Customer Reviews

Electronics Projects For Dummies

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Years ago (many, many years...) I was an electronics hobbyist, and I even worked at Radio Shack. Recently, I came across some of my old "toys" and wanted to see what was going on in the world of electronics projects these days. A big fan of the "Dummies" books, I saw this title and took a shot.

At first I was a little dismayed to find that there were only ten or so projects, and looking at them they all seemed pretty lame. But once I studied them I realized that these ten, fairly simple projects, were perfect examples of so many different concepts that were easily adoptable and transportable to many other uses, more like what I had in mind.

Basically with these few projects you can learn about remote control, both IR and RF, speech recorder chips, speech synthesis chips, LED sequencing, light activated controls, motion activated controls, robotic propulsion, and even basics of radios and amplifiers, all using modern, easily obtainable parts.

And in additon to great content, the writers have a great style, using an approach and language that is easily understandable to beginners but meaty enough for experts.

If you are interested in an excellent book to give you a wide introduction to many different electronic concepts, this is the book for you!

This book offers no significant understanding of electronics or of the components used in it. Rather than encroach on the sales of his co-authored book Electronics For Dummies, Boysen simplifies his book of Electronic Projects to the point of incoherence. There is some explanation of what a component is doing in the circuit, but the explanations are very brief, and there is no background understanding provided for comprehending the significance of the explanation.

There is no discussion of current flow (negative to positive vs positive to negative) and of how current flow determines where in a circuit a component is placed. There is only a brief discussion on how to read and interpret a schematic, the discussion being on the meaning of the symbols. The authors spend more time telling you how to use a soldering iron than how to understand what it is you're actually doing when you replicate the schematic on the breadboard. As they describe step-by-step (along with photos) how to layout and wire the breadboard, they do not associate the procedure back to the schematic. Never do they say anything such as: "Now here in the schematic we see x occurring, and so on our breadboard we do y."

They very briefly explain how a breadboard itself is pre-wired but do not refer back to that explanation during the initial projects to clarify what it is they're doing. A study of the second project, a parabolic microphone, a less detailed project than the first, allows an easy comparison between schematic and completed breadboard and will clear up any confusion for the reader - no thanks to the authors. This completed breadboard is shown early in the book, with components labeled, as an example of what a completed board looks like, and shown again in the chapter on its project. But they don't take the trouble to be helpful to beginners and mention the IC is oriented top to the left. But then, the only help they're really giving anyway is telling you what to do, not why you do it.

There are no design tips, such as: "If you want a circuit that does x then these are the electrical conditions under which x would occur and this is how you might go about designing a circuit to make x occur." They don't explain how they went about designing the various circuits in their projects. Nor is there is any mention of any useful conventions or possible mistakes in drafting a schematic. When a sub-circuit (potentiometer/IC amp/speaker) is literally duplicated from one project to another, they don't point that out. This modularity is significant and they see no reason to mention it.

An advantage of the book, I suppose, is that you don't have to understand electronics to follow the step-by-step instructions for building the projects in it. Just skip the explanation of the schematic, which is only marginally helpful anyway, and connect the dots the way they show. Another analogy is painting by numbers. This color goes here, here and here, and this other color goes right there and nowhere else. You might learn how to paint that way, but it's a pretty mindless way to teach it.

There is a glossary but it is elementary. The entry for current is: "The flow of an electrical charge", with no mention of Ohm's Law, which the authors stated on page 19. If you look up Ohm's Law in the glossary you read: "The equation that you use to calculate voltage, current, and resistance, or power", with no reference to what the law says or where it is given in the book.

There are 10 projects. The first project results in LED lights that react to high or low frequencies of sound, so you get a blinking light show. That's followed by a parabolic microphone, then a circuit designed around a programmable IC sound chip that's activated by pressure switches which they put in a doll. Finally at project 4 you get to see the schematic for an AM radio, the first project that interested me, but since most of the electronics for it is on an integrated circuit, there isn't much to learn from this project.

Next we get two plastic pumpkins, one of which transmits an infrared beam to the other. When the beam is broken, the other pumpkin is activated to speak or play a recorded sound. This has applications outside of pumpkins, for an alarm system, of course. So this project has some appeal.

Project 6 involves timing a collection of LEDs to create a sequence of images, which they call Dancing Dolphins. Next they control a little 3-wheeled go-kart via infrared, which involves an infrared receiver and transmitter like in the pumpkins, although in this case the transmitter is a remote control for the electric motor in the go-kart.

After that you get a metal detector with a maximum sensitivity range of about an inch, then a project called Sensitive Sam, which involves a motorized cart that can follow, via sensors, a track on the floor created by black electrical tape, as long as the floor is otherwise shiny or reflective. With a radio wave remote you build you can control the cart's speed, honk its horn or turn it off.

The last project, which should have been one of the first, is a small box that detects its own motion off the horizontal via a tilt switch, which activates a sound chip. It contains a microphone for recording into the sound chip. This project does not require a computer to get your voice into the chip. It uses the same chip used in the talking pumpkin. In fact, the schematic for this is a slight simplification or variation of that for the pumpkin that receives the infrared beam. The authors do not mention this similarity, and because the schematics have to accommodate the few differences in the components they require, they are not drawn so that they mirror the similarities between them.

They're of little help in gathering the components for the projects. An appendix with a comparative chart of the components used in the book would have been helpful. They list what you need within a project's chapter, such as "100 microfarad electrolytic capacitor", which does tell you what you need in this case, if you can figure out how to find that in the huge electronics catalogs online, but there's no general suggestions about capacitors and resistors for future projects using AA batteries or other low voltage projects. If you want to buy in bulk they don't point you in the right direction: "Get a bunch of these, and these, and a lesser amount of these, and you'll probably appreciate a wide assortment of these, and you won't need any of these for a while but you might as well get one or two of these." They're no help whatsoever in choosing a multimeter: what features would be useful to a hobbyist and which are superfluous.

If you want merely to learn how to assemble some simple circuits and don't mind not learning any electronics along the way, and you like the projects the book offers, then this book can suffice. In the final chapters, the authors give helpful suggestions of where to go next. Among their suggestions the only two books they recommend are: Electronics For Dummies by Gordon McComb and Earl Boysen, and The Art of Electronics by Paul Horiwitz and Winfield Hill. I think I'll pass on the Dummy book.

I am still searching for a book for REAL Dummies.. people who have never wired a circuit and who are still struggling with First grade concepts like "what is a volt, what is an ampere? How do I wire up one LED so that it will light up? Is it positive to negative or the other way round?"

This book is not really for that kind of dummy. It starts you off with a project that involves about 50 resistors, integrated circuits, etc. It should not be called 'for dummies', but simply "simple projects for home hobbyists."

Having learned to wire my single LED (from relatives and the internet), and thus discovering what resistors are all about, I want to build an equally simple circuit to discover what a Capacitor is all about.
I am still looking for the first grade primer that will guide me in these basic learning exercises, but this book isn't it.

If you're into electronics projects, this book gives you 10 great ones to play with-my favorite was the line-following go-kart that uses an optical sensor. The projects are well organized with parts lists and easy to read schematics. I especially like the clear explanations and the easy going writing style. My only complaint is there weren't more projects-where's the sequel?

I thought the point of this book, as the books Intro alludes to, was to learn the most simple and basic fundamentals of electronics through building the projects covered in the book. The back of the book says the reader will discover how to "Troubleshoot circuits with a multimeter" among other things but doesn't give us the knowledge necessary to do so.

This book has a lot of shortcomings. Here's just one example.

This book has only about HALF of a single page dedicated to resistors! For something so significant and "used all the time in electronics circuits" as the author states, there needs to be more coverage. What's more, the information needs to be INFORMATIVE and useful.

To further illustrate... The author tells us that the measurement of resistors are "usually given in thousands (kohms) or millions (megohms) of ohms" and that resistors have colored bands that can be used to indicate their value. Instead of informing us how to interpret those values by looking at the colored bands or providing a simple chart (like another book that I have does), he tells us to "just read the packaging your resistor comes in or test it with a multimeter." UNBELIEVABLE!!! Imagine the potential (more like INEVITABLE) headaches that would be caused if you did things that way.

To illustrate...
Let's say a resistor accidentally finds it's way into the wrong container. You put a project together with that resistor, not knowing it's the wrong value, and end up wasting a lot of time in frustration trying to figure out exactly why your project won't work the way it's supposed to. Or worse, maybe even risk the possibility of damaging other components.

For the 2nd recommendation for determining a resistors value the author, on page 77, states that instead of using the colored bands on resistors to know what value it is, "an easier way" is to guess what the value is, then dial a multimeter to that value to test it and, depending on the reading you come up with, adjust the dial up or down until you finally get the right number. Sure, if you have no ambitions beyond this book it's easier in the short term, otherwise you're doing yourself a HUGE disservice. For a scenario...

Imagine you're doing an electronics project and you don't have a new resistor on hand in the value that you need. You do, however, have a scrap bin of old circuit boards taken from discarded electronics that you salvage components from. You believe there has to be at least one resistor in your bin with the value that you need. Imagine how much faster you'd find that component knowing that you needed a resistor with an orange, white, yellow then silver band as opposed to checking each resistor and playing the guessing game the author recommends.

Giving bad advice like what I've just described is a terrible way to start off learning electronics. To give an analogy, a good piano teacher will instruct their students to use proper posture and hand/finger technique. Sure it would be easier for the student at this point in time to go the lazy route when all they're playing is Mary Had a Little Lamb and Row Row Row Your Boat, but as they advance to more challenging music that laziness is going to make things difficult for them and impede their progress. This isn't exactly a good analogy but it's obvious enough what the point is.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have/buy this book and intend to do the projects, you'll need to visit the authors website where he has notations of mistakes that were made in the book. Some projects have missing components or ones that are listed with incorrect values. I don't recall exactly what, but the website lists them somewhere so be sure to find out what they are before you head out to the local electronics shop or place an order online for the parts you need.


I'm a beginner in electronics with ambitions to really learn what makes electronic devices tick. Part of my learning strategy has been to start off with a few basic books to make sure I gain a solid foundation and have no gaps in the fundamentals before I attempt to tackle the more technical and pedantic texts. This book has sorely failed me. The favorable reviews are not accurate portrayals of this waste of paper.

A couple of other gripes:

I feel like I bought an infomercial. There are too many plugs for the authors other book. If he doesn't teach anything worthwhile in this book and didn't live up to a fraction of the positive reviews on here, why in the world would I bother to buy his other one? Remember in the movie "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie gets his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring only to find that it's "a crummy commercial"? That's about what this book feels like to me.

BTW - The photos are terrible. It's very obvious that most of them were haphazardly shot without any concern of how they'd turn out. Dark components on top of dark backgrounds, poor lighting, no attention to detail, etc.

To sum things up, I'VE BEEN RIPPED OFF.

If you're looking for an electronics project book, you might want to look into "Junkbots, Bugbots, & Bots on Wheels" by Dave Hrynkiw and Mark W. Tilden as an alternative.
I have no affiliation with this book, it's authors, or benefit in any way, shape, or form by recommending it.
Although I haven't completely finished it yet, I feel satisfied with the knowledge I've gained thus far.

I bouth this book with Electronics for dummies. I think that both are excelent for beginners.

I've built several of these projects, using the electronics but designing my own graphics and containers. The circuits are clear and function properly. I adapt them for soldered circuit boards and that works well. I'd recommend this book highly.