Chris Collins

Tools · electronics

Electronics course

A structured electronics course across the site’s 130-odd electronics, embedded, sensor, radio and electrical tools — 13 units from DC, AC and semiconductors through op-amps, filters, power, logic, data conversion and noise to microcontrollers, sensors and LEDs, radio, PCBs and manufacturing, and capstone projects — each with objectives, lessons whose steps open the right tool view or circuit, a worked example, randomised exercises with checked answers and a quiz, plus a clickable course map, a "which tool for what" index, a placement test and progress you can export.

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How to use it

This is a course in electronics, from Ohm’s law to an ordered circuit board, built out of the other tools on this site. It follows the order of a full course — the one in The Art of Electronics and Practical Electronics for Inventors: DC, AC, semiconductors and transistors, op-amps, filters and oscillators, power supplies and digital logic — and then carries on into data conversion and noise, microcontrollers and buses, sensors, actuators and LEDs, radio, PCB design, EMC and manufacturing, ending with whole projects.

Each lesson is a short explanation followed by Do this steps. Each step opens a tool at the right place — a circuit in the circuit library, an example in the simulator, a tab of a calculator, a sketch on the virtual Arduino — in a new tab, so the course stays where you left it.

How to use it

  1. Course — the thirteen units. Open one to see its learning objectives and lessons. Open a lesson, read it, follow its Do this steps, and tick I’ve done this lesson; the next one opens. Each unit then has a Worked example, Exercises and a Quiz.

  2. Exercises make new numbers every time (New problem). Type your answers in SI units, with prefixes if you like — 4.7k, 2.2m, 100n, 15u — and press Check (or Enter). Answers within about 2% count. Show working explains the method; Show answers fills them in (and that problem does not count towards your score).

  3. Quiz — five multiple-choice questions per unit, each with an explanation once you submit. A unit is complete when all its lessons are ticked and its quiz is passed at 80%.

  4. The bar at the top shows your progress through the whole course, and Continue takes you to the lesson you were on (or the next unfinished one).

  5. Course map — the units drawn as a graph of what builds on what: units in the same row can be taken in either order. Click a unit to open it, or one of its dots to jump to a lesson. Below it are the lessons that lean on lessons in other units.

  6. Which tool for what — every electronics, embedded, sensor, radio, FPGA and electrical tool with its summary, searchable, with the units that use it.

  7. Placement test — two questions from each of units 1–12. Get both right and you can mark the unit as tested out, so Continue skips it; a unit is only skipped if everything it builds on is too.

  8. Progress — a table of every unit, and Export progress / Import to back up your progress as a JSON file or move it to another browser. Reset progress starts again.

Links such as /tools/electronics-course/?unit=opamp open a unit directly (the unit ids are dc, ac, semis, bjt, opamp, filters, power, digital, convert, mcu, sensors, pcb and capstone), and #map, #tools, #placement and #progress open the other tabs.

The units

  1. DC fundamentals — charge, current, voltage and power; Kirchhoff’s laws; series and parallel; dividers and loading; Thévenin; real resistors; the RC time constant.

  2. AC and phasors — rms; phasors and complex numbers; reactance and impedance; resonance and Q; AC power; transformers and three-phase; decibels and Bode plots.

  3. Semiconductors and diodes — doping; the PN junction and the diode equation; rectifiers; zeners; LEDs and photodiodes; Schottky diodes and protection.

  4. Transistors and amplifiers — BJTs and MOSFETs; switches; biasing and load lines; small-signal amplifiers; inductive loads and H-bridges; heat.

  5. Op-amps and real-world limits — negative feedback; the standard amplifiers; integrators and precision rectifiers; comparators; bandwidth, slew, offsets, rails and stability.

  6. Filters and oscillators — RC, Sallen–Key and MFB filters; notches and crossovers; digital filters; the 555 and relaxation oscillators; sine oscillators; crystals.

  7. Power supplies and power integrity — linear regulators; buck and boost; loop compensation; decoupling; batteries; power trees, protection and USB-C.

  8. Digital logic and CMOS — Boolean algebra; CMOS gates; flip-flops and counters; 74HC and CD4000 chips; logic levels; timing and metastability; HDLs.

  9. Data conversion and noise — sampling and aliasing; quantisation; ADC architectures; DACs and PWM; error budgets; noise and how to beat it.

  10. Microcontrollers and buses — inside an MCU; GPIO; timers and PWM; UART; I²C and SPI; debugging; toolchains; CAN and Modbus.

  11. Sensors, actuators, displays and LEDs — temperature; bridges and load cells; IMUs, encoders and range; servos and motors; displays; LED drivers and addressable LEDs; logging and PID.

  12. Wireless, IoT, PCB/EMC and manufacturing — link budgets; choosing a radio; transmission lines and matching; traces and stackups; EMC and ESD; KiCad to Gerbers; assembly; fault-finding.

  13. Capstone projects — a 555 flasher from breadboard to PCB; a sensor node with its power tree and battery life; an audio amplifier you can listen to; a weather station; an LED lamp.

Notes

  • The explanations are my own summaries; the exercise maths reuses the calculators of the tools they belong to — AC circuits and phasors (impedance, resonance and its engineering-notation parser), the circuit and analog calculators, the semiconductor explorer’s diode equation, the switching, op-amp, power supply, decibel, RF and PCB tools — so the course and the tools agree.

  • Numbers use conventional textbook simplifications: Vt = kT/q at 300 K (25.9 mV); 0.7 V per silicon junction; ideal 555 thresholds at ⅓ and ⅔ of the supply; IPC-2221 for trace widths; free-space path loss with isotropic antennas; and the β model for thermistors. Datasheet figures (gain–bandwidth, slew rates, logic thresholds) are typical values for well-known parts.

  • Progress is kept in this browser’s local storage and never leaves it, except when you export it.

  • Further reading: Horowitz and Hill, The Art of Electronics (3rd ed., 2015); Scherz and Monk, Practical Electronics for Inventors (4th ed., 2016); Sedra and Smith, Microelectronic Circuits; Henry Ott, Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering.

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