General Electronics: Expert Guides and Resources

Capacitors are among the most useful of all electronic components. And capacitance is the term that refers to the ability of a capacitor to store charge. It's also the measurement used to indicate how much energy a particular capacitor can store. The more capacitance a capacitor has, the more charge it can store.

Before you can fire up your Raspberry Pi and start building your own electronics projects, you need to do some basic setup work. Start by setting up the hardware. You'll need the following to set up your Pi so that you can program it for your projects: A Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. A suitable power supply: The Raspberry Pi requires a 5 V power supply connected via a micro-USB connection on the card.

All of electronics can be divided into two broad categories: analog and digital. One of the most common examples of the difference between analog and digital devices is a clock. On the analog clock, the time is represented by hands that spin around a dial and point to a location on the dial that represents the approximate time.

A Raspberry Pi (sometimes just called a Pi for short) is a very small computer. Raspberry Pi is a popular alternative to Arduino, BASIC Stamp, and other types of microcontrollers and is the ideal computer for people who love to make their own gadgets.Physically, a Raspberry Pi resembles an Arduino or a BASIC Stamp.

As you design and build with electronic circuits, you’ll invariably find yourself scratching your head trying to remember what color stripes are on a 470 Ω resistor or what pin on a 555 timer integrated circuit (IC) is the trigger input. Never fear! This handy Cheat Sheet will help you remember such mundane details so you can get on with the fun stuff.

Electronics is more than just schematics and circuits. By using various components, such as resistors and capacitors, electronics allows you to bend electric current to your will to create an infinite variety of gizmos and gadgets. In exploring electronics, use this handy reference for working with Ohm’s, Joule’s, and Kirchhoff’s Laws; making important calculations; determining the values of resistors and capacitors according to the codes that appear on their casings; and using a 555 timer and other integrated circuits (ICs).

Semiconductors are used extensively in electronic circuits. As its name implies, a semiconductor is a material that conducts current, but only partly. The conductivity of a semiconductor is somewhere between that of an insulator, which has almost no conductivity, and a conductor, which has almost full conductivity.

You need a closed path, or closed circuit, to get electric current to flow. If there's a break anywhere in the path, you have an open circuit, and the current stops flowing — and the metal atoms in the wire quickly settle down to a peaceful, electrically neutral existence. A closed circuit allows current to flow, but an open circuit leaves electrons stranded.