Hi,
My nephew in Down Under wants to get into hardware. I'd like to give him a book on basic hardware theory and practice. He has an Arduino board, but has little knowledge about all the various components like resistors, capacitors, transistors etc.
Does anyone know of a good basic book which isn't too theoretical, maybe even geared towards microcontrollers?
Thanks in advance,
Josef
Not a book but perhaps the "Inventor's Kit for Arduino" from Sparkfun? He'll already be familiar with the Arduino, so addition to building the example circuits he will have the second Arduino that the first can "talk to."
I don't have any hands-on with this kit but it looks like a good starting place with basic circuit elements.
"Make:Electronics"
This one looks exactly what you're looking for: lots of practice and some very well explained theory.
I consider The Art of Electronics to be one of the most readable/useful books on the subject, if perhaps a bit heavier than you have in mind. After having taken several EE courses which made the subject as opaque as possible (barf-back formulas with no reasons why for various op-amp configurations, for instance), I took an engineering physics electronics course which used AoE and suddenly everything became _much_ clearer.
YMMV.
And don't forget to get the student manual. It works through problems in a way that supplements the textbook well.
Jon
Another approach is to approach this through books targeted at folks interested in simple robots. Since you mentioned the Arduino, I'm assuming he has some knowledge of micros. There's one I've skimmed through recently (only just bought it for a friend) called Intermediate Robot Building by David Cook. Looks very nicely laid out at first glance and I think it caters well to beginners in electronics. Although I assume there is a Beginning Robot Building book by the same author, I haven't bought it. Maybe it would be better to start with that one. But the Intermediate book looks to me like a Beginning book, so the Beginning book must be really basic.
Point is, there are a number of "getting into robots" books around, and often clubs in the area. That might be a good way to go. Especially considering your nephew already has gotten into micros of some kind.
Jon
Where did you go to college? Sounds horrible. Barf-back formulas? Sounds like *chemistry*.
Am 27.4.2011 schrub asdf:
I just wanted to say that this was what I ordered. (I'm still waiting for feedback on how it's used and with which results)
Thanks.
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