Customer Reviews

Optoelectronics, Fiber Optics, and Laser Cookbook

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One of the best electronic books today, optoelectronics is perfect, fun and easy to use. This is a guide to optical circuits which includes fiber optics and lasers, provides a collection of experiments and projects for the college student, technician, and hobbyist. The book is greatly detailed and simple directions to enter the field of optoelectronics in nontechnical terms. It is really fun and again, easy to use for any of its 88 projects. Dare to be challeged and be caught up in what I call the best "something to do" book.

If you are a physicist or engineer, you'll find plenty of textbooks on optics, electronics, and optoelectronics, but probably not many examples of optoelectronic circuits. That is where the value of this book lies. There are the very basics of theory on optics in these chapters, but you will need to read other books to really be able to say you know optics. Chapter 3 is where the book takes a big upswing in quality and uniqueness. This chapter on optocouplers and optointerfacing and the example circuits are brilliant. Obvious and plain commonsense, you'll ask yourself "why didn't I think of it"? "Optocouplers and optointerfacing" presents a great many circuits for any number of purposes and the standouts would have to be the TTL - to - RS-232 interface, RS-232 infrared data transmission system and, a high speed RS-232 infrared computer interface. In later chapters we get to "wireless security systems" another interesting subject. The schematics are quite clear, contain comprehensive parts lists and include manufacturers of unusual parts. I didn't check the degree of ease or difficulty of sourcing these parts but I note that light dependent resistors and the phototransistor are manufactured by Vactec. They are not mentioned in the appendix of sources and vendors. Later chapters in my opinion only get better and better provided you have an interest in these areas.
In summary I highly recommend this book to individuals who want to get their hands on some concrete projects that unite the power of electronics and optics, provided they have other sources for the theory and also provided they are prepared to do some hunting for some of the rarer devices needed to build some of the circuits.