Electronics Projects For Dummies

Earl Boysen, Nancy C. Muir

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470009680
• eBook ISBN: 9781118044025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

These projects are fun to build and fun to use
Make lights dance to music, play with radio remote control, or build your own metal detector Who says the Science Fair has to end? If you love building gadgets, this book belongs on your radar. Here are complete directions for building ten cool creations that involve light, sound, or vibrations -- a weird microphone, remote control gizmos, talking toys, and more, with full parts and tools lists, safety guidelines, and wiring schematics. Check out ten cool electronics projects, including
* Chapter 8 -- Surfing the Radio Waves (how to make your own radio)
* Chapter 9 -- Scary Pumpkins (crazy Halloween decorations that have sound, light, and movement)
* Chapter 12 -- Hitting Paydirt with an Electronic Metal Detector (a project that can pay for itself) Discover how to
* Handle electronic components safely
* Read a circuit diagram
* Troubleshoot circuits with a multimeter
* Build light-activated gadgets
* Set up a motion detector
* Transform electromagnetic waves into sound Companion Web site
* Go to www.dummies.com/go/electronicsprojectsfd
* Explore new projects with other electronics hobbyists
* Find additional information and project opportunities

Part I

Project Prep

In this part . . .

B efore you can jump in and tackle projects, you might want to brush up on (or discover for the first time) the basics. Chapter 1 answers such urgent questions as “What is an electronics project, anyway?,” and Chapter 2 provides our best advice about safety procedures that keep you intact while you play with gadgets. Chapter 3 runs down the parts and equipment you work with in a typical project, and Chapter 4 reviews some basic skills that you need to build all kinds of electronic toys.

Chapter 1

Exploring the World of Electronics Projects

In This Chapter

Understanding exactly what an electronics project is

Exploring the effects you can achieve

Considering what’s in it for you

Determining what you need to invest to get started

You probably picked up this book because you love tinkering with gadgets, from that train set you got as a kid to the motion-activated dancing monsters on display in the store aisles at Halloween. Not only are you intrigued by them, but you wonder whether you can build something like them yourself. Now that you own this book, yes, you can!

In this chapter, we take a look at exactly what getting into building electronics projects involves, the kinds of great gadgets you can build yourself, what you’ll get from spending your time with electronics, and what you need to commit to take the plunge.

What Is an Electronics Project, Anyway?

Obviously, an electronics project involves electronics, meaning that you use electricity to make something happen. However, overlaps exist among electronics, mechanics, and even programmable devices such as robots. Here’s what we mean when we say electronics projects.

Electronics, mechanics, robotics: Huh?

Do you dream of building elaborate Erector Set-types of mechanical structures — perhaps a model of the Golden Gate Bridge with pulleys and levers moving objects around? Is your goal to create a robot butler with a programmed brain that enables it to serve your every whim? Well, those aren’t exactly what we categorize as electronics projects.

Certainly, electronics projects are often combined with mechanical structures that use motors, and a robot has electronic components driven by microcontrollers and computer programs. In this book, though, we focus on projects that use simple electronics components to form a circuit that directs voltage to produce effects such as motion, sound, or light. By keeping to this simple approach, you can pick up all the basic skills and discover all the common components and tools that you need to work on a wide variety of projects for years to come. For these projects, you don’t have to become a mechanical or programming whiz.

An electronic circuit might run a motor, light an LED display, or set off sounds through a speaker. It uses various components to regulate the voltage, such as capacitors and resistors. A circuit can also use integrated circuits (ICs), which are teeny, tiny circuits that provide a portion of your circuit in a very compact way. This saves you time micromanaging pieces of the project because somebody else has already done that job for you, such as building a timer chip that sets off a light intermittently.

Programmable versus nonprogrammable

ICs are preprogrammed or programmable. And that brings us to our next distinction.

Although we do use ICs in many of our projects — for example, in the form of a sound chip that’s preprogrammed with beeps and music — for the most part, we keep away from programmable electronics. In order to work with programmable electronics, you have to get your hands dirty with programming code and microcontrollers, and that’s not what we’re about here. Instead, we focus on building electronics gadgets that teach you about how electricity works and get your mind stirring with ideas about what you can do by using electronics, rather than computers.

Don’t get us wrong: Microcontroller projects can be a lot of fun. After you get your hands dirty and pick up lots of basic skills doing the projects in this book, you might just go out and buy Microcontroller Projects For Dummies (if such a book existed).

Battery-powered versus 120 volts+

One other thing that we made a conscious decision about when writing this book was that we didn’t want you tinkering with high-voltage projects. Electricity can be dangerous! Keeping to about 6 volts keeps you reasonably safe whereas working with something that uses 120 volts — like the juice that comes out of your wall socket — can kill you. While you’re discovering the basics of electronics, our advice is that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

When you get more comfortable and more knowledgeable about tools and skills and safety measures (which we put a lot of emphasis on, especially in Cha...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Project Prep
• Part II : Sounding Off!
• Part III : Let There Be Light
• Part IV : Good Vibrations
• Part V : The Part of Tens