Concepts

These are the various concepts that people may need to know while learning a technology tutorial and could be required to complete a ‘hookup’ tutorial. Concepts are most often a general building block that may be built upon other concepts. Concepts can generally be learned without physical objects but are reinforced with a hookup tutorial.

Connectivity of the Internet of Things

July 27, 2016

An overview of the different protocols that can be used for the development of Internet of Things (IoT)-based projects.

ASCII

June 13, 2016

A brief history of how ASCII came to be, how it's useful to computers, and some helpful tables to convert numbers to characters.

What is a Battery?

May 3, 2016

An overview of the inner workings of a battery and how it was invented.

Raspberry Pi SPI and I2C Tutorial

October 29, 2015

Learn how to use serial I2C and SPI buses on your Raspberry Pi using the wiringPi I/O library for C/C++ and spidev/smbus for Python.

Raspberry gPIo

October 29, 2015

How to use either Python or C++ to drive the I/O lines on a Raspberry Pi.

MIDI Tutorial

October 8, 2015

Understanding the Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

Getting Started with OBD-II

October 8, 2015

A general guide to the OBD-II protocols used for communication in automotive and industrial applications.

LogicBlocks & Digital Logic Introduction

March 31, 2014

Introducing fundamental digital logic concepts and LogicBlocks

LogicBlocks Experiment Guide

March 31, 2014

Experiments guide for the LogicBlocks kit. Build oscillators, latches, multiplexers and more with the LogicBlocks.

Hexadecimal

March 20, 2014

How to interpret hex numbers, and how to convert them to/from decimal and binary.

Motors and Selecting the Right One

December 12, 2013

Learn all about different kinds of motors and how they operate.

Data Types in Arduino

November 6, 2013

Learn about the common data types and what they signify in the Arduino programming environment.

Digital Logic

October 3, 2013

A primer on digital logic concepts in hardware and software.

Alternating Current (AC) vs. Direct Current (DC)

September 5, 2013

Learn the differences between AC and DC, the history, different ways to generate AC and DC, and examples of applications.

Series and Parallel Circuits

August 20, 2013

An introduction into series and parallel circuits.

Analog vs. Digital

July 18, 2013

This tutorial covers the concept of analog and digital signals, as they relate to electronics.

Metric Prefixes and SI Units

July 11, 2013

This tutorial will explain how to use and convert between the standard metric prefixes.

I2C

July 8, 2013

An introduction to I2C, one of the main embedded communications protocols in use today.

Electric Power

June 26, 2013

An overview of electric power, the rate of energy transfer. We'll talk definition of power, watts, equations, and power ratings. 1.21 gigawatts of tutorial fun!

Polarity

June 14, 2013

An introduction to polarity in electronic components. Discover what polarity is, which parts have it, and how to identify it.

What is Electricity?

June 13, 2013

We can see electricity in action on our computers, lighting our houses, as lightning strikes in thunderstorms, but what is it? This is not an easy question, but this tutorial will shed some light on it!

Logic Levels

June 3, 2013

Learn the difference between 3.3V and 5V devices and logic levels.

Button and Switch Basics

May 7, 2013

A tutorial on electronics' most overlooked and underappreciated component: the switch! Here we explain the difference between momentary and maintained switches and what all those acronyms (NO, NC, SPDT, SPST, ...) stand for.

Accelerometer Basics

March 28, 2013

A quick introduction to accelerometers, how they work, and why they're used.
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Old Tutorials

Looking for the old, archived tutorials? Head on over to the archived tutorials on the main SparkFun site.
Please be aware that the tutorials you find there are no longer actively maintained.