🗓 8 weeks, June 1, Saturday 10:00am-12:30pm
🕰️ Saturdays 10:00am - 12:30pm
🗺 Highside Workshop (209 Evergreen Ave)
💰 $50 - $300 sliding scale, pay what you can (includes a Breadpad software license)
📋 Common Application
👥 [Class Size 10 people]
About
Have you ever replaced a battery in a device and seen an intricate circuit board inside you wouldn’t dare touch? Have you ever wondered if it matters whether your toaster is analog or digital? And what exactly is the circuit breaker in your apartment?
Electronics are everywhere: the appliances in your kitchen, the circuit board in your phone, the train cars in the subway, and almost everywhere else. Although electrical engineers often spend years learning their profession, anyone can learn the fundamentals of how electricity moves and shapes the world around us.
This course will be an interactive exploration of topics that can help anyone acquire a better understanding of how modern electronics are designed and assembled. By the end of the course, students will learn how to assemble power sources, chips, and passive components into functioning circuits of their own design. Each of the 7 weeks of classes will cover a fundamental concept in electronics along with an interactive simulation exercise to demonstrate the concept.
The course is $50-$300 (pay what you can), which will cover space rental and software. You will need to bring an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to complete the relevant lab exercises.
Syllabus
June 1 | Batteries and power supplies |
June 8 | Switches and signals |
June 15 | Transistors and semiconductors |
June 22 (REMOTE) | Integrated circuits (introduction) |
June 29 | Integrated circuits (lab exercise) |
July 13 | Circuit design and manufacturing |
July 20 | Electronics of everyday things |
July 27 | Final project presentations |
Closing project
Each student will create their own Breadboard circuit modeling the behavior of a household appliance. Each student will create a simulated electronic circuit that they can demonstrate to the group at the final session. Students may work on a solo project or collaborate. Students will assemble a functioning circuit assembly for a household appliance of their choice, potentially one of the following:
- temperature control circuit for a toaster oven or refrigerator
- speed control circuit for a blender
- digital clock and alarm
- battery charging brick for a smartphone
- surge protection circuit in a power strip
We’ll collect these artifacts on a web page
The facilitators
Shantanu Bala is a software and electronics engineer from Arizona and the developer of Breadpad, the most popular circuit simulator for iOS. Previously, he co-founded a hardware startup, worked on early-stage product teams, and conducted research funded by NASA and NSF.