Awesome Electronics

A curated list of awesome resources for Electronic Engineers and hobbyists

Electronic Engineering (EE) is the practice of understanding, designing and building electronic circuits. It is often differentiated from electrical engineering in that it mostly deals with low power DC electronic circuits rather than high power AC systems but there is a lot of overlap between electronic and electrical engineering.

Experimenting with and building electronic circuits is also a popular hobby and many professional resources are often equally applicable to hobbyists and vice versa.

This list is for websites, services, software, tools and more: everything that you think is awesome in the world of Electronic Engineering. If you have anything to add please follow the instructions in contributing.md.

Contents

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• Learning
• Documentation
• Simulators
• Gerber Viewers
• Free EDA Packages
• Paid EDA Packages
• CAD Specific
• PCB Batching Services
• Part Search Engines
• Project Sharing Platforms
• Inventory Management and Purchasing
• Miscellaneous Software Projects
• Development Board Retailers
• Blogs
• Forums
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Subscription Kit Services
• 3D Part Models
• Other Lists
• Arabic Section

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Learning

Technical Tutorials

• "skill" tag on learn.sparkfun.com - A wide variety of technical tutorials on various EE related skills.
• Soldering is Easy - Comic book that goes over the basics of soldering that has been translated into quite a few languages.
• Uses of Different Soldering Iron Tips - Covers what all those different soldering iron tips are good for.
• How to design a motherboard for your electronics project - Introductory tutorial on Schematic & PCB design

Courses

• Khan Academy - Electrical Engineering - Non-profit learning platform with a full course on electrical engineering and related topics.
• NEETS (Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series) - U.S. Navy Non-Resident Training Course Material.
• NPTEL - Has all free engineering courses including electronics, electrical and communcation engineering.
• Udemy courses related to Electronics - Top paid courses available on Udemy.
• Coursera courses related to Electronics - Includes some free courses that provide e-certificates on completion.

Theory

• Basic Electronics PPT - Contains conceptual explaination of diode, BJT, J/MOS-FET, LED, 7 seg display, photo-resistor/diode/transistor
• Electronics textbook - Text covers design and function of electronic circuits and components, DC analysis, and AC analysis.
• Student Handbook - Language used in this book easily understandable covers evolution, fundamentals, diode, rectifiers, transistors and its applications, SCR, DIAC and TRIAC.
• Electronics circuits and systems - Quality free e-book covering all topics under circuits and systems, highly recommended for conceptual understanding.
• Lessons In Electric Circuits - Free high quality textbooks and worksheets with emphasis on theory, simulation, and the socratic method.
• Ultimate Electronics: Practical Circuit Design and Analysis - Free online book with interactive schematics & simulations by CircuitLab (under development).

University Course Archives

• Berkeley EECS - Comprehensive EE & CS course website archives.
• Dr. Jacob Baker - Courses and tutorials, professor at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
• Dr. Abraham, Dr. McDermot, and Dr. Valvano - Courses materials, professors at UT Austin

Documentation

• Inkscape Electric Symbols - Circuit Drawing Symbols for Inkscape
• Tabula - Extract tabular data from a pdf, very useful for extracting pin tables or part characteristics from datasheets.
• WebPlotDigitizer - Extract data from plots, charts, etc., very useful for getting part performance curves from datasheets.
• WaveDrom - Create waveforms and timing diagrams from a JSON description file.
• tscircuit - Open source EDA package for schematic and PCB design using React

Simulators

Analog and Mixed Signal Circuit Simulators

• LTspice - The industry standard free SPICE circuit simulator from Linear Technologies. Also see the unofficial LTwiki and Group.
• ngspice - Open source SPICE circuit simulator.
• Circuit JS/Falstad - Free, open source online simulator with electron flow visualization (rewrite of original Java applet by Paul Falstad).
• EveryCircuit - Free to try online, visual, interactive circuit simulator for simpler circuits.
• Qucs - Open source, cross-platform, non-SPICE-based circuit simulator, with with S-parameter and Harmonic Balance capability.
• Qucs-S - Open source fork of Qucs using SPICE for simulation.
• QucsStudio - Free, closed-source, Windows-only fork of Qucs with a similar interface, new engine, and more features.
• Open Circuit Design Software - Open Source, full EDA suite chip design suite, focused on keeping up with commercial tools.
• TINA-TI - Exclusive DesignSoft-TINA build for Texas Instruments, bundled with Texas Instruments Models.
• CppSim - Free, open source circuit simulator that leverages the C++ language to achieve very fast simulation times.
• Scilab with Xcos - Free, open source numerical computing alternative to MATLAB. Xcos provides Electrical System modeling capability similar to Simulink.
• iCircuit - Easy to use electronic circuit simulator, its advanced simulation engine can handle both analog and digital circuits and features realtime always-on analysis.
• Micro-Cap - Professional-grade mixed signal simulator with wide variety of interactive simulation types.
• GeckoCIRCUITS - Open Source Power Electronic Circuit Simulator. GitHub Project. Direct download link due to broken website.
• Proteus - PCB Design and Circuit Simulator Software.

Verilog HDL Simulators

• Verilator - Free, open source Verilog compiler. Test benches are in C++ or SystemC. Very fast, but limted to 2-state, cycle-based simulation, and synthesizeable code only.
• Icarus Verilog - Free, open source verilog interpreter. Test benches are in behavioral verilog. Simulation is 4-state, and event-based.

Gerber Viewers

Online

• Tracespace Viewer - Gerber viewer that lets you inspect the individual layers as well as the board preview.
• Gerblook - Online Gerber viewer powered by Gerbv.
• Mayhew Labs 3dpcb - 3D Gerber viewer.
• CircuitPeople - No frills 2D layer viewer for Gerbers, without the excessive processing.
• Stackrate Viewer - Easy to use online gerber viewer with trace hovering and measurement tools.

Installable

• Gerbv - Excellent Gerber viewer for Linux and BSD.
• KiCAD Gerbview - The KiCAD gerber viewer.
• GC-Prevue - Commercial with free version. Can handle some gerbers better than Gerbv and KiCAD.
• ZofZPCB - FREE 3D Gerber Viewer.

Free EDA Packages

• KiCad - Open source EDA package with push and shove router, differential pairs and much more.
• Eagle - One of the most popular EDA packages due to it's (board size restricted) free version.
• DesignSpark PCB - Gratis EDA package without restrictions, sponserd by RS Components.
• Altium CircuitMaker - Free package from the maker of the go to pro software.
• gEDA - Another open source package, good for people that like scripting and makefiles, Linux and BSD only.
• DipTrace - Quality Schematic Capture and PCB Design software with (pin and signal layer restricted) free version.
• LibrePCB - A new, powerful and intuitive EDA tool for everyone, cross-platform and GNU GPLv3.
• Horizon EDA - A free and open source EDA tool with the focus on shortcut operation.
• EasyEDA - Easy to use with both browser based and cross platform app versions. Integrates LCSC and JLCPCB component catalogs with 3D models.

Paid EDA Packages

• Altium - PCB Design Software & Tools.
• Proteus - PCB Design and Circuit Simulator Software.

CAD Specific

KiCad

• Xesscorp's list of KiCad 3rd party tools
• Contextual Electronics' Shine on You Crazy KiCad - Beginner video tutorial that gets you to a manufactured board as quickly as possible.
• Contextual Electronics' Getting to Blinky Tutorial - A more comprehensive beginner to intermediate video tutorial.
• KiCad.info Forums - User discussion and help forum.
• Keyboard PCB Guide - Comprehensive written tutorial that takes you through creating a keyboard PCB.
• Cheatsheet (also in landscape) - Short PDF that goes over the menus and keyboard shortcuts for the most common operations.
• Footprint Collection - Collection of all the KiCad footprints available online and some scripts to manage them.
• InteractiveHtmlBom - A html BOM generation tool for manual pick and place.
• KiBot - Generate the fabrication and documentation files for your KiCad projects easily, repeatable, and most of all, scriptably.

Eagle

• List of ULPs everyone should know
• Adafruit Eagle Library
• SparkFun Electronics Eagle Libraries

Altium

• Altium Designer Libraries - .IntLib and .PcbLib of electronic components from different manufacturers.

PCB Batching Services

• PCBShopper - Comparison service for quite a lot of different PCB batching and assembly services.
• OSH Park - Low cost PCB batching service with high quality boards with a signature purple silkscreen.
• Aisler - Affordable quality circuit boards made in and shipped from Europe (Germany).
• Dirty PCBs - Low cost PCB batching service that prides itself on its "dirty" quality.
• JLCPCB - Low cost PCB batching service with inhouse low cost SMT service.
• PCBWay - Low cost PCB batching service with PCBA, CNC and 3D-Printing services.

Part Search Engines

• Octopart - Probably the most well known part search engine.
• Findchips - Part search from Supply Frame.
• Parts.io - Another search engine from Supply Frame geared towards discovering new parts.
• Electronic Component Search Engine - Free access to schematic symbols, PCB footprints and 3D models.

Project Sharing Platforms

• Kitspace - Project sharing site that helps you buy parts and re-build projects. Open source and developed by yours truly.
• Hackaday.io - Social site for sharing projects from the popular blog.
• Hackster.io - Another social site for sharing projects. Is well organised by platform, topic and product.
• InventHub - Git-based project hosting and collaboration platform for hardware development.
• CADLAB - Another Git-based project hosting and collaboration platform for hardware development.
• Eyrie - For viewing Eagle and KiCad designs online.
• WikiFactory - A project hosting and collaboration platform for product development. Filter for "electronics" for more electronics related projects.
• Instructables - A social site for sharing projects. Filter for "circuits" for more electronics related projects.

Inventory Management and Purchasing

• 1-click BOM - Browser extensions that automates purchasing and part searching.
• PartsBox - Web service to manage your part inventory with a nice user interface and Octopart integration.
• PartKeepr - Open source web service for managing your part inventory with parametric search and automatic datasheet import.