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.
Also check out the PCB/EDA software list on the EEVblog forums. It's been up for a while longer and is much more comprehensive for some sections.
- Simulators
- Part Search Engines
- Gerber Viewers
- Miscellaneous Web Services
- Free EDA Packages
- CAD Specific
- PCB batching services
- Blogs
- Forums
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Tutorials
- Ngspice - Open source SPICE circuit simulator.
- LTSpice - The industry standard free SPICE circuit simulator from Linear Technologies.
- 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.
- 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.
- EasyEDA Gerber Viewer - Gerber viewer and design for manufacture test.
- Gerbv - Excellent Gerber viewer for Linux and BSD.
- KiCAD Gerbview - The KiCAD gerber viewer.
- Eyrie.io - For viewing Eagle and KiCAD designs online.
- SnapEDA.com - Parts library with free symbols & footprints. (Compatible with Eagle, KiCAD, Altium, OrCad, Allegro, etc.)
- Hackaday.io - Social site for sharing projects from the popular blog.
- Kitnic.it - Project sharing site that helps you buy parts and re-build projects. Open source and developed by yours truly.
- 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.
- Design Spark PCB - Gratis EDA package without restrictions, sponserd by RS Components.
- Altium Circuit Maker - 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.
- Xesscorp's list of KiCAD 3rd part tools
- Contextual Electronics' KiCAD 4.0 video tutorials - Comprehensive video tutorials for beginners.
- KiCAD.info forums - User discussion and help forum.
- Keyboard PCB Guide - Comprehensive written tutorial that takes you through creating a keyboard PCB.
- PCB Shopper - 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.
- Dirty PCBs - Low cost PCB batching service that prides itself on its "dirty" quality
- Hackaday - Probably the most popular blog covering electronics and hardware hacking.
- bunniestudios.com - Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang covers hardware hacking, open hardware, manufacturing and more.
- EEVBlog forum - Probably the largest and most active forum to discuss electronic engineering topics.
- /r/electronics and /r/ECE are the two most active sub-reddits for EE topics.
- /r/askelectronics - Sub-reddit dedicated to help on electronics topics.
- Electronics Stack Exchange - Question and answer site for electronics running on the popular Stack Overflow service.
- EEVBlog beginners forum - Good place for beginner questions, other sub-forums on EEVblog should be suitable for questions on more advanced topics.
- The Amp Hour - Off-the-cuff chat about electronics with Chris Gammel and Dave Jones (EEVBlog), often with guests
- Embedded FM - Christopher and Elecia White discuss embedded systems development and much more, often with guests.
- Sparkgap Podcast - Covers a specific EE topic each episode, sometimes with guests.
- EEVblog - One of the earliest and most successful YouTube channels where Dave Jones does teardowns, tutorials and more.
- ElectroBOOM - YouTube channel that debunks and explains EE topics with a lot of comedy thrown in.
- Micah Scott - Video logs of reverse engineering and re-purposing consumer electronics hardware in creative ways.
- Afrotechmods - Tutorials on electronics projects, often suitable for beginners as well.
- The Signal Path - Very in depth teardowns, repairs and reviews of lab equipment and prototyping products.
- w2aew - Excellent tutorials about basic and complex analog hardware.
- Mr. Carlson's Lab - Teardowns, repairs and restorations with an emphasis on classic electronics gear.
- GreatScott - Electronics tutorials, projects and how to's.
- All About Circuits - Online textbook for learning theory with clear diagrams and explanations.
- 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.