Electronic Projects for Beginners

This review is for 50 Electronic Projects for Beginners (Edition 2014) by A.K.Maini.First, who's writing this review? I'm a hobbyist with a few years experience. I've read a lot of books on electronics and made many successful projects over the years.And why? I picked this book because there are not many modern electronics books that are fully component based. Most newer book use uC or uP for almost all the projects and this book does not do that.The list of projects is available in the preview so I won't duplicate it here. I should note the preview is the 2009 edition and I received the 2014 edition. At a glance the project list looks the same so I'm not sure what the differences are.Before I dive inside I wanted to say a few words about the physical book as overall it feels cheap.The first thing I noticed is the edges of the cover have a rough cut to them as if the paper shear was dull and pushed it's way thorough. When I opened it I found the pages are a dull gray and contain a lot of stray fibers. They are sufficiently thick to feel good but unfortunately allow a lot of bleed through. I would also like to note a couple pages were actually wrinkled before printing as to cause gaps in the text. And the greyscale printing is light and patchy and is similar to a high quality photocopy. While it's completely readable it's definitely second class all the way. But I can forgive all this given it's low cost ($12), because if you pay a value price it's not fair to expect a premium product.On to the content.This book has a lot of pictures, charts, schematics, and diagrams so it's a quick read. I was easily able to finish it in two days. And after reading it I'm still not sure who the intended audience is.It claims to be a project book for diploma level students, hobbyists, and electrical enthusiasts, but the first hundred pages are used to cover basic theory and components. The coverage is not in depth enough for a person new to the hobby and wouldn't be needed by someone who is isn't. This is followed by thirty pages of IC application data, all of which is found on the IC data sheets at no cost. So the first third of this project book is not spent directly on projects.Once you get to the projects they are really good. You are given accurate schematics including parts lists, a full description of how each circuit works, and PCB etching layouts. The way in which the projects are presented in this book is probably the most complete I have ever seen in a multi-project book.It should be said some of the projects use mains (wall-plug) power and mains power can be deadly if you don't handle it right. And the mains power in the book is 230v 50Hz (from India) not the the 110v 60Hz mains we use in the US. So some changes may be necessary to make some projects work in the US, or the correct travel power adapter could be used to obtain the original 230v 50Hz power needed.Most other projects use 9v batteries. The downside to this is the author chose to do the PCB layouts in such a way that the battery is mounted flat on the board and makes the PCB much bigger then necessary. I would have preferred leaded layouts so the battery could be stored elsewhere or an AC-DC adapter could be used without the wasted PCB space.While no index or glossary is provided there is a full color fold-out poster with the resistor codes on it.So why four stars?The less then stellar book quality and extra background info really didn't bother me too much. In the end, the question really is did the author provide 50 quality projects with enough documentation to understand and build them. And I would say yes, with the caveat that many run of 230v 50Hz mains.Overall, it's a decant book and I'd recommend to any semi-experienced hobbyist that is interested in any particular project within. But I don't recommend it to a newbie or as an intro to electronics.If you're looking for an intro book you should check out Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery by Charles Platt or Practical Electronics for Inventors by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. And If you're looking for simpler projects then you find in this book then check out 50 Cmos Ic Projects Paperback by Delton T. Horn.

many very interesting educational projects with very good explanations. As a beginner in Electronics, found these projects to be invaluable for learning and demonstrating the practical uses of various components. He also includes plans for building your own equipment: power supply, resistance capacitance and volt meters for example. Most of the projects in this book have interesting practical applications, some books offer projects that just don't inspire me.

this is some really complicated stuff. not for a beginner, these are advanced projects and experiments. If your a 3rd year engineering student you might be able to make use of this book, but as a hobbyist it is way to advanced.

This content of this book was so outdated.

VERY HAPPY WITH MY PURCHASE.

This book seems thrown together from student essays, with minimal editing.There are many typos (COMS ICs?), schematics are drawn in varying styles, with inconsistent symbols, and often without dots for some or all of the T junctions. There are many useless illustrations, such as several photos of the same 9 volt battery. The book has several sections that are there just to fill space, such lists and pinouts of 74 series and 4000 series ICs, or a list of all the controls on an analog oscilloscope (long, but not detailed enough to be truly useful). Some images are clearly lifted from elsewhere -- I recognize the DIL IC package drawings from a manufacturer's datasheet. Other photos are so blurry they must be low-resolution images copied from websites. An image of ferrite cores contains only some black, featureless rectangles. Some illustrations are downright wrong, such as a TO-3 package showing the two terminals in the middle (not offset toward one of the mounting holes, which is how that package is keyed).The text itself is boring and lists way too many facts, without a deep understanding. This is a book for rote learning, not for teaching a working knowledge of the concepts. Most of the 50 electronic projects are quite boring, too. A fluorescent tube driver that's capable of generating some 700 V of high-frequency voltage comes with no warning about any sort of danger at all (the voltage is mentioned only in passing). Some of the explanations are awkward and baffling: the author explains the timing of the retriggerable monostable multivibrator in two different ways, both unnecessarily complicated.Overall, a terrible book, with blame shared equally by the author and the editor.

This is an ambitious text and presents practical projects. The first difficulty is that the first three chapters are poorly presented and not really accessible to a beginner. They are also well outpaced by changes in technology — I don’t think any serious student of technology now would use an analog multimeter, for example. Secondly, the projects are probably more easily achieved via arduino or raspberry pi — while the aim is to produced stand alone electronics it could be better focused on more modrern applications using a breadboard and arduino or RasPi. All in all a very disappointing text. I’d suggest something by Charles Platt as a far better investment.

I think it's fantastic. If you like diagrammes and especially integrated circuits, then this book is a must have. The projects are also very interesting and enable you to build useful items. I'm looking forward to making the capacitancemeter.

Im a complete beginner .....this book is way too technical and advanced for me .....so much so that i questioned my reason on the subject ......far easyer books to understand out there ......personaly i would go for MAKE : series of books ....

Disappointing that there aren't many transistor based experiments. Focusing only on IC dumb down the subject. Doesn't help students get the grasp of the basics.Having said that, the given projects are presented neatly.

One of the best book for beginners.It has detailed explanation plus the working of the circuit.If you haven't done any circuit till now,then you can go for it.