Beginner's Guide to Reading Schematics

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Beginner's Guide to Reading Schematics

by: Robert J. Traister, Anna L. Lisk

Topics include: flashlight circuit, complex schematics, electronic diagrams, pictorial drawing, tube elements, shielded wire, circuit sections, simple circuits, audio amplifier, matching network

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THERE ARE THREE BASIC TYPES OF ELECTRONIC DIAGRAMS: block, schematic, and pictorial.

Reviews:

This book, as you'd hope, *has* helped me a great deal with interpreting schematics. That said, there is still some definite room for improvement, especially in the little things. For instance, the book starts off by going through each basic compnent - This is the symbol for a resistor, etc. This section is exactly what you'd expect to find, and naturally takes you one big step towards understanding the schematics. A chapter later, however, they show several schematics that have the symbol for a ground connection... but they never seem to mention what the symbol means. I knew what it was because I'd starting learning online... but if I hadn't found it online, the book would have left me wondering.

I also have come across a few symbols on various shematics that aren't anywhere in the book... which I guess is OK, as this is a beginner's guide, and not a "definitive collection." I did, however, just expect a little more.

With all that said, I would still recommend the book to people just starting out with schematics, because it really will help you, and the price is right.

I'm not a particularly techie sort of person, but I found I needed to have a grasp of the electronics of some of the equipment I use (I'm a musician). Most beginners books are overwhelming in theory and completeness and end up more confusing than anything else. This book is baby talk and exactly what I needed. The five stars are for its simplicity and usefulness. It has flaws and it's not exciting to read, but it has the simplest explanations of components I have come across. If you don't need to know everything, but just fix your wah wah or explore a little circuit bending, this book will demystify a lot of electronics for you. It won't tell you how to do anything, but it will enable you to figure out what you need to know from more complicated books. If, like me, you've started with electronics a few times and given up because the books you've used have offered way too much information and spent too much time on electrons, or just been written from too knowlegable a point of view (one 'basic' book I tried has four pages on capacitors that I read several times without really ending up knowing what they did), this is the book for you. It will make the books that have frustrated you in the past far more useful.