The electronics is using electricity to process, control and transmit information through circuits and components.
In other words, electronics is not limited to electricity “doing things,” like lighting a bulb or turning a motor. The interesting part is that we now use voltages and currents to make decisions, measure signals, amplify them, filter them, or convert them into zeros and ones.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably already somewhat familiar with electricity. You know voltage exists, current flows, resistance opposes the flow of current, and that poorly calculated power ends up smelling funny (which is also a very fast way to learn).
If that part isn’t clear yet, I recommend starting with the electricity course:
Electronics goes one step further. In electricity, we are usually concerned with transporting and transforming energy. In electronics, on the other hand, we use that electricity to represent and manipulate information.
- Electricity focuses mainly on energy: generating it, transporting it, transforming it, and converting it into useful work.
- Electronics focuses mainly on the signal: measuring it, modifying it, amplifying it, switching it, processing it, or communicating it.
Or, put simply:
- Electricity 💡 makes a light bulb turn on.
- Electronics 💻 decides when it turns on, for how long, and at what intensity.
Of course, the boundary isn’t always clear-cut. A power supply, a variable frequency drive, or a battery charger have both an electrical part and an electronic part. Reality seldom asks for permission before mixing concepts.
What we will learn in this course
The field of electronics is enormous. We could talk about amplifiers, sensors, communications, switching power supplies, microcontrollers, digital buses, radio frequency, and a few other things until our coffee goes cold.
So we’ll follow a reasonable path, starting with the basics and building from there.
- Circuit fundamentals and analysis: We’ll review voltage, current, resistance, power, Ohm’s Law, and Kirchhoff’s Laws.
- Basic components: We’ll look at resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors, and other common components.
- Analog electronics: We’ll work with continuous, time-varying signals, amplifiers, filters, and signal conditioning.
- Digital electronics: We’ll convert signals into zeros and ones, look at logic gates, digital levels, timing, and communication buses.
- Microcontrollers: We’ll finish by using programmable circuits to read sensors, control actuators, and build complete systems.
The idea is not to memorize components, like collecting trading cards. The idea is to understand what each component does, why it behaves that way, and when it makes sense to use it.
Where to start
Before we get to microcontrollers, sensors, and more flashy circuits, we need a solid foundation. Because an Arduino, an ESP32, or any modern board is nothing more than a very well-packaged electronic circuit.
Inside, there are resistors, transistors, capacitors, signals, voltage levels, power consumption, rise times, noise, and many small things that explain why something works… or why “it was working yesterday and today it isn’t.”
So we’ll start from the beginning: what electronics really is, what sets it apart from electricity, and what are the basic building blocks we’ll use to construct everything else.
