One thing that has kept coming up in my research has been the term Boolean algebra or Boolean logic, this apparently is a system of logic that was developed in the 1840′s by a chap called George Boole. It basically laid out several rules of relationships between mathematical quantities that were limited to being true […]

If I’m going to teach electronics (or even develop my interest as a hobby) there are three ICs that I will have to look at. They are the op amp (operational amplifier), the 555 timer and the 4017 decade counter. Op Amp – this IC takes a weak signal and gives it a boost, it’s made up […]

Ok, so I don’t have to create a PCB for each circuit I want to explore I’m going to have to look into methods of circuit prototyping… The first to come to mind (and to hand sitting at my laptop ) is a program called Circuit Wizard, I’ve already used this in previous posts to […]

Right, as I’ve stated before, logic gates are made up of lots of components arranged in just the right way to produce a desired logical outcome. If you had to build one of these circuits each time you needed a gate you’d probably throw your hands up in disgust as it would not only take huge […]

So what is binary? To date my only contact with binary code has been to understand this joke, I know it’s all about a 2 digit system consisting of 1s and 0s and that the binary digit for 2 is 10 (confused yet? ask me to go further than 2 in binary and I will […]

One thing you can’t get away from when investigating digital circuits is logic. I already had a vague inkling of what logic and logic gates were when I started this investigation but boy did I underestimate the scope! Here’s what I found out… Digital circuits are made up of digital switches called gates or logic […]

The first step is to find out why digital electronics are different for any other type, what makes it different? The defining point is the signals involved… An electrical signal is a pattern over time of electrical current, there are two types of signal: digital and analogue. As you can tell by the name digital […]

I’ve downloaded and had a go at the BBC Bitesize electronics exam paper and I’ve come out with (using very gerenral grading bands) something like a C! That came as a huge surprise, it seems as though I really don’t have that much confidence in my own knowledge of electronics, well that showed me! It’s […]

Oh boy, my meeting with Dean did not go so well this morning… I’ve spent the last week reading around my notes on electronics and reading a couple of books on the subject. The problem is I’m still not focused enough, I could spend the rest of this semester reading around electronics and still not […]

Ok, what is competence? I should start with the work I did way back when at the start of the course, the passage below is the introduction to my skills audit: As this journal is designed to assess my capability in the subject areas listed at the start of each section of this document I […]