What's the best way to learn circuitry? Any good books?

I feel like information about electricity/circuits are wildly misunderstood and people online argue constantly about it even though we've been doing it for over a century now.

I'm fixing this monitor and I don't want to fuck it up even more or kill myself.

>>106132370 (OP)
The free textbooks here are quite good for a beginner.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

Art of Electronics and the accompanying lab manual are quite good once you've already grasped the basics. It's not a traditional book an electrical engineer would use though, it was initially written for physics students to get up to speed with circuits. If you're really serious, you should look at the open courses available for electrical engineers at somewhere good like MIT or Berkeley, at the very least, check the syllabus for the textbooks they recommend. There's really no end to the ways you can specialize in this field. Many (most?) electrical engineers never actually work in circuit design.

>>106132432
Thank you. I have a background in programming and circuit logic but the physics of electricity is what confuses me. I'll check out those books

>>106132370 (OP)
minecraft redstone

>>106132370 (OP)
I have bachelors in electrical engineering (pivoted to python dev cuz no career prospects where I live) and it honestly has a steep learning curve but after the first hurdle you're already at the end and it's pretty intuitive

So you need basic digital electronics understanding (low level programming an arduino/STM32/microcontrollers, modules and clocks...), basic voltage and current laws (Ohms, Kirchoffs, Thevenin, Norton, Superposition), maybe oscillator circuits and you're set for 90% of the shit unless you're doing some highly specific high speed charging circuit or FPGA programming, antenna design or some shit

If you're fixing monitors, LCDs or cathode ray tubes like 99% of the time its some bulging electrolytic capacitor that needs replacing and you're set.

If you think of fixing some old electronics, if its mobile phone or laptop you can find pcb layouts and schematics online most of the times for free, unless its newer then you have to pay for some gook that pogo pin probed that like alien did my butt

>>106132505
I think that should cover enough elementary physics to understand the basics. After that of course, you'll need to study electromagnetism, which is obviously as complex a topic as you want, as are all things worth learning.

>>106132505
Texas instruments has a lot of good application notes if you're interested in the details of moving from schematics to pcbs.
In my opinion the most important concepts that get ignored/misunderstood by most hobbyists are impedance, meaning complex resistance, high frequency components in digital logic, and return currents. I don't have specific books but those keywords will get you far. If you understand the math/physics behind these you don't have to rely nearly as much on rules of thumb.
Also a lot of circuit design is like programming. You learn it by doing it

>>106132370 (OP)
>people online argue constantly about it even though we've been doing it for over a century now.
This is why it's important to ground (heh) yourself in the theory. Even experts will argue some things though, just look how C++ vs Rust threads popup all the time, both camps are ultimately doing the same thing, just arguing about preferences.

Stay away from anything connected to mains power until you know what you're doing, and at least the mistakes kill you.

>>106132547
It's a CRT monitor I'm fixing, I've checked the caps but nothing seems to be leaking/bulging. My next step is to probe the PSU/boards with it powered on but I want to know what I'm doing first so I don't fuck it up or electrocute myself.

>>106132578
I'll check it out. Funnily enough this monitor is from TI (it's a Mitsubishi but was used at a TI building near my house)
I barely understand the concepts of AC/DC, specifically why one would be used over another and where in a circuit it's converted.

>>106132766
hello kosshi, do you use plan9 and like cats?

>>106132725
Yeah sadly the thing I need to troubleshoot IS the main power, which is why I'm being so hesitant to test it live

>>106132766
>My next step is to probe the PSU/boards with it powered on but I want to know what I'm doing first so I don't fuck it up or electrocute myself.

Use your senses, both common and bodily. Does the board smell of burnt plastic? Where the smell comes from heavily? When turned on where does the heat come from? If its a specific IC or part that heats up that might be the issue.

By the schematics you provided maybe a triac might be the issue or the diode bridge, if its the coil winding then you're fucked so lets hope itsnot that

>>106132802
as long as you discharge caps (use a grounded screwdriver and don't touch the metal) and don't touch the flyback transformer, youre fine.

>>106132811
It's hard to tell, it smells bad because of how it was stored but nothing burnt.

I can hear it whine when turned on, but no feedback/static to the screen and no power light, so I think something is shorting the entire system. I don't think the flyback is getting HV either so that makes it a bit safer(?)

It's actually identical to this issue I found on YouTube, and his machine just had a bad cap somewhere on the main board.

(Although I had a power light the first time I powered it on, so hopefully I didn't fuck anything up)

>>106132859
That's what I thought. Some of those caps are rated 450V, is that safe to just discharge with a screwdriver? When do I need to discharge caps besides removing them?

>>106132860
https://youtu.be/mbkFfWon5D8?feature=shared

Here's the link, my bad.

>>106132788
hello matrix tranny

>>106132902
you ALWAYS need to discharge caps, they can keep power for days or even weeks, and 450V will kill you.
before doing anything on your crt, unplug it and discharge all your caps.
yes, you just need a grounded screwdriver (or a knife works too), but expect your tip to get melted/arc-welded a bit, so don't use your fancy 50$ precision screwdriver for this.
also, scraping away paint from a wall-mounted radiator or any grounded copper pipes and putting a grounding wire clamp around that (and around your screwdriver, with lots of electrical tape around the screwdriver and any exposed copper near you) should be fine, just make sure you have a good and sturdy connection.
>>106132920
how is your diddled.space femboy harem doing?

>>106132954
https://litter.catbox.moe/yaky3n.mp4

>>106132977
pedophile

>>106132954
Dude I've been grabbing those 450V caps and contacts with my bare hands

>>106132997
you got lucky and they were quickly discharging then, but you shouldn't take chances.

>>106132370 (OP)
Principles of Electric Circuits -T.Floyd - Simple enough to start, you can use the internet for things that the book assumes or skips.
Art of Electronics is mostly reference.

Practical Electronics for Inventors would have been nice if the errata wasn't as long as the book.

>>106132920
Kek, matrix troons already got BTFO'd here >>106116780
Imaging believing in mossadware.

this thread is relevant to my interests.
At the lab I work at, I've been tasked with designed a somewhat complex high-speed circuit thing from scratch. We just ordered the first PCBs from my drawings... and I have no fucking clue what I'm doing. I've taken like a single EE course in undergrad.
I haven't used SPICE at all, I'm fumbling around kicad, and I just use the same trace thickness for everything lol.
I fully expect it will not work when they arrive. I should just start looking for new jobs now I guess oof

>>106133005
Yeah, I'm a nit nervous now, lol. I guess I'll just hook a probe to neutral and read voltages on the PSU with power on. It might not even be getting any voltage

>>106132370 (OP)
Buy a beginning electrical engineering textbook.

>>106132977
heterosexual

>>106133038
He probably just needs a technicians book.

>>106133021
Kek, be sure to post results.

>>106132432
bait
>>106132513
real
>>106132505
theres literally no reason to buy any books, read guides and use free circuit simulators. whatever you specifically don't ever read AoE and be aware that there is a shit load of lies, gatekeeping, and gaslight in this industry.

you will never learn how to build circuits just by copying what some mi6 faggot wrote down 40 years ago

>>106133916
>mi6 faggot wrote down 40 years ago
Meds, now.

>>106133916
>theres literally no reason to buy any books, read guides
N

>>106132578
Eric Bogatin lectures and textbooks are what I use in addition to TI's great application notes.

>>106132859
>>106132802
anon, while you will be fine working on discharged capacitors, be very mindful of live and neutral swapping on older circuits if you use a metal chassis. with a wrong configuration you might end up shocking yourself the moment you touch the powered chassis. the moment you research and understand these concepts is when you're ready to work with mains power.

>>106133916
don't listen to this schizo nigger or you'll end up accidentally making a portable electric chair without understanding why. you need to NAIL the physics behind the interaction of electric charges and why AC can go through more pathways than DC at the same effective voltage.

No matter how you learn, nothing beats experimentation and just staring at a circuit until you finally realize why it works.

>>106132370 (OP)
Lol , learning circuit design on your own just because you want to fix your cheap shit is quite overkill. Leave it to the professionals kiddo. Thankfully for you, electronics these days are built to be disposable.

>>106134503
>Leave it to the professionals kiddo
You said it yourself retado, pros don't bother fixing cheap shit cause it takes years of experience and hours of work for something that costs 20-30$.

>>106134503
What a miserable life you must live. I found this thing broken and took it so I could learn to fix it. Because it's fun and rewarding to learn new things.

>>106134418
Thanks for the heads up. That's actually the main thing I'm confused about now, the Isolated/Live part of the board. Isolated is grounded individually to the board, but the Live circuit all share a common ground is my understanding now but I'm even sure if that's correct, or why it's necessary

>>106135631
thats not what the other anon referred to, but anyway his info is a bit outdated. unless your monitor is a really expensive and/or old CRT, there will be no conductive metal chassis to touch. also if it's an LCD/OLED then there will be a high-voltage AC input that is DC-converted, usually external to the monitor, and the rest of the circuit will be rather harmless < 24V
unfortunately this anon is also correct >>106134503
if it's anything but a loose internal connector, blown fuse or capacitor, then it's true, electronics are not built to be repaired, at best you can replace individual PCBs if you can find replacement parts.

>>106135962
It's most likely a capacitor. And this is a CRT monitor from 93 and the schematic shows that it should be a pretty high voltage, and there are copper strips on the chassis that are conductive. There is also a common ground part of the chassis that is used by a few different components

>>106132370 (OP)
>I feel like information about electricity/circuits are wildly misunderstood
Yes, and everybody who actually can do this shit, is usually way too busy doing instead of talking about it (and especially not with Dunning-Kruger present).

>What's the best way to learn circuitry?
Need something/have a goal and do it. I needed to grow dope (now legal in my country), and I wanted to fully automate it; enter learning about microcontrollers to control the system and read and log data from sensors.

You could want to build a... remote-controlled submersible, a drone-submarine, about half the size of an average human adult.
Now, figure out how do that and what you need to know.

If you can do that, you can do that.

>pic
Part of an ATX power supply, which are probably the most common, slightly more complex switch-mode-power-supplies in our households today (well, at least when desktops were mroe commong; laptop chargers are the same thing, except they just need one 19V power line, instead of 3.3, 5 and 12 and many more on a typical ATX PSU).
The component, that's on the backside where the four C919-etc. markings are, is probably the main opto-coupler.

It's like being a mechanical engineer and looking at an engine, you don't know the exact details, but you have a good idea what each part is supposed to do, because you know the use-case and the general 'reference designs' these devices have.

>>106136119
>Part of an ATX power supply,
Eh, scratch that, Mitsubishi and most likely either manufactured in '93 or '07, that's an SMPS alright, but not an ATX.
(I just glanced at the color of the cables and went with most likely/common; obviously, don't have that attitude on anything that is or goes live, I'm just some fag behind a screen.)

>>106132370 (OP)
Comprehensive, from the ground up and for people who know absolutely nothing about it: https://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

>>106132860
>I can hear it whine when turned on
if its low volume then its most probably coil whine, its common

>so I think something is shorting the entire system
Circuit shorts create a lot of current on the short, making that part of the board heat up excessively

>and his machine just had a bad cap somewhere on the main board.
As I said, that's the most easily fuckable part mainly because in the 90s chinese manufacturers tried to replicate japanese electrolytic caps and US diverted from japanese manufacturing to chinese ones, good caps cost money

>>106136524
I'm calling it a short but could also just be an open circuit. I'll test it after I study up on whatever I need so I don't fucking kill myself by accident

>>106132370 (OP)
As always, when wanting to learn something:
Have a real goal. Choose the appropiate methods to reach it. Then you can learn those methods. The student will almost always fail to learn if they consider learning a means to its own end. The student will remain driven when things get tough when they have a goal they actually desire.

>>106132766
>It's a CRT monitor I'm fixing

why wont you just throw it away, CRT is blurry mess. I will never forget how i switched from CRT to much superior LCD, suddenly everything was so sharp.

They even created TrueType to blurry the text on LCD, because it was so sharp it looked bad. CRT blurred everything up so even old games looked good because it was blurry mess.

>>106136684
You're a retard

>>106136991
and you took such obvious bait

>>106137012

>>106136632
can you take board pic front and back and from the side?

>>106137262
>>106136632
also if its open circuit then you could probably finding it by probing the voltage and if there is no voltage where it obviously should be then that component is at fault

>>106137297
That's the plan
>>106137262
I don't have one but I posted the schematic earlier in the thread. The caps look good