Where can I find projects that are more tutorial than “copy-paste”? Some thing that talks about the math and analysis of it as well.

Question

So, I'm taking 6.002x which is basic circuit analysis of resistor networks, MOSFETs, capacitors, inductors, diodes, gates, amplifiers, etc. and while I enjoy this I'm not learning anything about designing circuits in both the analog and digital contexts.

Where can I find projects to build that aren't just here's a circuit diagram; it does this; go build it type projects? I want to learn about some aspects of design as well as build projects.

I'm a software engineer by trade, but I'm trying to learn electronics too, so I have a full stack understanding.

Answer 1

Build something popular, where there are a lot of people in forums talking about what does what. Some of them even know what they're talking about; with your education so far you should be able to tell who does and doesn't. There's a lot of attention in audio, since audiophiles tend to think they can be electrical engineers if they can solder. If you or any of your buddies play guitar, you can try out AX84.com. They have good documentation on their designs. Might be larger scale than what you're looking for. Some projects in the Arduino Playground are documented well enough for you to learn something, and they tend to be pretty cool. I'd just search the web to get an idea of what you want to build, and then search a lot more to figure out how to build it, reading articles about every process in the design until you understand why each component was included where it was.

Answer 2

For future reference, stack-exchange is not a general opinion forum asking for recommendation or what basic Google searches could entail.

What your question is basically asking "How do I become an electrical engineer?" to design circuits beyond logic gates requires extensive training in:

1. Signal Processing
2. Circuit Theory
3. Microprocessors
4. Digital Logic

The circuit course you are working on provides a fundamental understanding of analyzing circuits. there are a few things you should pay attention to in that class:

• How to write equivalent capacitor, resistor, inductor loads
• Voltage/current divider
• OpAmps

Using knowledge of OpAmps you can easily design and implement audio amplifiers.

If you want to design audio filters you need a good grasp of Signal Processing/Fourier Transforms to interpret and analyze filters.

LED light show.

You are asking for quite a bit.

You could use op-amp/comparator circuits. Digital Logic (JK-flipflops/Latches to store memory)

Calculator:

Use an ALU or micro-controller. Hell, you could use a microprocessor to implement almost all of these projects.

Updated to OPs new question, notice the edit at the top of the page

When designing circuits Engineers think of everything as Blocks.

Each block has a specific function that then feeds to the next block to achieve an overall goal.

a microphone amplifier broken up into three stages.

1) decoupling - removes the DC bias (if there was any) from the microphone 2) Biasing - biases the transistor so that we can use the full range of the rails 3) Gain Stage - applies a gain to the signal

Understanding how each one of them works requires extensive study:

Decoupling - Signal Processing

Biasing - circuits

Gain Stage - Electronics/Analog Circuit Design (yes there are courses offered on that topic specifically)