Electrical Engineering

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!

How to assemble and modify the SparkPunk Sound Generator kit.

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

How to strip, crimp, and work with wire.

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

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

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

A crash course in bi-polar junction transistors. Learn how transistors work and in which circuits we use them.

A diode primer! Diode properties, types of diodes, and diode applications.

Every electrical project starts with a circuit. Don't know what a circuit is? We're here to help.

Learn about Ohm's Law, one of the most fundamental equations in all electrical engineering.

An introduction to the concept of Pulse Width Modulation.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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