OReilly Make More Electronics (2014).pdf

Make: More Electronics

Charles Platt

Dedication

In memory of my father, Maurice Platt, who showed me that it is a fine and valuable occupation to be

an engineer.

Acknowledgments

I discovered electronics when I was a teenager, in collaboration with my friends in high school. We

were nerds before the word existed. Patrick Fagg, Hugh Levinson, Graham Rogers, and John Witty

showed me some of the possibilities. Fifty years later, Graham kindly contributed a schematic to this

book.

Several decades after that, Mark Frauenfelder nudged me back into the habit of making things. Gareth

Branwyn facilitated Make: Electronics, and Brian Jepson enabled its sequel. They are three of the

best editors I have known, and they are also three of my favorite people. Most writers are not so

fortunate.

I am also grateful to Dale Dougherty for starting something that I never imagined could become so

important, and for welcoming me as a participant.

Fredrik Jansson provided advice and corrections while I was working on this project. His patience

and good humor have been very valuable to me.

Fact checking was also provided by Philipp Marek. Don’t blame Philipp or Fredrik if there are still

any errors in this book. Remember that it’s much easier for me to make an error than it is for someone

else to find it.

Circuits were built and tested by Frank Teng and A. Golin. I appreciate their help. I am also grateful

for the conscientious attention of Kara Ebrahim and Kristen Brown in the production department, and

proofreader Amanda Kersey.

Preface

This book picks up where my previous introductory guide, Make: Electronics , left off. Here you will

find topics that I did not explore in detail before, and other topics that were not covered at all

because I lacked sufficient space. You will also find that I go a little bit further into technicalities, to

enable a deeper understanding of the concepts. At the same time, I have tried to make “Learning by

Discovery” as much fun as possible.

A few of the ideas here have been discussed previously in Make magazine, in very different forms. I

always enjoy writing my regular column for Make , but the magazine format imposes strict limits on

the wordage and the number of illustrations. I can provide much more comprehensive coverage in this

book.

I have chosen not to deal with microcontrollers in much depth, because explaining their setup and

programming language(s) in sufficient detail would require too much space. Other books already

explain the various microcontroller chip families. I will suggest ways in which you can rebuild or

simplify the projects here by using a microcontroller, but I will leave you to pursue this further on

your own.