Electrical Engineering

These tutorials help form some of the fundamentals you would learn in an Electrical Engineering course of study.

Beginner Parts Kit Identification Guide

March 22, 2019

The essential parts for beginning (or even experienced) hobbyists that gives you all of the basic through-hole components you will need to get started playing with embedded projects. We'll identify a few parts in the kit and provide a few basic circuits to get started!

8-Pin SOIC to DIP Adapter Hookup Guide

August 13, 2015

Assembly and application of the 8-pin SOIC-to-DIP adapter.

What is a Battery?

May 3, 2016

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

Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs)

August 12, 2013

Learn the basics about LEDs as well as some more advanced topics to help you calculate requirements for projects containing many LEDs.

Resistors

April 1, 2013

A tutorial on all things resistors. What is a resistor, how do they behave in parallel/series, decoding the resistor color codes, and resistor applications.

How to Use a Breadboard

May 14, 2013

Welcome to the wonderful world of breadboards. Here we will learn what a breadboard is and how to use one to build your very first circuit.

How to Use an Oscilloscope

February 25, 2014

How to work the dials and buttons on an oscilloscope, and a glossary of the o-scope lexicon.

Battery Technologies

February 6, 2013

The basics behind the batteries used in portable electronic devices: LiPo, NiMH, coin cells, and alkaline.

How to Power a Project

February 7, 2013

A tutorial to help figure out the power requirements of your project.

Multiplexer Breakout Hookup Guide

August 18, 2016

How to use the 74HC4051 multiplexer breakout to drive eight LEDs, read eight button inputs, or monitor eight potentiometers.

PCB Basics

December 14, 2012

What exactly IS a PCB? This tutorial will breakdown what makes up a PCB and some of the common terms used in the PCB world.

Understanding Thermal Resistance

May 14, 2020

Discussing what thermal resistance is, how it’s used for thermal management, and how to maximize the life of your project.

Analog vs. Digital

July 18, 2013

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

Integrated Circuits

July 15, 2013

An introduction to integrated circuits (ICs). Electronics' ubiquitous black chips. Includes a focus on the variety of IC packages.

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.

Boss Alarm

March 30, 2016

Build a Boss Alarm that alerts you of anyone walking into your office and automatically changes your computer screen.

Proto Pedal Example: Programmable Digital Pedal

September 22, 2016

Building a pedal around the Teensy 3.2 and Teensy Audio shield. Changing the effect in the pedal is as easy as uploading a new sketch!

SparkFun Troubleshooting Tips

October 19, 2017

Not working as expected? In this tutorial, we will be exploring a few general troubleshooting tips and possible solutions that frequently come up with SparkFun's Technical Support.

Raspberry Pi Stand-Alone Programmer

March 8, 2018

This tutorial will show you how to use a headless Raspberry Pi to flash hex files onto AVR microcontrollers as a stand-alone programmer. It also tells the story about production programming challenges, how SparkFun came to this solution, and all the lessons learned along the way.

Working with Wire

February 8, 2013

How to strip, crimp, and work with wire.

Measuring Internal Resistance of Batteries

May 5, 2016

Classroom STEM activity that has students build a battery from a lemon, measure the open and closed circuit voltages, and determine the battery's internal resistance.

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.

Voltage Dividers

February 8, 2013

Turn a large voltage into a smaller one with voltage dividers. This tutorial covers: what a voltage divider circuit looks like and how it is used in the real world.

Make Your Own Fritzing Parts

March 18, 2014

Learn how to create your own Fritzing part so you can make amazing looking wiring diagrams, learn about schematics and PCB design, and get your design fabbed into a real PCB with Fritzing's PCB manufacturing service.
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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.