Hobby electronics and personal fabrication.
9 topics · 18 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Lessons in Electric Circuits, Volume I: DC
Tony R. Kuphaldt · 2000
Builds circuit intuition from first principles and worked examples, written as an openly licensed textbook so that cost would never be the reason a…
+7 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Wireless Telegraph Construction for Amateurs
Alfred Powell Morgan · 1913
Teaches amateur radio construction on simple wooden boards fitted with screws and terminals for mounting components, the literal breadboard…
+5 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The NIST RS274/NGC Interpreter — Version 3
Thomas R. Kramer, Frederick M. Proctor & Elena Messina · 2000
Defines G-code as a formal language translated into canonical machining calls, treating CNC control as a compiler problem rather than a fixed…
+3 more at this level
12 of 18 works
Tony R. Kuphaldt
Builds circuit intuition from first principles and worked examples, written as an openly licensed textbook so that cost would never be the reason a student could not learn electronics.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Adrian Bowyer
Argues that a 3D printer capable of printing most of its own parts would let ordinary people manufacture goods for each other outside the money economy entirely, and sets this out as the founding rationale for the RepRap project.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Neil Gershenfeld
Argues that giving ordinary people access to CNC mills, laser cutters and other digital fabrication tools will do to physical objects roughly what the personal computer already did to information.
Neil Gershenfeld
Argues that digital fabrication tools are triggering a revolution in personal manufacturing comparable to the personal computer, moving programmability from bits into physical materials themselves.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Massimo Banzi
Argues that Arduino's open hardware licence, not its specific circuit design, is what let a low-cost microcontroller board spread from a classroom project into a worldwide maker movement.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Bill Earl
Argues that a good solder joint is recognisable by sight alone, shiny and fully wetted to both surfaces, and that most beginner soldering failures trace to too little heat applied for too short a time rather than too much.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Gareth Halfacree
Introduces the Raspberry Pi as a computer whose openness is itself the pedagogy, walking a beginner through hardware, Linux and GPIO projects on the premise that taking the machine apart is how it teaches.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Limor Fried
Explains a solderless breadboard's internal strip wiring as the fact that governs everything about using one, so a beginner who understands the hidden connections stops making the wiring mistakes that come from treating it as a grid of independent holes.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Alfred Powell Morgan
Teaches amateur radio construction on simple wooden boards fitted with screws and terminals for mounting components, the literal breadboard prototyping method that later gave the technique its name.
link checked 17 Sept 2026National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Specifies exact joint geometry, heat and inspection criteria for hand soldering, on the premise that a reliable solder joint is a measurable physical outcome, not a matter of experienced feel alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States Navy
Argues that a technician's core skill is a disciplined, repeatable fault-isolation procedure applied with test equipment, not familiarity with any one piece of gear, so the same method carries across unfamiliar circuits.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States Navy
Argues that correct troubleshooting depends on choosing the right test instrument and interpreting its reading against a known-good baseline, and works through the instruments a technician actually reaches for.
link checked 17 Sept 2026