Basic Electronics Guide- Need Ideas!

[XCVG]

I've been thinking of writing a guide to basic electronics. It will have a section on basic components and a section on more advanced stuff, like regulators and ICs. It will also have a section on finding parts, designing circuits, soldering, etc. It wouldn't be a blah blah blah thing, it would have a bunch of experiments to go through with a breadboard. Now, what should I add? I'm gonna put in things like resistors, diodes, LEDs, transistors, capacitors on the basic section. Now the advanced section I don't know. Voltage regulators for sure, maybe logic gates too. I need some more ideas on what to put in, like what would you want people to learn.

Also, I want to know if anyone is interested. I know it would be good for newbs, but would anyone else care? And you more advanced people, I might want some contributions.

 

[XCVG]

Outlined Ideas

All right! Now time to seach through my junk for my breadboard! Any suggestions on the order? I think:
basic circuit (lightbulb and battery) (freeform)
switches (explain types of switches, maybe one experiment {freeform})
resistor (lightbulb, resistor, battery) (freeform)
building a circuit (diagrams, breadboarding)
diodes (lightbulb, diode, battery)
LEDs (LED, resistor, battery)
capacitors (LED, resistor, capacitor, battery)
transistors (NPN and PNP)

Next section:
Voltage Regulators
Logic Gates
Crystals (no idea how to do that)
*need more ideas*
Opamp (maybe)

Reference
designing circuits
soldering and desoldering
parts procurement (big one!)

I still need more ideas!

 

[robm]

This will be a great guide to have on ModRetro!

What, exactly, is your intended end result? This can get extremely complicated, or it can be extremely simple, or somewhere in between. From everything you've shown in your post, entire books have been written.

I agree with Bacteria - keep it relevant to what we do here, and you'll have a chance at keeping this simple enough. With everything you have here, you're far beyond a "Basic Electronics Guide." The basic modder/portabilizer here isn't going to give a rat's behind about what crystals do, especially since for our purposes the only example I can think of for a demonstration would be for clock reference for a microcontroller.

Let's see, for the average beginner/modder/portabilzer, I would expect to see some of these topics:

AC and DC basics
Basic proper soldering
Basic proper wiring (what not to do, what wire is appropriate, etc)
Perfboard usage for buttons/etc

Suggestions for parts procurement:
www.digikey.com
www.sparkfun.com
www.mouser.com
http://skycraftsurplus.com
www.radioshack.com (ick.)

 

[XCVG]

Okay, thanks for the ideas. I'll add a bit on AC versus DC, and I guess I'll cover perfboard as well. Soldering is going to be covered, but what do you mean by "proper wiring"?

And I know that you could write a book on this stuff, this isn't going to be all that in-depth, more how the stuff is used.

 

[robm]

When breadboarding, you want solid-strand wire, not multi-strand, etc.

When wiring portables, don't make wiring connections that look like this:

\|/
(*)<-- Big glob of solder
/|\

When soldering two wires together, don't do this:

====---(*)---====

Instead, fan the strands out, interweave them, then solder.

So on and so forth.

 

[robm]

Back in my BBS days, ASCII art was one of my great hobbies.

Photographing actual examples would be a good idea, though.

 

[XCVG]

I'm probably going to use photos for it all, because paint drawings look very unprofessional. I'll explain circuit diagrams as well.