Doug Lowe - Electronics All-In-One for Dummies

Electronics ALL-IN-ONE For Dummies

by Doug Lowe

Electronics All-in-One For Dummies

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Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011945574

ISBN 978-0-470-14704-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-15883-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-15928-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-15929-3 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

When Doug Lowe was 10 years old, his father gave him an electronics experimenters kit that started a life-long love of all things electronic. As a child, he dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer. But he soon discovered that he loved writing as much as he loved electronics, and his first technical book was published in 1981. Since then, he has written more than 100. All of those books have been about one specific corner of the electronics world: computers. But now he has finally written a book about his first love, the joy of designing and building electronic circuits from scratch.

Doug lives in sunny Fresno, California, where the motto is Fres-YES!, (unfortunately, Im not making that up). The fruits of his electronic passions can often be seen around the Halloween season, in the form of animated computer-controlled Halloween decorations that rival Disneys Haunted Mansion.

Dedication

My grandpa had a wonderful workshop behind his home. It was cramped and cold in the winter, and smelled of machine oil, stale coffee, aged rubber, and damp wood like an ancient hardware store clinging to life down the road from a giant Big Box store. It was there that I began a lifelong love of electronics, as my grandpa tried to explain the mystery of electricity and taught me how to use a soldering iron, read a voltmeter, and test a questionable vacuum tube.

In the spring of 1970, he showed up at my house with a trailer full of everything an 11-year-old boy could possibly need to create his own electronics lab. The trailer was stacked high with broken radios and box after box filled with tools and spare parts: vacuum tubes, soldering irons, condensers, volt meters, resistors, tube testers, and tuning capacitors.

I can still remember the look on my dads face when he saw that trailer full of junk pull up in front of our house, hitched to the back of grandpas old Buick.

I was in heaven. I think my dad may have been somewhere else.

But he helped unload the trailer, and then he built me an amazing workbench with enough shelves and drawers to store everything and more.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandpa, Kenneth D. Lowe Sr., and to my dad, Kenneth D. Lowe, Jr.

To my grandfather, for giving me an amazing gift buried in a trailer full of junk. And to my dad, for letting me keep it.

Authors Acknowledgments

First, Id like to thank Katie Feltman for giving me the opportunity to write this book. Weve talked about doing something like this for years, and I was so delighted when she called me to discuss this project. I am especially grateful for her patience as deadlines came and went.

Next, Id like to thank Christopher Morris, not only for doing such an incredible job as project editor on this long project, but also giving me the encouragement and support I needed along the way.

Thanks also to Kirk Kleinschmidt, who gave the book a great technical review and offered many excellent suggestions not only on purely technical considerations but also on the presentation of complex material. And thanks to Heidi Unger, who as usual did a great job whipping my prose into shape, crossing all the is and dotting all the ts, or something like that. And, of course, thanks to all the behind-the-scenes people who chipped in with help Im not even aware of.

Id also like to thank my niece, Miranda Chapman, for allowing me to jumpstart her modeling career by using her beautiful image to illustrate the internal structure of the atom.

Finally, Id like to thank a few others who made important contributions: Jon Williams and John Barrowman of EFX-TEK for providing the prop controllers used in several of the chapters; Light-O-Rama for providing the lighting controller used in Chapter 3 of Book VIII; and my good friend Dave Youngs, who parted with a very fine 100mm macro lens for the duration of the project.