Electronics All-in-One For Dummies

867 Pages·2012·77.25 MB·English

by  Doug Lowe

Electronics
ALL-IN-ONE
FOR

DUMmIES‰

Electronics
ALL-IN-ONE
FOR

DUMmIES‰
by Doug Lowe
Electronics All-in-One For Dummies®
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
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
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
When Doug Lowe was 10 years old, his father gave him an electronics
experimenter’s 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, I’m 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 Disney’s 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 dad’s face when he saw that trailer full of
junk pull up in front of our house, hitched to the back of grandpa’s 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.
Author’s Acknowledgments
First, I’d like to thank Katie Feltman for giving me the opportunity to write
this book. We’ve 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, I’d 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 i’s and dotting all the t’s, or something like that. And, of
course, thanks to all the behind-the-scenes people who chipped in with help
I’m not even aware of.
I’d 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, I’d 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.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com.
For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974,
outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Composition Services
Vertical Websites
Project Coordinator: Katherine Crocker
Senior Project Editor: Christopher Morris
Layout and Graphics: Carrie A. Cesavice,
Senior Acquisitions Editor: Katie Feltman Cheryl Grubbs, Joyce Haughey, Mark Pinto,
Corrie Socolovitch
Copy Editors: Heidi Unger, Kathy Simpson
Proofreaders: Lauren Mandelbaum,
Technical Editor: Kirk Kleinschmidt
Evelyn Wellborn
Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner
Indexer: BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services
Vertical Websites Project Manager:
Laura Moss-Hollister
Vertical Websites Assistant Project Manager:
Jenny Swisher
Vertical Websites Associate Producers:
Josh Frank, Marilyn Hummel,
Douglas Kuhn, Shawn Patrick
Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham
Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case
Cover Photos:
© istockphoto.com / Rudyanto Wijaya
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director
Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services