These elements are a voltage source, conductive path and a load. The voltage source, such as a battery, is needed in order to cause the current to flow through the circuit. In addition, there needs to be a conductive path that provides a route for the electricity to flow. Finally, a proper circuit needs a load that consumes the power. The load in the above circuit is the light bulb. When working with circuits, you will often find something called a schematic diagram.
These symbols are graphic representations of the actual electronic components. Below is an example of a schematic that depicts an LED circuit that is controlled by a switch. It contains symbols for an LED, resistor, battery and a switch. By following a schematic diagram, you are able to know which components to use and where to put them. These schematics are extremely helpful for beginners when first learning circuits. There are many types of electronic symbols and they vary slightly between countries.
Below are a few of the most commonly used electronic symbols in the US. To find the resistor value, you need to know the voltage and the amps for your LED and battery. Next, you need to find out what voltage your battery is.
In this example, we will be using a 9V battery. This will give you a voltage of 7 which needs to be divided by. This project is a great starter project for beginners.
We will be using test leads to create a temporary circuit without having to solder it together. You can however connect an LED to a 3V or smaller battery without a resistor. Another way to create and test a circuit is to build it on a breadboard. These boards are essential for testing and prototyping circuits because no soldering is needed. Components and wires are pushed into the holes to form a temporary circuit. Below the holes of each row are metal clips that connect the holes to each other.
The middle rows run vertically as shown while the exterior columns are connected horizontally. These exterior columns are called power rails and are used to receive and provide power to the board. Breadboards will need to have power supplied to them and this can be done in a few ways. One of the easiest way is to plug the wires from a battery holder into the power rails. The red arrows in the image below help to show how electricity is flowing in this circuit.
All components are connected to each other in a circle just like when we used the test leads. For an in-depth tutorial on soldering electronics, view our post How To Solder for a complete step-by-step guide.
There are a lot of great places online to find electronic components, parts and tools. Below is a list of our favorite places to shop for electronics. We truly believe that adding a makerspace to a school or library can help students acquire the skills needed for the 21st century. Copyright Makerspaces. Breadboard Breadboards are an essential tool for prototyping and building temporary circuits.
Test Leads Alligator Clips Test leads are great for connecting components together to test a circuit without the need for soldering. Wire Cutter Wire cutters are essential for stripping stranded and solid copper wire. Helping 3rd Hand When working with electronics, it seems you never have enough hands to hold everything.
Heat Gun A heat gun is used to shrink plastic tubing known as heat shrink to help protect exposed wire. Jumper Wire These wires are used with breadboard and development boards and are generally AWG solid core wire. Electronic Components Now its time to talk about the different components that make your electronic projects come to life.
Switch Switches can come in many forms such as pushbutton, rocker, momentary and others. Resistor Resistors are used to resist the flow of current or to control the voltage in a circuit. Variable Resistor Potentiometer A variable resistor is also known as a potentiometer.
Light-Dependent Resistor LDR A light-dependent resistor is also a variable resistor but is controlled by the light versus turning a knob.
Capacitor Capacitors store electricity and then discharges it back into the circuit when there is a drop in voltage.
Diode A diode allows electricity to flow in one direction and blocks it from flowing the opposite way. Light-Emitting Diode LED A light-emitting diode is like a standard diode in the fact that electrical current only flows in one direction. Transistor Transistor are tiny switches that turn a current on or off when triggered by an electric signal.
Relay A relay is an electrically operated switch that opens or closes when power is applied. What Is A Circuit? Schematic Diagram When working with circuits, you will often find something called a schematic diagram.
Red wire from the battery clip is connected to one alligator clip on the red test lead. Connect one alligator clip from black test lead to the short leg - of the LED.
The opposite end of the black test lead is connected to the black battery wire. Place the red wire from the battery clip into F9 of the breadboard.
Insert the black wire from the battery clip into J21 of the breadboard. Potentiometers have three legs as to create a voltage divider, which is basically two resistors in series. When two resistors are put in series, the point between them is a voltage that is a value somewhere between the source value and ground. For instance, if you have two 10K resistors in series between power 5V and ground 0V , the point where these two resistors meet will be half the power supply 2.
Assuming this middle point is actually the center pin of a potentiometer, as you turn the knob, the voltage on the middle pin will actually increase towards 5V or decrease toward 0V depending which direction that you turn it. This is useful for adjusting the intensity of an electrical signal within a circuit hence its use as a volume knob.
If you only connect one of the outer pins and the center pin to the circuit, you are only changing the resistance within the circuit and not the voltage level on the middle pin. This too is a useful tool for circuit building because often you just want to change the resistance at a particular point and not create an adjustable voltage divider.
This configuration is often represented in a circuit as a resistor with an arrow coming out of one side and looping back in to point towards the middle. LED stands for light emitting diode. It is basically a special type of diode that lights up when electricity passes through it.
Like all diodes, the LED is polarized and electricity is only intended to pass through in one direction. There are typically two indicators to let you know what direction electricity will pass through and LED. The first indicator that the LED will have a longer positive lead anode and a shorter ground lead cathode. The other indicator is a flat notch on the side of the LED to indicate the positive anode lead. Keep in mind that not all LEDs have this indication notch or that it is sometimes wrong.
Like all diodes, LEDs create a voltage drop in the circuit, but typically do not add much resistance. In order to prevent the circuit from shorting, you need to add a resistor in series. To figure out how large of a resistor you need for optimum intensity, you can use this online LED calculator to figure out how much resistance is needed for a single LED. It is often good practice to use a resistor that is slightly larger in the value than what is returned by calculator.
You may be tempted to wire LEDs in series, but keep in mind that each consecutive LED will result in a voltage drop until finally there is not enough power left to keep them lit. As such, it is ideal to light up multiple LEDs by wiring them in parallel. However, you need to make certain that all of the LEDs have the same power rating before you do this different colors often are rated differently.
LEDs will show up in a schematic as a diode symbol with lightning bolts coming off of it, to indicate that it is a glowing diode.
A switch is basically a mechanical device that creates a break in a circuit. When you activate the switch, it opens or closes the circuit.
This is dependent on the type of switch it is. As switches get more complex they can both open one connection and close another when activated. This type of switch is a single-pole double-throw switch SPDT. This would break two separate circuits and open two other circuits, every time the switch was activated. A battery is a container which converts chemical energy into electricity.
To over-simplify the matter, you can say that it "stores power. By placing batteries in series you are adding the voltage of each consecutive battery, but the current stays the same. For instance, a AA-battery is 1. If you put 3 in series, it would add up to 4. If you were to add a fourth in series, it would then become 6V. By placing batteries in parallel the voltage remains the same, but the amount of current available doubles. This is done much less frequently than placing batteries in series, and is usually only necessary when the circuit requires more current than a single series of batteries can offer.
It is recommend that you get a range of AA battery holders. For instance, I would get an assortment that holds 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 AA batteries. Batteries are represented in a circuit by a series of alternating lines of different length. There are also additional marking for power, ground and the voltage rating. Breadboards are special boards for prototyping electronics. They are covered with a grid of holes, which are split into electrically continuous rows. In the central part there are two columns of rows that are side-by-side.
This is designed to allow you to be able to insert an integrated circuit into the center. After it is inserted, each pin of the integrated circuit will have a row of electrically continuous holes connected to it.
In this way, you can quickly build a circuit without having to do any soldering or twisting wires together. Simply connect the parts that are wired together into one of the electrically continuous rows. On each edge of the breadboard, there typically runs two continuous bus lines. One is intended as a power bus and the other is intended as a ground bus. By plugging power and ground respectively into each of these, you can easily access them from anywhere on the breadboard.
In order to connect things together using a breadboard, you either need to use a component or a wire. Wires are nice because they allow you to connect things without adding virtually no resistance to the circuit.
This allows you to be flexible as to where you place parts because you can connect them together later with wire. It also allows you to connect a part to multiple other parts. It is recommended that you use insulated 22awg 22 gauge solid core wire for breadboards. You used to be able to find it at Radioshack, but instead could use the hookup wire linked to above. Red wire typically indicates a power connection and black wire represents a ground connection.
If you look at the schematic you will see that the 1K resistor, LED, and switch are all connected in series with the 9V battery. When you build the circuit, you will be able to turn the LED on and off with the switch. You can look up the color code for a 1K resistor using the graphical resistance calculator. Also, remember that the LED needs to be plugged in the right way hint - the long leg goes to the positive side of the circuit. I needed to solder a solid core wire to each leg of the switch.
For instructions on how to do that, check out the " How to Solder " Instructable. If this is too much of a pain for you to do, simply leave the switch out of the circuit. If you decide to use the switch, open and close it to see what happens when you make and break the circuit.
This next schematic may look daunting, but it is actually rather straight-forward. It is using all of the parts that we have just gone over to automatically blink an LED. I learned their pin layouts by looking up their datasheets. A good source for quickly finding datasheets is Octopart.
Simply search for the part number and you should find a picture of the part and link to the datasheet. For instance, from the datasheet for the 2N transistor, I was quickly able to see that pin 1 was the emitter, pin 2 was the base, and pin 3 was the collector. Aside from the transistors, all of the resistors, capacitors, and LED should be straight-forward to connect. However, there is one tricky bit in the schematic. Notice the half-arch near the transistor. This arch indicates that the capacitor jumps over the trace from the battery and connects to the base of the PNP transistor instead.
Also, when building the circuit, don't forget to keep in mind that the electrolytic capacitors and LED are polarized and will only work in one direction. After you finish building the circuit and plug in the power, it should blink. If it does not blink, carefully check all of your connections and orientation of all of the parts.
A trick for quickly debugging the circuit is counting components in the schematic versus components on your breadboard. If they don't match, you left something out. You can also do the same counting trick for the number of things that connect to a particular point in the circuit.
Once it is working, try changing the value of K resistor. Notice that by increasing the value of this resistor, the LED blinks slower and that by decreasing it, the LED blinks faster. The reason for this is that the resistor is controlling the rate at which the 10uF capacitor is filling and discharging. This is directly related to the blinking of the LED. Replace this resistor with a 1M potentiometer that is in series with a 10K resistor. Wire it such that one side of the resistor connects to an outer pin on the potentiometer and the other side connects to the base of the PNP transistor.
The center pin of the potentiometer should connect to ground. The rate of blinking now changes when you turn the knob and sweep through the resistance. What is happening is that the configuration of components and connections on the chip is causing pin 3 to oscillate rapidly between high and low. If you were to graph these oscillations, it would look like a square wave a wave the alternates between two power levels. This wave then rapidly pulses the speaker, which displaces air at such a high frequency that we hear this as a steady tone of that frequency.
Make sure that the chip is straddling the center of the breadboard, such that none of the pins might get accidentally connected. Aside from that, simply make the connections as specified in the schematic diagram. Also note the "NC" symbol on the schematic.
This stands in for "No Connect," which obviously means nothing connects to that pin in this circuit. You can read all about chips on this page and see a great selection of additional schematics on this page. In terms of the speaker, use a small speaker like you might find inside of a musical greeting card. This configuration can't drive a large speaker, the smaller the speaker you can find, the better off that you will be.
Most speakers are polarized, so make certain that you have the negative side of the speaker connected to ground if it requires it. If you want to take it a step farther, you can create a volume knob by connecting one outer pin of a K potentiometer to pin 3, the middle pin to the speaker, and the the remaining outer pin to ground.
You are not exactly on your own. The internet is full of people who know how to do this stuff and have documented their work such that you can learn how to do it as well.
Go forth and seek out what you want to make. If the circuit does not yet exist, chances are there is documentation of something similar already online. A great place to start finding circuit schematic is the Discover Circuits site.
They have a comprehensive list of fun circuits to experiment with. If you have any additional advice about basic electronics for beginners, please share it in the comments below. Did you find this useful, fun, or entertaining? Follow madeineuphoria to see my latest projects. I connected everything and quadruple checked it. Any suggestions? Hi all I want to modify an existing brake light bar for my car as original expensive one has many leds out. I want to make set up with 21 leds wired up to 12v,I presume in parallel but unsure of resistor configuration and values Please help and advise cheers.
I do not understand the placement of the 10uF capacitor. It seems to be connected in a way that opposite to it's polarity. Why is it charging and what stops it from blowing up? Question 1 year ago on Step Answer 1 year ago. Does it have any other markings? Reply 1 year ago. Je ne comprend pas ce que vous voulez dire.
So, when they say that the US power supply is 60 Hz, what they mean is that it is reversing times per second. How can calculate the number of reversing per second based on frequency, could you please explain it?? Reply 3 years ago. Question 2 years ago on Step 7. Ont les utilisent souvent dans les alimentations, avec un transformateur, ou dans dans des montages d'alimentations sans transformateurs pour abaisser la tension, mais aussi dans d'autres montages.
Answer 2 years ago. Question 2 years ago on Step 2. Si vous avez besoin de plus explications, je vous les fournirais. Ce qui fait que certains conduise mieux que d'autres, plus exactement ils permettent au courant de mieux passer.
Question 2 years ago. Introduction: Basic Electronics. By randofo madeineuphoria on Instagram! More by the author:. I'm also the author of … More About randofo ». There are two different ways in which you can wire things together called series and parallel.
When things are wired in parallel, they are wired side by side, such that electricity passes through all of them at the same time, from one common point to another common point In the next example, the motors are wired in parallel because the electricity passes through both motors from one common point to another common point.
Bear with me as I elaborate as to what each of these are in the coming steps. This is represented in a circuit as a resistor with an arrow pointing towards the middle of it.
Normally open N. Normally closed N. Did you make this project? Share it with us! I Made It!
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