Class 7 Electronics Notes

How to read a circuit diagram

As usual, Sparkfun has a great tutorial on how to read a circuit diagram!

How to read a datasheet

Let’s pull up some datasheets for our various items. You’ll see the quality varies widely. These are all parts from your Sparkfun kit.

Things you’ll often find in datasheets:

  • Physical measurements of the device
  • Amount of input voltage/current needed
  • Amount of power it uses
  • How to hook it up
  • Information on how to use it in manufacturing
  • Max/min temperature
  • How it works inside

How to find out how to hook up something

Find the part on Sparkfun, Adafruit, or elsewhere. Look for tutorials. Look for comments. Search for libraries.

Example: humidity and temperature sensor.

  1. Visit Sparkfun page
  2. Check out the datasheet. It looks awfully complex to communicate with.
  3. Oh, some sample code. Ugh.
  4. Some code on Github. Looks possible.
  5. Let’s check out the comments section first.
  6. Someone mentions an Adafruit library. That looks more promising.
  7. Oops, how to hook it up? Back to the datasheet!
  8. Wait, does Adafruit have any more information? Yes, they do!. It’s not the same part, but some guy in the comments said they were basically the same. Let’s give it a try.