Electronics

Electronics are the science and and technology concerned with regulating the flow of electrical currents. In other words you are able to man-over electrons. The control of electrons that we have adapted over the years has allowed us to innovate and create new inventions such as computers and mobile phones. Furthermore schematics are are blue prints for arranging components and constructing electronic circuits as shown below.

Laws

Ohms law: Voltage = current x resistance

V = I x R

Watts = current x voltage

P = I x V

Circuits

There are two types of circuits:

• Parallel

• Series

Components include:

• breadboards – allow you to connect items up without solder.
• wires – conduct electricity.
• resistors – resist flow of electricity
• potentiometers – are resistors where the user can vary the resistance.
• capacitors – store energy in an electric field. They store charge and tend to smooth out changes in current.
• inductors – probably won’t need these just yet, but an inductor stores energy in a magnetic field when electric current flows through it.
• buttons – like switches, but only make connection when pressing
• switches – allow toggling between open circuit (no flow + no activity), and closed circuit (flow + activity)
• diodes – only allow current to flow in one direction.
• batteries – they store energy

Output Devices

Output devices involve an action of some sort. In other words they do something when there is enough power. For example outputs can be a motor or a light. Generally outputs need a lot of power to work and might need a separate power source to activate.

Input Devices

To put it simply Input devices are sensors that allow you to input information into the circuit. For example Light, temperate and humidity. Examples of input devices include:

• Thermistors
• sonar sensor
• LDR

Fritzing

Fritzing is a piece of software with a simple interface that allows you to build a circuit in 3 different formats: breadboard circuit, schematic and PCB layout. I have downloaded Fritzing for around £7 however it is unable to open on my computer as shown below so this will be experimented in the future when this problem is fixed.