Roadmap / Hardware
Electronic Circuits
One MCU pin cannot drive a motor or read a sensor directly. Electronic circuits bridge that gap.
Goal Read the circuits around an MCU and design the ones you need.
- 01Semiconductors and the PN junction
Why current flows one way only: the principle shared by diodes and transistors.
- 02Types of diodes
Rectifier, Schottky, Zener, LED, TVS, and where each is used.
- 03BJT as a switch
A small base current switches a large one. Calculating the base resistor.
- 04MOSFET as a switch3D lab
Gate voltage, on-resistance, logic-level MOSFETs: the standard way to switch a big load from an MCU.
- 05Gate drivers and the half bridge3D lab
Two MOSFETs stacked, and why the upper one needs a driver.
- 06Op-amp basics
Calculating inverting and non-inverting amplifiers with the virtual short.
- 07Op-amp applications
Comparators, integrators, active filters, differential amplifiers.
- 08Current-sense circuits
Amplifying a few millivolts across a shunt for the ADC.
- 09Linear regulators
An LDO is simple but runs hot. Dropout voltage and heat.
- 10Switching converters
Buck and boost: efficient, but noisy, and why.
- 11ADC and DAC circuits3D lab
Resolution, reference voltage, sampling time, and the RC filter at the input.
- 12Protection circuits
TVS diodes, fuses and reverse-polarity protection against ESD, reverse voltage and overcurrent.
Switch an LED strip with a MOSFET
Draw a low-side switch that turns on a 12 V load from a 3.3 V GPIO and choose the part values.
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