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Outcomes:

• You will assemble a breadboard that you will use for the rest of the semester.

• You will perform voltage and current measurements of resistors and LEDs assembled on the breadboard.
  

• You will study circuit serial and parallel configurations.

•  You will determine why some breadboard wiring configurations don't work and why some do.

Objectives:

Obviously, the first objective is for you will get hands-on experience with physical items: breadboard, circuit elements (resistors, LEDs, wires), and basic circuit building. It may appear trivial to someone who is experienced in electronics. However, the course does not assume any prior experience and hence this basic step is necessary.

The second objective, which is most essential is to learn how to measure DC voltage, current, resistance, and the concept of I-V curve. To do measurements, we need circuits, and for this, we choose the most simplistic but worthwhile circuit topic: the concept of serial and parallel circuit configuration.

Lastly, this may appear a bit frivolous, but it can be very helpful for a beginner to learn as much as possible typical pitfalls and common errors (i. e. "rookie" mistakes) in breadboard circuit wiring. Learning these mistakes can help one save a lot of time and hassle later. Hence, you will construct some circuits that work and some don't, and try to figure out the reasons.

Lab instrumentation basics:

0. Recommended tools and instruments
   

Although not required, it is convenient to have some basic basic electronic tools: needle-nose pliers, wire-cutters, small screw-drivers, and tweezers. These will be discussed in class. Below is just a representative image of common toolkit, many items shown there are not needed for the course because we won't do any soldering, unless you wish do something special and extra for credits. One item not required but very handy not just for the course but general home use is the small portable digital multimeter (DMM) (the blue instrument). Most low-cost DMM's do not have the precision and accuracy that our lab-bench instruments do. Hence, you still need to do critical measurements in the lab. However, with a DMM, you can at least test your circuit at home to know that the circuit is correctly built, and you only need to obtain more accurate and precise figures in the Lab with the bench instruments.

Lo-cost DMM's can test only basic resistance and diode polarity, but not other common circuit elements and properties, such as capacitor, diode/LED forward voltage and capacitance, transistors. For the electronic hobbyist of you, there are simple instruments such as the one below that can be handy for those circuit elements.



Another must-have instrument for the home hobbyist is an oscilloscope (You don't need for the course). However, if you are really into electronics, there are many highly affordable and acceptable basic oscilloscope kits like the two shown below (both have 1-MHz analog bandwidth and hence, good enough for audio as well as most robotic control applications). For Lab IV to Lab VI of this course, we will study AC signals, hence if you want to test out your circuit at home, thing like the ones below will be quite handy.
        

1. Breadboard assembly
   

Assemble the binding posts on the circuit breadboard as illustrated below.

Note that you can choose either convention with the black post for the ground and the green post for Vb or vice versa. However, if you choose the convention like that in the picture, it will be consistent with your power supply (green for ground) and perhaps it will reduce risk of wrong connection when you build circuits with op amps (Lab IV to Lab V).

Make sure the nuts on the binding posts are well tightened to avoid loosening the posts when making wire connection.

2. Breadboard instruction
   

To know how breadboard works, you can watch the videos below, or you can search and choose any instructional video on electronic breadboard that you like.

3. Lab-bench instruments
   

Lastly, two most essential instruments on your bench are:

- the DC power supply (click on image for pdf manual):

some video instruction: at this link. 

At this stage, we don't need +/-15 V yet for op amp power supply, but the video below is a good reference for future use:

 

- the digital multimeter (click on image for pdf manual):

Unfortunately, this product is obsolete and lacks many features that its replacement models offer, such as web-browser html access and control. Nevertheless, it is still adequate for what we do in this course.
       

We will discuss and do demo of these two pieces of equipment in the class lecture. You are strongly encouraged to search any online instructions beside the manuals.

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