THE DEV BENCH
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Electronics & PCB Design

The hardware foundation - and the half of it that can actually be taught. Electronics fundamentals (Ohm's law, passives, semiconductors, power, grounding, test gear), soldering and surface-mount knowledge aimed at the IPC-A-610 body of knowledge, and tool-agnostic PCB design covering stackups, controlled impedance, design for manufacture and fabrication outputs. The hand skill only comes from practice; this is what makes that practice productive.

Start here

Electronics Fundamentals (Ohm's law, passives, semiconductors, power, signals, test gear, safety)46 cards — step 1 of 3

Then learn the mechanism: Why decoupling capacitors exist, and why placement beats value — the deck gives you the vocabulary, the lesson explains why it works.

Electronics & PCB Design — the courseThe designed curriculum: ordered units from charge and Ohm's law through to board bring-up, each one pointing at specific chapters and videos with an instruction for every link. Start here — the decks below are the drill, this is the teaching.Soldering & Surface Mount — the courseThe hand skill and the knowledge that makes practising it productive — joints and flux, packages, rework and reflow, and the IPC-A-610 acceptance classes where 'good' is defined by class rather than taste. Syllabus scaffolded; units not built yet.KiCad — PCB Layout — the courseThe tool as a tool: KiCad's data model, library portability, capture and ERC, board setup before placement, routing, zones, DRC and fabrication outputs. Take the PCB design theory above first. Syllabus scaffolded; units not built yet.

Flashcard decks

3 decks · 123 cards · in study order

Electronics

1 deck · 46 cards
1Electronics Fundamentals (Ohm's law, passives, semiconductors, power, signals, test gear, safety)The foundation underneath soldering, PCB design, drones and robotics. Voltage, current and resistance in practice; how to read passive components; diodes, transistors and MOSFETs; power supplies, regulation and decoupling; grounding and noise; and how to actually use a multimeter and an oscilloscope. Written for someone who codes but has not done the hardware side. Every acronym spelled out.46

PCB Design

1 deck · 37 cards
2PCB Design Fundamentals (stackup, impedance, DFM, placement, thermal, fab outputs)Tool-agnostic printed circuit board design - the discipline, not the software. Layer stackups and why they are chosen, controlled impedance and return paths, design for manufacture, component placement strategy, thermal management, and the fabrication and assembly documentation a board house actually needs. Aligned with the IPC CID (Certified Interconnect Designer) body of knowledge. Applies whether you use KiCad, Altium or anything else.37

Soldering SMD

1 deck · 40 cards
3Soldering & SMD Fundamentals (packages, alloys, flux, reflow profiles, defects, IPC classes, rework, ESD)The knowledge half of soldering - the part that can genuinely be taught. Component packages and how to identify them, solder metallurgy, what flux actually does, thermal control and reflow profiles, the named defects and their causes, the IPC-A-610 acceptability classes, rework technique and ESD control. Aimed at the IPC-A-610 Certified IPC Specialist body of knowledge. The hand skill itself only comes from practice - this is what makes that practice productive.40

Lessons

1 lesson

Decks and exams test what you already met somewhere else. A lesson is where the concept gets in — guess first, read in chunks with a question between each, then explain it back before you see the answer.

Why decoupling capacitors exist, and why placement beats value~25 min · K · Knowledge

Curated resources

verified August 2026

Covers electronics fundamentals, soldering/SMD and PCB design. Free-first: two complete free textbooks lead, and the soldering standard is public-domain NASA rather than the paid IPC one. Where a topic has a definitive treatment by a named authority, that is linked directly instead of a summary of it.

Start here — free, complete, and worth reading in order

All About Circuits — Textbookfree · textbookA full electronics textbook, free and readable online. DC, AC, semiconductors and digital as separate volumes. The best starting point if you code but have never done the hardware side.SparkFun tutorialsfree · tutorialsShort, practical, well-illustrated pieces on one concept at a time — voltage/current, how to read components, soldering, multimeter use. Good for filling a specific gap fast.

Video channels

Phil's Labfree · videoPhil Salmony, ex-Airbus. Analog and digital design, PCB layout, DSP and KiCad, at real engineering depth. The anchor channel for paths 3, 5 and 7.Robert Feranecfree · videoHardware design, high-speed layout and long-form interviews with specialists — including Rick Hartley on grounding, which is the definitive treatment of that topic.EEVblogfree · videoDave Jones, 25+ years a design engineer. Fundamentals, test gear and teardowns — the teardowns teach how real products are actually built and where they compromise.Contextual Electronicsfree · videoChris Gammell, co-host of The Amp Hour. Structured, project-based KiCad and board-bring-up work rather than one-off videos.Technology Connectionsfree · videoNot a course — deep explanations of how everyday electrical things actually work. Builds the intuition that makes the formal material stick.

PCB design, signal & power integrity

The Myth of Three Capacitor Valuesfree · articleSmith, Bogatin and Sandler on why the 10µF/1µF/0.1µF rule lost its physical basis, and what actually determines decoupling effectiveness. Derives the rule rather than repeating it — which is what separates it from most writing on the topic.Rick Hartley — How to Achieve Proper Groundingfree · talk · off-allowlist (Altium)The single most recommended talk in PCB design. Why energy travels in the field around a trace rather than in the copper, and what that means for grounding, return paths and EMI. Long, and worth it.Eric Bogatin — talks and publicationsfree · referenceThe signal-integrity authority's own page at CU Boulder, collecting his lectures and articles. Go here when a rule of thumb needs its actual derivation.KiCad documentationfree · officialThe official docs for the tool the PCB path uses. Schematic capture, layout, DRC/ERC and the fab outputs you actually send to a manufacturer.KiCanvasfree · toolView KiCad schematics and boards in the browser with nothing installed — useful for reading someone else's design, which is how a lot of layout skill is picked up.

Soldering & inspection criteria

NASA-STD-8739.4 — Crimping, Interconnecting Cables, Harnessing and Wiringfree · public domainReal, citable workmanship criteria in the public domain. IPC-A-610 is the industry standard but its accept/reject photographs are the copyrighted core of a paid document — this is the free source that can actually be read and quoted.KiCad — official site and downloadsfree · toolFree, open-source, and genuinely what professionals use. No licence to manage and no feature gate on the parts that matter.