Electronic Circuits

An electronic circuit is a set of active and passive electronic components connected to deliver some functionality. Various combinations of components connected in a specific manner can perform simple or complex operations. All of the design and working principles explained in the lesson on circuits apply to electronic circuits.

Electronic circuits can be complete standalone devices, such as a music amplifier or a radio tuner that takes an analog signal as an input, cleans it of noise, amplify it, and convert it to a signal that can drive a speaker. The speaker then has circuits to split the signals by frequency and generate sound by moving diaphragms to create sound.

They can be complex circuits, such as computer processors that work with peripherals like keyboards and monitors attached to them. Humans can input any data they want and see the output once the data is processed by the computer circuits. These can be controlled circuits embedded in or attached to electrical appliances, such as washing machines. The machines do the actual work of running the motor, but the circuits determine and control the motor’s running time, speed, flow time, etc.

An electronic circuit is usually categorized as an analog circuit or a digital circuit but can also be a mixed-signal circuit (a combination of analog circuits and digital circuits). Analog circuits deal with the filtering, amplification, and modification of analog signals, such as that in a music amplifier. Digital circuits deal with manipulating and storing discrete values (generally binary values, 0s, and 1s) to implement complex logic as in a computer. One voltage (the higher positive value) represents a binary 1, and another voltage (usually a value of 0V) represents a binary 0.

When building the circuits for IoT solutions, the right knowledge of electricity and electronics will help you understand how to design circuits and their working.