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Awesome Electronics Awesome

A curated list of awesome resources for electronic engineers and hobbyists

Electronic engineering (EE) is the practice of understanding, designing and building electronic circuits. It is often differentiated from electrical engineering in that it mostly deals with low power DC electronic circuits rather than high power AC systems but there is a lot of overlap between electronic and electrical engineering.

Experimenting with and building electronic circuits is also a popular hobby and many professional resources are often equally applicable to hobbyists and vice versa.

This list is for websites, services, software, tools and more: everything that you think is awesome in the world of electronic engineering. If you have anything to add please follow the instructions in contributing.md.

Contents

Simulators

  • LTSpice - The industry standard free SPICE circuit simulator from Linear Technologies.
  • Ngspice - Open source SPICE circuit simulator.
  • Circuit JS - Open source online simulator for simpler circuits with live interactivity and visualization.
  • Every Circuit - Free to try online, visual, interactive circuit simulator for simpler circuits.
  • Qucs - Open source integrated circuit simulator for DC, AC, S-parameter, noise analysis, etc.
  • iCircuit - Easy to use electronic circuit simulator, its advanced simulation engine can handle both analog and digital circuits and features realtime always-on analysis.

Gerber Viewers

Online

Installable

Free EDA Packages

  • KiCAD - Open source EDA package with push and shove router, differential pairs and much more.
  • Eagle - One of the most popular EDA packages due to it's (board size restricted) free version.
  • Design Spark PCB - Gratis EDA package without restrictions, sponserd by RS Components.
  • Altium Circuit Maker - Free package from the maker of the go to pro software.
  • gEDA - Another open source package, good for people that like scripting and makefiles, Linux and BSD only.

CAD Specific

KiCAD

Eagle

PCB Batching Services

  • PCB Shopper - Comparison service for quite a lot of different PCB batching and assembly services.
  • OSH Park - Low cost PCB batching service with high quality boards with a signature purple silkscreen.
  • Aisler - Affordable quality circuit boards made in and shipped from Europe (Germany).
  • Dirty PCBs - Low cost PCB batching service that prides itself on its "dirty" quality.

Part Search Engines

  • Octopart - Probably the most well known part search engine.
  • Findchips - Part search from Supply Frame.
  • Parts.io - Another search engine from Supply Frame geared towards discovering new parts.

Project Sharing Platforms

  • Kitspace.org - Project sharing site that helps you buy parts and re-build projects. Open source and developed by yours truly.
  • Hackaday.io - Social site for sharing projects from the popular blog.

Inventory Management and Purchasing

  • 1-click BOM - Browser extensions that automates purchasing and part searching.
  • Partsbox.io - Web service to manage your part inventory with a nice user interface and Octopart integration.
  • Partkeepr - Open source web service for managing your part inventory with parametric search and automatic datasheet import.
  • Part-DB - Another open source web service for managing part inventory with a permission system and a good barcode generator.

Miscellaneous Web Services

  • Eyrie.io - For viewing Eagle and KiCAD designs online.
  • SnapEDA.com - Parts library with free symbols & footprints. (Compatible with Eagle, KiCAD, Altium, OrCad, Allegro, etc.)

Development Board Retailers

  • Sparkfun - Retailer and designer of open source electronics development boards and other equipment and materials with excellent accompanying tutorials.
  • Adafruit - Another retailer and designer with excellent selection and tutorials.
  • Tindie - Marketplace for electronics makers to sell low volume batches of their own designs.

Blogs

  • Hackaday - Probably the most popular blog covering electronics and hardware hacking with a whole staff of writers.
  • bunniestudios.com - Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang covers hardware hacking, open hardware, manufacturing and more.
  • Bald Engineer - Project logs, tutorials and articles about electronics and embedded software by James Lewis.
  • Rheingold Heavy - More project logs, tutorials and articles about electronics and embedded software, these ones by Dan Hienzsch.

Forums

Discussion

  • EEVBlog forum - Probably the largest and most active forum to discuss electronic engineering topics.
  • /r/electronics and /r/ECE are the two most active sub-reddits for EE topics.

Help

  • /r/askelectronics - Sub-reddit dedicated to help on electronics topics.
  • Electronics Stack Exchange - Question and answer site for electronics running on the popular Stack Overflow service.
  • EEVBlog beginners forum - Good place for beginner questions, other sub-forums on EEVblog should be suitable for questions on more advanced topics.

Podcasts

  • The Amp Hour - Off-the-cuff chat about electronics with Chris Gammel and Dave Jones (EEVBlog), often with guests
  • Embedded FM - Christopher and Elecia White discuss embedded systems development and much more, often with guests.
  • Sparkgap Podcast - Covers a specific EE topic each episode, sometimes with guests.
  • MacroFab Engineering Podcast - Weekly podcast where Parker and Stephen from MacroFab discuss EE topics and industry news
  • The Engineering Commons Podcast - Covers general engineering topics from mechanical to electrical.

Videos

  • EEVblog - One of the earliest and most successful YouTube channels where Dave Jones does teardowns, tutorials and more.
  • ElectroBOOM - YouTube channel that debunks and explains EE topics with a lot of comedy thrown in.
  • Micah Scott - Video logs of reverse engineering and re-purposing consumer electronics hardware in creative ways.
  • Afrotechmods - Tutorials on electronics projects, often suitable for beginners as well.
  • The Signal Path - Very in depth teardowns, repairs and reviews of lab equipment and prototyping products.
  • w2aew - Excellent tutorials about basic and complex analog hardware.
  • Mr. Carlson's Lab - Teardowns, repairs and restorations with an emphasis on classic electronics gear.
  • GreatScott - Electronics tutorials, projects and how to's.
  • Julian Ilett - Buys cheapest electronic modules he can find and tries to do useful things with them.
  • MikesElectricStuff - Teardowns, large lighting projects, xrays and more.
  • Ben Eater - Series of videos on building an 8-bit computer on breadboards with excellent explanations of all the sub-circuits.

Learning

Technical Tutorials

Theory and Courses

  • All About Circuits - Online textbook for learning theory with clear diagrams and explanations.
  • Electrical Engineering - Khan Academy - Online learning platform with lots of topics, including a full course on electrical engineering, circuits, semiconductors, signals, robots, and even reverse engineering electronic devices.

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