Books containing several common place EE designs

[trickae]

I'm looking for a book that has a collection of ELECTRONIC design varying from transistor amplifiers and other such circuits that we should be able to learn from for a design perspective.

Any help?

 

[berkeman]

"The Art of Electronics", by Horowitz and Hill. Check it out at your local technical library.

 

[trickae]

thanks berkman, I'm currently reading that with sedra smith for my electronics course

 

[mgb_phys]

"The Art of Electronics" is still probably the best electronics design textbook.
But it doesn't contain very main actual designs, if you want a cookbook of circuits there is a range of small cheap paperbacks (from Sam's i think) that are in every electronics store, called things like "101 555 timer circuits"

Main complaint with Art.., is that it also shows examples of bad circuit designs but without even a hint of what's wrong with them and the last chapter contains a Motorola 68000 project that is out of date in the new editions. Probably best to have left it out or have a simpler example based on a 8051.

 

[berkeman]

Main complaint with Art.., is that it also shows examples of bad circuit designs but without even a hint of what's wrong with them

They did that on purpose...

 

[mgb_phys]

They did that on purpose...

I know - that's what makes it worse - they could have given a clue, printed upside down at the bottom of the page!

 

[berkeman]

Well if there are any that bug you a lot still, just PM me. I only have the first edition of AofE, though.

 

[ranger]

Lets make a sticky!

Since AofE is such a popular book and is suggested a lot on PF (for obviously good reasons). How about we make a sticky in the EE forum where we can post the exercises and bad circuits and the possible solutions and have a someone competent look over them? This would be good reference for EE students as solutions are not provided in the text. Personally, I will also have a lot to gain by this, since I have no way verifying if my solutions are correct (And I'd hate to PM berkeman every time I need something or populate the EE forum whenever I have some doubts).

btw, the Student Manual for AofE is also worth the investment. It has very good lab circuits, design templates for most circuits, elaborately worked examples, and summarized views on the main points in the text.

 

[berkeman]

Interesting idea. We'll have to be careful about copyright issues, though. Maybe I'll e-mail H&H to see what they think about it. In a way it's good advertising for them as a useful resource, but just posting scanned parts of books technically violates their copyright. If you re-draw the circuit, then I don't think it violates the copyright, but in the process of re-drawing, other errors might get introduced.

 

[ranger]

I'm pretty sure that we can legally replicate scanned versions of problems or schematics in agreement with Fair Use. You may want to verify this:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/index.html
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=284191&postcount=3

The potential for incorrectly draw schematics is certainly there, but with so many people having the text, its a snap to verify against the original.

 

[berkeman]

Hmmm. Interesting links, ranger. Thanks. That would seem to say that if we are posting reproductions of figures in the text for the purposes of education and discussion, that it would fit under the Fair Use provisions of copyright law. Plus again, the way we would be using them would almost be an advertisement for the book, and not something that would be stealing sales from them.

So I'm willing to give it a try. Anybody got a "bad circuit" that they want to post and discuss? It doesn't have to be from H&H necessarily. It would be good if it didn't appear too much like homework in the EE forum, but I don't know of many EE homework sets that take that approach.

If someone wants to post a thread with a puzzle or two in it, I can sticky it to see how it goes.

 

[ranger]

Great!

I can't post a problem right now; I don't have the book with me. But maybe you could initiate the discussion and sticky it to sort of give whoever (is not aware of this thread) an idea of what's going down, so that they may post some questions.

 

[berkeman]

Done. I stickied a starter thread in the EE forum. I'll post one of my favorite Bad Circuits from H&H on Monday, unless somebody beats me to it. I also need to think back over the years to remember some of the dumbest things I've seen in actual application schematics...

Thanks for the suggestion, ranger.