Make: Electronics: Studying By Discovery

Intro book for the beginner, handbook for the intermediate/advanced
**Intro**This is a nice electronics book. It starts out basic enough that I would say an enthusiastic student in 4th grade or higher, with ample support from their parents could probably get into electronics as a hobby by beginning with this book. It is also suitable for much more advanced people if they are willing to skip the first third of so of the book where the basics are. I meet this category, since I’m a Mechanical Engineer (but importantly, not an Electrical Engineer), and I’m happy to have bought this book just the same.**Notable positive features**1.) This book is substantial. It has glossy pages, color photos, and is 325 pages long. The pictures are bright and sharp. This is the second edition, and the author described the things that have been improved from the first edition.2.) There’s a lot of basic info for accommodating beginners, and a good brush-up course for more advanced people. It tells how to solder, identify resistors, install and use things like IC’s and LED’s without burning them out, etc. It tells the basic facts about electronic components, like what IC’s, LEDs, and capacitors *are*. It recommends tools and where to get tools and equipment from. It encourages you to experiment in order to learn, like it tells you how to actually go burn up an LED just to see how much (or how little) abuse they can take.3.) It has helpful info to explain the subtle electrical engineering concepts that have always confused me, like the difference between a relay and a transistor, and what the three leads on transistors do. My college electronics textbooks didn’t do a good job at this, so that’s the sort of thing that I’m getting out of this book.4.) It has safety information. Soldering safety. Shock hazard safety. What you should and shouldn’t be afraid of.5.) It doesn’t jump into wiring diagrams instantly. It uses photos and other types of sketches for people who haven’t mastered wiring diagrams yet.6.) It has little bits of electronics history in it in the form of photos of the scientists and engineers from history, and captions under the photo. This keeps things entertaining without filling the text with unwanted extra info.7.) There is information toward the end on how to program software for your own contraptions using Arduino, a fun, versatile, and cheap software that is good for programming robots and other things.8.) There are some neat example projects, including a crystal radio (a radio that doesn’t need batteries).**Comparison to Hacking Electronics by Simon Monk**This book is pretty similar to Hacking Electronics by Simon Monk, and those interested in the topic at hand should consider both of these books. Both are well written, cover a similar spectrum of topics, have color photos, and have glossy pages. I would say both are equally good in writing and content *quality.* This book is slightly longer than the Monk book, and thus has more content, so I like it slightly more for that, because I’m a little more advanced, and I tend to want as much info as possible so I can use it as a reference or handbook. Finally, this book seems a little better for hardware tinkering people than the Monk book, since the Arduino part in this book comprises a smaller percentage of the whole book than in the Monk book.**Summary**If you want to get into tinkering with electronics for fun, or want to learn more about electronics via a “learn by doing” approach, this is definitely a good book. It starts out basic enough that you can probably start from the very ground level, with knowing almost nothing. I think this book would also be good if you are teaching grade school or middle school students about electronics. Finally, this book would be a good handbook for the shop of a maker, circuit bender, hobby roboticist, or anyone else that likes to tinker with electronics, and needs an occasional reminder about resister color codes, for example, or how to hook up transistors.I recommend this book with essentially no reservations!

Fun and very educational
I had studied electronics on my own as a kid, wanted to be a TV repairman in the 60’s & 70’s, but made a career in software instead. Nearing retirement now, I started from scratch with this book after reading the sample in Kindle. I expected to get incremental gratification from completing each breadboard experiment, but I find I am getting something more valuable than that. I am getting a sort of gut-feel that had eluded me earlier, for the behavior of components that can be counter-intuitive. So the journey turns out to be better than the milestones and destination, which is a concept that has rarely been real for me except in travel and backpacking. My enthusiasm keeps growing.I’ve spoken with authors of tech books at conferences, and was told book sales rarely pay off except as advertising for the author’s speaking and consulting income. Book prices and relatively small sale volumes don’t compensate for the expended hours. This book and its successor (Make: More Electronics) embody a stunning amount of detail effort and thought, a testament to the enthusiasm Mr. Platt seems to find in tutoring us in electronics, and in the process of learning through experimentation.After reading his descriptions of voltmeter features, I upgraded from my old one to the NeoTech 4000 and I am pleased so far. I also bought the pre-packaged kit #1 of parts (resistors, capacitors, LEDs etc) from Pro-Tech traders (I think) which gave a good kick-start to my dive into the material. I will price alternatives for the equivalent kits #2 and #3 before deciding whether to buy them in kit form (very convenient, but pricey) or ordering the parts individually (for which the author offers a wealth of useful help).

Thoroughly enjoyed it,1. This is the best book in my opinion if you want to start learning electronics by building circuits yourself.2. Starts from complete basics, so there are no prerequisites.3. The book does not cover vast range of topics like other books (Practical electronics for inventors or art of electronics) do, but you will need to have quite a bit of experience to implement the circuits from those books, as they will not go into detail about actually building those circuits (no hands-on approach) as they are more of a textbook.If you are considering to go for this book -You would need to buy a few electronics test instruments, tools and components to make the circuits yourself.In India, do not go for Amazon or any other big online retailer to buy “electronic components”, they are very limited and overpriced.Just search “electronics components online stores India” and go for any store you like.Experience with offline retailers may vary for everyone, it would be easier to find offline shops if you are from a big city with industries nearby, otherwise just go for online shops.

This is my favourite textbook of all time. I am someone with 0 prior experience in electronics and it has been a joy to work my way through the various experiments with Mr. Platt as my teacher. This book’s intention is to get your hands dirty and to focus on the intuition and application rather than, say, working your way through differential equations. So while this book won’t help you derive the time constant formula for calculating the speed at which a capacitor charges, it will tell you what the formula is, how to use it, and make you set up some real circuits where you can see this in practice and motivate you to see how understanding this would be useful in real world applications. This is definitely teaching at its best.I feel this is a book the author really enjoyed writing (I could be wrong, of course, but it really does seem like a real labour of love). It’s just so well-executed: well-structured, well-written, detailed, thoughtful, and with the odd bit of humour every now and again.You will get the most out of this book if you work your way through the experiments — but this will involve some non-trivial sum of money. As a UK resident, I spent around a total of 150-200 pounds sourcing the supplies for all 30+ experiments (including a mid-range soldering iron, multimeter, etc). I’m sure I could have shaved down the costs somewhat, but I find it hard to see it costing less than 100 pounds if you’re starting from scratch like I did. I used a combination of farnells and amazon and probably spent around 3 hours putting together my shopping baskets of individually sourced items. The book has a US-bias so most of the suppliers listed are US-based. There are kits available, but most of these seem to ship from the US so the shipping charges can be steep.Having recently completed this book I am now going to reward myself with Make:More Electronics!