Fundamentals

Understanding Fundamental Electronic Parts Including Specs, Hints and Examples

Breakout boards and microcontrollers are an efficient way of quickly plugging together working electronic devices. There’s only very little need to understand the fundamentals of electronics.

Why should I dig deeper?

There’s no need for you to visit this section unless you’re hungry for more.

In this section I look at the discrete parts of electronics like transistors, resistors, capacitors and coils. Understanding these building blocks of breakout boards and ICs can be awesome, and sometimes even necessary.

Do More With Less

What if you just want to have a latched push button to power on and off your device? What if your button needs to switch a much bigger load than it could handle or would be safe to do?

That’s what you can put together with a few transistors and resistors. Yes, there may be even breakout boards for latched buttons and switching MosFETs. Using discrete parts gives you more flexibility, cheaper cost and smaller form factors.

Discrete Components

Discrete components are the most basic electronic parts that cannot be divided any further, like transistors or resistors.

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(content created Feb 27, 2024)