The electronics instructional laboratory offers an opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience with practical aspects of doing experimental physics. In particular, the electronics course is critical for learning the process of converting physical variables into measurable and useful electronic signals, and for turning electronic signals into desired physical behaviors. 

• Lecture website
• Making circuit diagrams

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• All About Circuits: Free online textbook, lots of other resources about electronic design.  Presented in engineering terminology, which may differ somewhat from language used in physics.
• Fundamental Analog Electronics by Brian Lawless: Previously published textbook, now out of print.  Author is hosting it in its entirety on his website here, the former link is a direct download.
• Dr Alyssa J. Pasquale's Books: An engineering professor at DuPage, has books on analog electronics, digital circuits, and microcontrollers online for no cost.
• Jameco Learning Center: Numerous tips, guides, and projects.
• Talking Electronics: Expansive hobbyist site, terrible web design.  May be good inspiration for starting projects.
• Sparkfun: Tutorials and parts vendor.
  • Tutorial: How to read a schematic
• Adafruit: Tutorials and parts vendor.
• Hackaday: Miscellaneous articles with many electronics projects.
  • https://hackaday.io/list/160076-fpga-tutorials Tutorials specific to FPGAs
• Music From Outer Space: Tutorials specific to making analog synthesizers.
• DIY synths database: Links to a plethora of analog synth designs.
• Bob Pease's articles: Old timer talks about circuits and whatever else crosses his mind.  More likely entertaining than educational; Bob was one of the pioneers of analog circuit design in the 60s and 70s.
• Hackster.io: General hobbyist project sharing site. Likely to have ideas both great and terrible.
• Van Hunter Adams's website: Cornell ECE prof, has some useful ideas for projects and info on digital devices.
• Analog Devices Lab Activity Material: Based on the Analog Devices Active Learning Module 2000, still useful for learning about common analog circuits.
• The Electronic Connector Book: Has tools for looking up & identifying numerous electrical interconnects. Useful for identifying what part you need to order to fix something.

• PJRC : Named for the site creators, has a lot of example projects and help for people working with Arduino family devices.
• ARM Assembly By Example: Learn assembly language using a Raspberry pi (or other ARMv6 processor)

• Dwarakan Ramanathan's tutorials on Digikey

• Altium's online design course

• University of Minnesota: Has FPGA resources for Xilinx family of boards
• Brigham Young University ECE 220: Has lab sequence for the Xilinx Basys 3 board
• Stanford's EE109: More introductions to FPGAs
• Stanford's older labs

• Tektronix Oscilloscopes
• Voltage Divider Examples
• Thevenin Equivalence
• RC Differentiators
• RC Integrators
• Introduction to Diodes
• Introduction to 555 Timers
• University of Colorado's Dr. Newhall, includes full lectures and specific topics
• EEVBlog (Presented from an engineering standpoint, so terminology may vary)
  • Introduction to Oscilloscopes
  • Operational Amplifiers (~1hr long, first 30 minutes is most relevant)
• Design: End-to-End - From the “Electronics for the Inquisitive Experimenter” channel. A 12 part series on designing, manufacturing, and testing an audio mixer.

• Device Orchestra Making music with motorized household objects
• Simone Giertz Previously the self-proclaimed queen of sh*tty robots, now makes useful things too.
• Chip Art Album Collection of photos from art that engineers snuck into the designs of their chips.
• https://nandgame.com/ Has you build up the circuity to make a digital computer from the ground up. You start with logic gates and end with a processor that can be programmed
• Guthman Musical Instrument Competition An annual event at Georgia Tech, most of the instruments involve clever electronics in some way. For instance, the SpiderHarp uses elastic and accelerometers to turn vibrations into sound.
• Classic Breadboarding An example of what “breadboard” used to mean.

• Falstad Circuit Simulator: Online circuit simulator with good visual interface.
• Semiconductor behavior simulator: Online material-level simulation of how things like diodes & transistors work. Made by Brandon Li, a grad student at CU Boulder.
• Micro-cap Circuit Simulator: Free professional grade circuit simulation software for Windows. Abandoned in 2019, but still downloadable.
• KiCad: Open-souce Printed Circuit Board(PCB) and schematic design software. Free, but a bit of a learning curve.
• Autodesk Fusion: Professional PCB design software addon available, free if you create a student account.
• Diagrams.net: Free flowchart making tool, includes circuit elements if you use the “More Shapes” button in the bottom left and add “Electrical” from the Other category.

• Microcenter : Probably the only physical store with a significant selection of parts nearby. Located up in Lincoln Park
• Sparkfun and Adafruit: Hobbyist suppliers, in addition to useful tutorials.
• Digikey: Daunting to learn, but massive component database.  More focused on industrial-scale applications. Also offers Printed Circuit Board(PCB) manufacturing now.
• Mouser: Similar to Digikey, the other industry standard website.
• Banggood: Larger focus on modules than individual parts, also offers many options for working with robotics/drones.  Generally more affordable, but may have longer shipping times
• Tayda Electronics: Hobbyist focus, less selection but more reasonable prices on small orders than other sites.  Affordable with generally quick shipping.
• Stepper Online: Specialty store for stepper motors and drivers, but a great place to go if you need to move something.
• Digilent: Focus on test & measurement equipment. Their Analog Discovery unit isn't exactly cheap, but it is a scope, power supply, and function generator all in one. Make sure to get the Academic pricing.
• Pimoroni : Centered around Raspberry Pi devices and located in the UK. Have some neat display and microcontroller combos.
  • Pishop.us: USA retailer that carries some Pimoroni stuff. A little smaller selection but also a bit cheaper.

• OSHPark: Service for fabricating PCBs from files, costs ~ 1.70 per square inch. Done in the USA, so may be both faster and more expensive than some services.
• Aisler: Another service for fabricating PBCs, housed in Germany.
• Seeed Studio: Parts supplier, also fabricates PCBs
• Elecrow: Sell parts, fabricate PCBs, and partner with folks to sell useful modules. Look promising but I haven't worked with them personally.

• https://wiki.dfrobot.com/Arduino_Common_Controller_Selection_Guide: A guide for what devices might be suitable for different situations.
  • DFRobot: Hobbyist site focusing on robots, sensors, and motors.

• Cheap FPGA Development Boards blog post: Not a vendor, but rather a listing of many devices with links to vendors. Last updated 2023.
• Xilinx family boards: Student pricing listed. Typically programmed using Vivado
• Altera family boards: Also have student pricing. This is the family of used in class that is typically programmed via Quartus
• Digikey listings: This should be filtered to only show a subset of boards from relatively reliable manufacturers. Make sure you're comfortable with whatever the device is going to demand from you before you buy something, the cheapest options can take quite a bit of knowledge to be able to get started with.

• Mad Lab: Misc kits, might be a good intro to soldering.  Jameco is American vendor.
• Boldport Club: Cool and strange physical implementations of circuits.
• The Electronic Gold Mine: Designs are a bit retro, but they have many decent kits for small projects.

So you want to play with electronics at home? Here are some reasonable options to get kitted out.

• Rigol DHO 800: A fully capable oscilloscope that would serve you well for a long time. ~$300 after educational discount.
• Analog Discovery 3: A software-controlled device. More fully featured, has function generator and logic analyzer included. ~$320 after educational discount.
• Siglent SDS1000: Another affordable benchtop scope. ~$275 after educational discount
• UNI-T UTD2052: About the cheapest benchtop scope you'll get outside of some really obscure companies. ~$180 after educational discount
• r/PrintedCircuitBoard wiki: Another collection of affordable scopes to look through. Has a ton of other equipment listed as well.

The instructional laboratory staff is always interested in feedback. Let us know if you find typos or mistakes, or let us know if you have comments about what you like or don't like about the lab experience.