2 amazing books for electronics enthusiasts - Make: AVR Programming & Practical Electronics For Inventors

Two great books for Electronics Enthusiasts

 - Make: AVR Programming and Practical Electronics for Inventors

Hi readers! I was going through my electronics-related books today, and I saw these two books-             

These two books, “Make: AVR Programming” and “Practical Electronics For Inventors”, are my two most used electronics books by far. Before I talk about them in detail, I just want to say that both these books are so amazing! I have used them a ton since I first got them, and I still find myself going back to them to check/clarify things, and I am still learning things from them! While these books probably won’t be very useful to someone just getting started with electronics, anyone with a basic understanding of electronics will find these books really amazing!

Make: AVR Programming

- Make: AVR Programming is - you guessed it - a book all about programming AVR microcontrollers! Written by Elliot Williams, an electronics hacker, this book walks you through programming AVR microcontrollers.

The microchip you learn to program
 in 'Make: AVR Programing", the ATmega 168.

The first few chapters of the book are pretty chill, focusing on getting everything setup and working, and going through some basic projects, to familiarise yourself with both the language used to program the microcontrollers(C), AND the absolutely AMAZING feeling you get when you flash your code to the microcontroller and everything WORKS! :)

And while chill is cool and all (see what I did there :) ), eventually the simpler projects start to get a bit boring… Luckily this book is filled with all sorts of cool, interesting projects! Want to learn how to drive motors, be it servos, DC motors, or steppers? This book has you covered. What to learn how to hook up external EEPROM to the microcontroller, to store whatever data you want? Check. Want to log the temperature from a temperature module? How about storing the data in.. say… external EEPROM? Gotcha! and this book is packed to the brim with cool projects to help reinforce the concepts learned in the chapter - Here are some of them -

• A Footstep detector, using a piezo disk
• A servo sundial, complete with laser :)
• Your very own AM radio
• A cipher encoder AND decoder!
• and many more!  

The author of the book has all of the code + resources for the book available on Github -  Make: AVR Resources

Overall, I think this is a great book for anyone interested in microcontrollers, or for people hoping to transition from an Arduino / Other Dev board to something smaller and cheaper. This is a great book, and I encourage you to read it!

This book is available for purchase on Amazon.com here - AVR Programming: Learning to Write Software for Hardware

Practical Electronics for Inventors

While again, this book isn't exactly beginner friendly, anyone with a basic understanding of electronics will find this book an absolutely stunning resource. Featuring over 200(out of 1000) pages of theory alone, this book leaves no stone unturned, providing insight into anything and everything electronics. Covering topics such as “Self inductance”, “Resistivity and conductivity”, “Circuits with Sinusoidal Sources”, and “Two-Port Networks and Filters”, the theory part of the book could be another entire book!

But there is more!! Much more!! :). Ever wanted to know all the nitty gritty details of your favorite kind of wire? This book’s got it! What about the interior circuitry of an oscilloscope? Yes sir! How about over 40 pages of transistor-y goodness? Why definitely! And instructions on turning lead into gold? Coming up in the next revision! :).

The cover of the book.

This is a truly amazing book. Enthusiasts and veterans alike will have no trouble at all finding something they fancy in this book - although you may need multiple degrees to understand a few of the advanced concepts in this book (I sure don't!). But there is soooooo much content that even if you can't understand what all the funky squiggly lines are meant to show, you can still take away a truckload of knowledge from this book :).

The 4th edition of this book is available for purchase on Amazon.com here - Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition

I definitely recommend you add  both of these books to your electronics bookshelf (or even use these books as a starting point for one!). I hope you enjoy these books and enjoyed reading this post! :). Thanks!