9 Circuits Ebook
9 Circuits Ebook
For each circuit you'll get the circuit diagram, the parts list, and a description
of what to expect when you've connected the circuit correctly. I will not show
you exactly how to connect each circuit on the breadboard, because the point
of this book is for you to practice figuring out how to do that. Understanding
how to build something from a circuit diagram is an extremely useful skill.
For each of the circuits I've created a web page where you can ask questions
about the circuit. You can find all these pages here:
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/
My interest in electronics started when I was around 14 years old. One day I
started thinking about how you could make a light blink. The curiosity started
to grow in me and I just had to figure it out. In such a situation it was good to
have a father with electronics experience.
Each component has a symbol. The symbols are connected with lines that
show you how to connect the components. After seeing a few circuit
diagrams, you’ll quickly learn how to distinguish the different symbols.
Resistor
Capacitor Non-polarized
Transistor
Speaker
Buzzer
Note: For some integrated circuits it's normal to use a symbol that represents
its function instead of the above box. Like this schmitt-triggered inverter:
Breadboards have two areas for placing components and two power supply
areas. I've labeled these four areas in the photo below. The five holes of each
row in a component area are connected with metal inside the board. The rows
on the left component area are separated from the rows on the right
component area.
To make a connection between the pins of two components, you plug the
In the figure below the lower pin of the resistor and the upper pin of the LED
are connected on the same row (Row 7). That means these pins are connected
to each other. The upper leg of the resistor and the lower leg of the LED are
not connected to anything.
In the supply areas, the holes are connected column-wise instead. This means
that if you connect the plus of your battery to the top-right hole of the supply
area on the right, all the holes from top to bottom of the right-most column
of this area will be connected to the plus.
Note: On bigger breadboards the supply areas are sometimes divided into
four areas; Top-right, top-left, bottom-right and bottom-left.
This is a simple circuit to light up a Light-Emitting Diode or LED. All you need
is a battery, a resistor and an LED. The resistor is there to reduce the amount
of current that flows through the LED. You always want a resistor in series
with an LED. Without the resistor there's a good chance your LED will break.
Connect the 470 Ω resistor from the top row on column F down to row 7 on
the same column, as shown in the figure below. It doesn't matter which leg
you place where.
Look closely at your LED. Does it have one leg that is longer than the other? If
yes, then that’s the plus side. If no, look more closely at the round edge at the
bottom of the plastic housing. On one side it is flat. The flat side is the minus
side. If it’s hard to see, lay it down on a flat surface and roll it. This should
show you the flat side.
Connect the leg on the plus side of your LED to column H on row 7. Now this
leg connects to the resistor, just like it does in the circuit diagram. Connect
the other leg, the minus side, to column H on row 10. Check your connection
against the figure below.
If you look a the circuit diagram for this circuit again, you can see that the
plus from the battery should be connected to the top-most leg of the resistor.
You’ve connected this leg to the top row of the breadboard on the right
component area, so this is where you need to connect your plus. The minus
should be connected to the negative leg of the LED, which you've connected
to row 10. This is where you need to connect your minus.
Connect one wire from the top row of the right component area, to the left
column of the supply area on the right. This will become plus from the
battery.
Connect another wire from row 10 of the right component area to the right
column of the supply area on the right. This will become minus.
First connect the red wire from your battery clip into the left-most column of
the right supply area. This is the column marked with a red line. Then, connect
the black wire from your battery clip to the right-most column, the one
marked with a blue line.
Now, connect your battery to the battery clip and see the LED light up!
If you’ve connected everything correctly and it’s still not working, you might
have connected the LED the wrong way. Flip it around and try again.
If it’s still not working, check the resistance value of your resistor. It should be
470 Ω. Use the Resistor Color Codes table at the end of this book to check the
value.
Still not working? Well, then your LED might be dead unfortunately. This can
easily happen if you connect it directly to the battery. Replace with a new LED
and try again.
For all the circuits in this book you’ll need a breadboard, a battery, and a
battery connector. But, for simplicity’s sake you won’t see them in the parts
list.
The circuits are sorted by difficulty, starting from the easiest. The challenge is
to figure out how to connect each of the circuits on the breadboard. The first
ones should be easy once you understand how the breadboard works. The
last ones might be challenging if you have no previous experience, but the
trick is to not give up.
For each of the circuits, I've created a web page where you can ask questions
if you're stuck. You can find these and other resources for this book at:
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/
The transistor will let current through from its collector to its emitter when a
little bit of current flows from its base to the emitter. When nobody's
touching the touch-pad, the base is left unconnected and no current will flow.
When somebody touches the touch-pad, the resistance in the finger will
connect the base of the transistor to the plus of the battery. This creates a
flow of current from base to emitter, which will “open” the transistor so that
current also can flow from collector to emitter. Now, current can flow through
the LED and the resistor, making the LED light up.
To create the touchpad, clip off a bit of the legs of one of your components.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/touch-enabled-light/
Part Description
Buzzer Buzzer that works with 9V
Steel Wire Bare and stiff wire, for example from a clothes hanger
Metal Ring Bare metal ring, for example from metal can
An old pen An old pen for mounting the metal ring
Tape Electrical tape is best, but any tape should work
The circuit works on the basic principle that for anything to happen in
electronics, there must be a closed loop; a path from the plus to the minus of
the battery where the current can flow. When the metal ring does not touch
the steel wire you don't have a closed loop, so nothing happens. When the
ring touches the steel wire, you get a closed loop and the buzzer sounds.
The circuit itself is pretty simple. You just need to connect the buzzer and the
battery (black part of the circuit diagram) to the breadboard. Make sure you
place the plus-marking on the buzzer closest to the plus of the battery.
• Not getting a good connection between the jumper wire and the track
• Not getting a good connection between the jumper wire and the ring
If you prefer a noiseless game that you can play without bothering other
people with the beep, you can modify this game to use light instead of sound.
Just replace the buzzer with an LED and a resistor like in the introduction
circuit.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/steady-hand-game/
This circuit stays quiet when it's in a dark place, such as in a cookie jar with
the lid on. But once you open the lid and let light inside, the circuit turns on
the buzzer and creates an alarm sound that should scare off the cookie
thieves.
The LDR and R1 make up a voltage divider that sets the voltage on the base
of the transistor, and thereby turns it on and off depending on how much
light is detected.
If you want to make the circuit more sensitive or less sensitive to light, replace
R1 with a higher (more sensitive) or lower (less sensitive) resistance value.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/cookie-jar-alarm/
This circuit uses a BC557 transistor, which is a PNP transistor. It works similar
to the NPN that you used in the previous ciruit, just that the current flows in
the opposite direction. So, when you have current flowing from emitter to
base, you “open” the transistor and let current flow from emitter to collector.
You can change the sensitivity to light by using a different value resistor for
R1.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/dark-enabled-light/
In the circuit diagram you can see that the output of the inverter (U1) is
connected back to the input with a resistor. This means that if there's a high
voltage on the input, the output will be low. But since the output is connected
back to the input, the input will be low. Now that the input is low, the output
will be high. That means the input will be high again, and so on… This
jumping back and forth between high and low is called oscillation.
To slow down the oscillation, you have a capacitor on the input of the
inverter. The charging and discharging of the capacitor will slow down the
time it takes for the input to go from low to high and from high to low. The
resistor R1 controls how much current that goes back to charge and
discharge the capacitor. The size of the resistor R1 and the capacitor C1 will
therefore determine the speed of the oscillation.
The inverter you're going to use is a Schmitt trigger inverter. This just means
that the threshold for switching from high to low is different from the
threshold for switching from low to high. This also helps in slowing down the
oscillation.
To decrease the blinking speed, increase the capacitor value and/or the
resistance value of R1. To increase the blinking speed, decrease the values.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/blinking-led/
This is a classic circuit, called an astable multivibrator. The basic idea here is
that the two transistors alternate between turning each other on and off. To
be able to really understand what's going on in this circuit you need to have a
good understanding of the basics of electronics, especially around how
voltage and current behave in circuits with capacitors and diodes.
When building this circuit, there's a lot of connections and it's very easy to
make a mistake. I often do mistakes building this one myself, even though I've
built it plenty of times.
If you want to change the blinking speed, try replacing the two capacitors
and/or the resistors R2 and R3 with other values.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/two-flashing-leds/
The circuit uses a 555 Timer, which is a classic integrated circuit that makes is
really easy to make things turn on and off repeatedly. R1, R2 and C1 sets the
blinking speed while R3 sets the current that goes out to the LEDs.
You can add or remove LEDs by changing the value of the resistor R3. For
example, if each LED needs 10 mA and you want to use 5 LEDs, you need 5 x
The law states that the voltage divided by the current will give you the
necessary resistance. In our 5 LED example, that translates to:
Note: A standard 555 Timer can only give out up to 100 mA in total.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/party-lights/
The circuit uses a 555 Timer to create a voltage that goes on and off
repeatedly. To make sound you need to send a voltage that turns on and off
repeatedly to the speaker. But, you need the voltage to turn on and off really
fast. Like a few thousand times a second.
The value of capacitor C1, resistor R5, and the resistance between pin 6 and 7
will set the tone of the sound. The pushbuttons have resistors in between
them so that the resistance between pin 6 and 7 will be different depending
on which button you push. This results in a different tone being played for
each of the buttons.
The best way to connect pushbuttons is across the gap between the two
component areas, like this:
• Connecting the pushbutton the wrong way or not using the correct pins
If you want more than four buttons on your instrument, you can add more
pushbuttons and resistors.
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/musical-instrument/
Pin 3 of the 555 timer has a voltage that goes on and off repeatedly, like
you've seen in some of the previous projects. This signal is connected into pin
14 of the 4017 IC. The 4017 IC counts each time the voltage on pin 14 goes
from low to high. It has 10 outputs that represents how many times the
voltage has gone from low to high (0 to 9). For example, after 3 counts output
Q3 is high while the others are low. On the 10th count, the counter starts from
0 again.
The running speed is set by R1, R2 and C1. Change one of the values and the
running speed of the lights will change.
This is a large circuit, and it's pretty easy to connect a wire or a component in
the wrong place. I suggest connecting only the 555 timer part first, and
adding a 470 Ω resistor in series with an LED between the output on pin 3
and the minus of the battery. You should see the LED blink really fast. When
you see this, you can disconnect the LED and resistor again. Then, continue to
connect the rest of the circuit.
• Mixing up the pin numbers of the ICs and connecting things to the
wrong pin
https://ohmify.com/9circuits/running-leds/
If you've built all the nine circuits, you should have a good practical
foundation for building great things with electronics. If you’re new to
electronics, you probably did not understand the details of all the circuits in
this book, and that’s okay. This book was all about building circuits and
improving your practical circuit-building skills.
If you also want to understand how these circuits work and how you can build
your own – then keep reading:
I’m constantly creating new learning material to help people build their own
ideas with electronics. Whether you want to build an automatic cat door for
your house or the next must-have gadget for the world, there are some steps
you need to take to build up the skills and knowledge necessary to build your
own inventions with electronics.
To help people from all backgrounds learn these steps, I’ve created Ohmify.
It’s an online electronics builders club with lots of courses and resources to
learn electronics such as:
• Roadmaps that show you what the next step is for you, depending on
your background.
• Forum for discussing ideas, asking questions and getting un-stuck with
your projects.
https://ohmify.com/join/