Domain

Electronics

Every other domain in this notebook eventually rests on a handful of circuit-level ideas: what voltage, current, and resistance actually are; how resistors, capacitors, and inductors behave; how transistors switch; and how the analog world gets turned into numbers a microcontroller can use. This is that foundation — kept separate from Sensors (specific sensing elements) and Embedded (the microcontroller itself) because it's the layer underneath both. It also covers the computer-hardware building blocks built on top of those circuits — CPU, memory, storage, GPU, motherboard, PSU, cooling — the parts list of any computer, general-purpose or embedded.

Topics

Circuit fundamentals

• Fundamentals — voltage, current, resistance, and how circuits workwritten
• Passive Components — resistors, capacitors, and inductorswritten
• Semiconductors — diodes, transistors, and MOSFETswritten
• Data Converters — ADC and DACwritten
• Analog vs. Digital Electronics — logic levels, comparatorswritten

Computer hardware basics

The building blocks any computer — general-purpose or embedded — is actually made of, built directly on the circuit fundamentals above. Read in this order: each one leans on the one before it.

• CPU — fetch-decode-execute, clock speed, cores, cachewritten
• Memory (RAM) — volatile working memory, DRAM vs. SRAMwritten
• ROM & Storage — non-volatile memory, HDD vs. SSD, the boot rolewritten
• GPU — massive parallelism, why AI workloads live herewritten
• Motherboard — chipset, buses, form factorswritten
• PSU — AC-to-DC conversion, voltage rails, wattagewritten
• Cooling — why heat matters, thermal throttlingwritten

Planned

op-amps pcb-basics