Wow, I'm so happy to see this is the first result (the reason I came to comment.) I've tried and failed many times to pick up a fundamental, from the ground-up understanding of electronics and electrial theory. Forrest Mims' "Getting started in electronics" was good, but the All About Circuits text book had the depth and accessibility and I was looking for.

And it's free!

Mechatronics text books tend to be useful. They are written for mechanical engineers who intend to build circuits and software for mechanic-electronic systems. So they tend to have practical information for those who want to start building electronic circuits now, but have no electrical background.

Have any specific recommendations for a hobbyist and outsider to formal mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines? Thanks!

The one I use is Introduction to Mechatronics by Carryer Ohline and Kenny

It covers a lot. On the mechanical side it only covers actuators and control systems.

This is an incredible resource. Learned everything I needed to know for an IoT side project and more from the AAC book

That's a nice TOC!

Flipping through, I think the thyrister treatment is a bit weak, and I would ideally like to see more in terms of comm-sys, (like how NTSC works for analog/radio TV), but this looks solid.

TIL about a nice reference.

Thank you!

The Art of Electronics is also fantastic

I respectfully disagree with this comment. I banged my head against The Art of Electronics for years before discovering that the problem wasn't with me... but rather, it was just a very poor book for a learner.

It may be a great book for those who already have some grounding in the topic.

Please, don't disparage a book because you personally did not find it useful. I, personally, found it very useful and it was my most important learning resources at the beginning.

Exactly as you said, because I have already had some exposure to physics and to kind of modular systems (I am mathematician working as a developer) this was perfect resource for me.

Different people with different backgrounds learn in different ways and from different types of resources. It is wise to understand there is no single resource that is going to be best for everybody.

> Exactly as you said, because I have already had some exposure to physics and to kind of modular systems (I am mathematician working as a developer) this was perfect resource for me.

So you're saying they're correct that it's not a good book for a learner without some exposure to the fundamentals. But what's the disparagement you're referring to?

It is important to differentiate between exposure to fundamentals of electronics and physics.

I believe if you have never been exposed to engineering or another discipline that deals with complex systems (like designing software or mechanical systems) you have to learn to build systems from smaller components. This is where many beginners fail. Even though they can sort of understand what parts do they can't put them together because they don't think in systems. In that case you need something else than AoE.

On the other hand, if you have built complex things in another discipline you may find yourself very at home with AoE with no previous exposure to electronics. That's because you already know how to build systems from lego bricks, now you just need to learn new kinds of bricks and rules to put them together.

That's a good summary. The book was originally written for physics grad students who needed to build instrumentation for their experiments. So intended readers probably understand electromagnetic theory, but need to know how you do things with available parts. That's where it's really useful. I own copies of all three editions. Third Edition is on a shelf nearby.

A good place to start is to get one of the small Elenco electronics kits. The ones with a solderless breadboard. That will get you the basics. With a solderless breadboard, you can always buy and add more components. Much hobbyist electronics is done on solderless breadboards, especially Arduino stuff.

Once you understand E=IR and W=EI, you can size most components. Beyond that, use LTSpice.

This book ruined many hours of my childhood, when I was in high school. I read it. I didn't understand it. I reread it. I still didn't understand it. At the time, I didn't realize I needed to know basic differential equations, and I just felt dumb.

Then I went to college.

When I looked at it as a more mature engineer, I found it imprecise, sloppy, and also not very helpful. It doesn't embody good design practice, give a proper theoretical basis, and the choice of topics is random.

Many people love it, but I hate it.

Thank you this has been very consoling to read as someone who tried and failed many times with this book when I was young. I thought I was just not smart but now realize most people on the internet who get this stuff are not brilliant autodidacts, they are just educated adults. Even reading a datasheet which is so critical was out of my reach (or patience) without the math and vocab.

it's a fantastic reference book - not great for learning the fundamentals

this looks very good. do you know if there is a PDF version that contains the whole textbook? could not find it on the website

actually found the PDFs

PDFs are here [0]. They are legally free. [0] https://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

Second that :-)