first.

But breadboarding a circuit is half the fun. The other half is watching the cotton packing out of a "smoke-tested" capacitor drift down from the ceiling, after it pops. Or watching the components do glow-worm imitations, when you wire them up wrong, or supply too much voltage. And that stuff you can't get from simulators.

Oh, and it provides valuable lessons on what not to do next time, also.

I've "let the evil smoke out" of components a few times, and it usual isn't all that big a deal, but I can suggest you don't do it in the presence of your wife/SO, as it tends to make them worry about what happens to you when they aren't around to see it. My most memorable was about 36 years ago, when I smoke tested 12 electrolytic can capacitors (reverse wired every one of the suckers) on a board (actually, the schematic had + and - reversed on the traces, so it wasn't REALLY my fault. Although, since I labeled the traces, it was, still, technically ... well, you know

) and the whole dozen blew almost simultaneously. My wife and baby daughter looked up to see my whole closet workshop wreathed in gently descending cotton batting, and smoke. Fun. But only once.

Micah

I have had ample time with PSpice (I have used it on windows; I don't know if there is a Linux version of it) and it is a very good tool to simulate circuits. But there will always be something special about building them on a board and trying to figure out what went wrong. For me, it is a better logic puzzle than crosswords or sudokus! A great sense of accomplishment comes from seeing something nice on a board in working order.

In one of the classes I was an assistant for, we used a capacitor in a disposable camera and would charge it up and use a paper clip to discharge it and watch the spark and hear the pop. Scared half the students to death, but it was always a joyous experiment.

d m Rosenberg,

Google "virtual breadboard" and "spice software"

Jon

Sometimes programs do a very good job of simulating circuits. PSpice has already been mentioned. But like everything else in the world, just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean it works in reality.

Jaxy,

Welcome, welcome, especially to a girl.

As a 75 yr old who built his first circuits about 60 years ago, I have forgotten much but will be following you as you try to teach us the direction to move in.

Well done for this initiative.

Sleepy