Monday, April 16, 2012

Electronics All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies By Doug Lowe

Electronics All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies

Electronics All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies By Doug Lowe

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Product Description

Take your electronics skills to the next level!

If you're looking for a solitary resource that covers everything you need to know about electronics, then look no further. This friendly-and-straightforward guide introduces the basics of electronics and enhances your learning experience by debunking and explaining concepts such as circuits, analog and digital, schematics, voltage, safety concerns, and more. Packed with nearly 900 pages of detailed information, this book shows you how to develop your own breadboard, design your own circuit, and get savvy with schematics.

  • Covers the basics of electronics and demystifies a variety of electronics concepts
  • Encourages you to dive in and design a variety of fun and interesting entertainment electronics, mobile, and automotive projects
  • Offers troubleshooting advice for common electronics challenges
  • Reviews circuits, schematics, voltage, safety concerns, and much more

So, get plugged in and start your next electronics project today with this book by your side!

Product Details
  • Amazon Sales Rank: #28519 in Books
  • Published on: 2012-02-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 872 pages
Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
From Ohm's law to building projects, get going in electronics with this All-in-One guide!

If you, like Doug Lowe, were always fascinated by electronics but didn't make a career of it, this book is for you. Here are clear, concise explanations of all the important concepts and directions for building simple, fun projects you can actually use. Each minibook covers the basics of a key topic, so you can jump in anywhere and get started!

  • Safety first — be sure to read Chapter 4 of Book I and follow all safety precautions as you tackle your projects

  • Building blocks — learn how conductors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and transistors work and how to use them

  • The full circuit — explore integrated circuits, digital circuits, logic circuits, and programmable circuits

  • Plug it in — find out how to build power supply circuits that let you run circuits on household current

  • Wonderful wireless — get the whole story on radio and learn to build one of the most interesting devices: a crystal radio

Open the book and find:

  • Important safety standards

  • Ohm's law and other electronics concepts

  • What a 555 timer chip does

  • How to work with alternating current

  • Where a crystal radio gets its power

  • How infrared light is used in wireless communication

  • What a Basic Stamp is

  • A project teachers can use in the classroom

Visit the companion website at www.wiley.com/go/electronicsaiofd for code samples you can use when creating programmable circuits.

About the Author
Doug Lowe still has the electronics experimenter's kit his dad gave him when he was 10. Although he became a programmer and has written books on various programming languages, Microsoft Office, web programming, and PCs (including 30+ For Dummies books), Doug never forgot his first love: electronics.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
3Excellent info, fun projects, needed a good editor...
By G. Essex
I've a coding background, and have a few ideas for projects that require more non-virtual skills like electronics. I thumbed through this at a B&N cafe one night, and really liked the style, so I ordered it off of Amazon.

Doug Lowe is a lot of fun - most of the "For Dummies" writers are (even if I still get uncomfortable and mock-offended at the implication of the series title every time I read one of these!). The info and exercises are very cool, and I'm getting a good "from the ground up" knowledge, just what I'm looking for. He shies away from some of the complex stuff that I'd actually *like* him to get into, but I head to the Web to fill in the gaps.

I wouldn't mind a little more in-depth "Here's what's happening in the circuit for this exercise" - early on, I fried a resistor and blew a fuse when seeing what I could try to change things up on one particular circuit, which was at least partly my fault for not doing the math (!), but might have been avoided if I'd had a little more detail on what I *could* experiment with and what I *shouldn't*.

Over all, the book is great...but there's one big drawback: editing.

It becomes very, *very* obvious that a lot of the passages *and the exercise instructions* were done using quick cut-and-paste jobs. This makes sense given how interrelated everything is, but it can trip things up if it's not carefully edited! As an example: the equations for finding total capacitance in series are identical to those for finding total resistance (or inductance) in parallel...and in the section on one, in several spots they used the units for another! (Though not consistently, making it even more confusing, if slightly more accurate.) Similarly, many of the exercises have cut-and-pasted components lists from a previous exercise...but they are *not* the correct list for the exercise into which they've been pasted. Serious attention to detail is required on my end, as somebody experimenting with electronics - I'd say some serious attention to detail should be expected on their end as well, as the editors of the book.

Worse than that, though, are spots where information (like important equations!) is mistyped or outright *omitted*. (In one spot, the paragraph introduces the background of an equation, and then presents it by saying "Like this:" - with the colon - but the equation is not printed. The copy moves right along to the next paragraph. Oops.) In most of these cases, simple logic will tell you what's *correct* (or, if you're not up on your skills, a quick Web search), but it started getting a bit unfortunate after a handful of these. I've been writing the correct info into my copy of the book, but I'd feel awful for somebody who didn't have Web access and didn't remember the basics to be able to correct all of these errors.

Since this book is "for dummies," it seems wrong that said dummies are expected to fill in the gaps themselves to get everything right.

Despite those problems, I still dig the book, and it's been very helpful - starting (before opening the book) from only a basic knowledge of household wiring and repair, and some decent fundamentals in physics and basic electronics, I'm now well on my way to working on the projects I had in mind, and I'm only halfway through the book. It's a good "crash course" on the subject, and - aside from the editing problems - presents everything I was looking for so far.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
4electronics for dummies
By geary1ful
a very good book it includes many interesting projects and easy to understand terminology i thourghly recomend this book for anyone interested in electronics

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
4Entry Level? - Consider This!
By Lawrence A. Owens
I am trying to both upgrade and more fully understand my 5.1 theater - Geek Squad connected the wires and showed me a few things, but I then realized I did not really know what I had and had to start reading all the manuals to really grasp the potential of the Onkyo A/V receiver.

I really wanted to understand the real tech terms and underlying concepts and so far this book has ben very helpful , especially for a novice - I am only 1/3 through it, but it is good and I would recommend it for those who really want to understand concepts.

http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/0470147040

 
 

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