Useful EE Links and Search Engines

In summary, I came across another good search engine today looking for a datasheet, so I thought I'd try starting this thread for folks to post useful links. The links should be to technical content, and not to paid services. Some good options for datasheet search engines include DatasheetPro, FindChips, Digikey, Mouser, and the US Patent Office Database. Additionally, Wolfram Alpha is a powerful tool for technical search and research. For beginners in electronics, there are websites such as HobbyProjects and Electronics-Lab that offer projects, tutorials, and schematics. And for lectures in electronics and electrical engineering, there are resources like Infocobuild and DiscoverCircuits. For
  • #1
berkeman
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I came across another good search engine today looking for a datasheet, so I thought I'd try starting this thread for folks to post useful links. The links should be to technical content, and not to paid services.

Good free datasheet search engine: http://www.datasheetpro.com/

Good way to check for availability of chips and other parts: http://www.findchips.com/

Good parametric search capabilities (and to order parts): http://www.digikey.com/

Similar to Digikey: https://www.mouser.com/

US Patent Office Database Search Engine: http://patft.uspto.gov/

Google+Mathematica on steroids -- Wolfram Alpha (W|A): http://www.wolframalpha.com/

.
 
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Beginner electronics

Beginner projects, tutorials, schematics: http://www.hobbyprojects.com/

Various schematics: http://www.electronics-lab.com/index.html

More simple schematics: http://www.sentex.ca/~mec1995/gadgets/gadgets.htm



Lectures

MIT "Circuits and Electronics:"



Radio Frequency


Amateur radio: www.arrl.org[/URL]

Interesting articles on rf/microwave: [url]http://www.microwaves101.com/[/url]

More advanced: [url]http://www.mwrf.com/[/url]

Latest developments: [url]http://rfdesign.com/[/url]

Heavy on ads, but comprehensive: [url]www.rfcafe.com[/url]

Quick air core inductor calculator: [url]http://www.daycounter.com/Calculators/Air-Core-Inductor-Calculator.phtml[/url]
 
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Audio and Video Lectures in Electronics and Electrical Engineering

This provides a good collection of links to audio/video courses and lectures in electronics and electrical engineering from colleges/universities around the world.

http://www.infocobuild.com/educatio...s/electronics-and-electrical-engineering.html

The courses and lectures include electromagnetics, circuits and electronics, microelectronic circuits, digital electronics, analog/digital integrated circuits, VLSI design, digital signal processing, digital communication, nanoelectronics, power electronics, and more.
 
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berkeman said:
I came across another good search engine today looking for a datasheet, so I thought I'd try starting this thread for folks to post useful links. The links should be to technical content, and not to paid services.

Good free datasheet search engine: http://www.datasheetpro.com/

Good way to check for availability of chips and other parts: http://www.findchips.com/

Good parametric search capabilities (and to order parts): http://www.digikey.com/

Similar to Digikey: http://www.mouser.com/

US Patent Office Database Search Engine: http://patft.uspto.gov/

Google+Mathematica on steroids -- Wolfram Alpha (W|A): http://www.wolframalpha.com/

.

This is a great thread but let me chime in not necessarily about datasheet search engines but how to get your datasheets picked up by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

When creating or updating your .pdf document (this is the preferred format for most datasheets), you go into the meta data field and enter an appropriate title, description and keywords for the datasheet you would like the search engines to index.

The title is most important. For example, if you are creating or updating an Xray Generator component, the Title would be "Xray Generator and Power Source - Joeblow.com"

The description should be completely relevant, for example: "The xray generators and power sources found on joeblow.com feature ct scanners, security scanners and nuclear medicine devices."

Finally, the keywords would be "xray generator, power source, ct scanner, security scanners, nuclear medicine devices, joeblow"

This is a simplistic view but most data sheets are very technical but always try to put in the title, description and keywords those terms that your larger audience will search on and your datasheets will appear at the top of the search engines and/or will be indexed rapidly.

The above named process is referred to as SEO or search engine optimization, which is the tailoring of your web page or web component so that they will be treated favorably when your website is crawled and indexed. I hope this helps.
 
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  • #8
shockvalue said:
This is a great thread but let me chime in not necessarily about datasheet search engines but how to get your datasheets picked up by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

When creating or updating your .pdf document (this is the preferred format for most datasheets), you go into the meta data field and enter an appropriate title, description and keywords for the datasheet you would like the search engines to index.

The title is most important. For example, if you are creating or updating an Xray Generator component, the Title would be "Xray Generator and Power Source - Joeblow.com"

The description should be completely relevant, for example: "The xray generators and power sources found on joeblow.com feature ct scanners, security scanners and nuclear medicine devices."

Finally, the keywords would be "xray generator, power source, ct scanner, security scanners, nuclear medicine devices, joeblow"

This is a simplistic view but most data sheets are very technical but always try to put in the title, description and keywords those terms that your larger audience will search on and your datasheets will appear at the top of the search engines and/or will be indexed rapidly.

The above named process is referred to as SEO or search engine optimization, which is the tailoring of your web page or web component so that they will be treated favorably when your website is crawled and indexed. I hope this helps.

peterjones said:
Hey thanks for such a great post!

Thanks Peter. The high voltage power supply company of Spellman High Voltage has some examples of this search engine optimization, which I referred to earlier. Their website,

http://www.spellmanhv.com gives examples and if you go to their products page, they have hundreds of datasheets:

http://www.spellmanhv.com/Products/Custom-Application.aspx

Hope you find this useful.
 
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  • #10
berkeman said:
I came across another good search engine today looking for a datasheet, so I thought I'd try starting this thread for folks to post useful links. The links should be to technical content, and not to paid services.

Good free datasheet search engine: http://www.datasheetpro.com/

Good way to check for availability of chips and other parts: http://www.findchips.com/

Good parametric search capabilities (and to order parts): http://www.digikey.com/

Similar to Digikey: http://www.mouser.com/

US Patent Office Database Search Engine: http://patft.uspto.gov/

Google+Mathematica on steroids -- Wolfram Alpha (W|A): http://www.wolframalpha.com/

.

Hi Mr. Berkeman,

I found your links very useful, especially the wolfram alfa. The latest and greatest search engine initiative(s) are in the mobile web arena. Bookmarking from pda's or smartphones is in it's infancy but the search engines are looking for these links. The best way to do this is to have a website with a favorite links section or buttons for facebook, twitter, etc on the page. (See the example at the top of the homepage on http://www.spellmanhv.com/ ). Clicking on these links and having an account allows one to bookmark the associated website via mobile, which gives good credible links to that website.

Your thoughts?
 
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I'm not up on the mobile web arena yet (just about to upgrade), so I appreciate you posting about it.
 
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EEM is a pretty good one for finding inventory and other relevant product data.

www.eem.com

It requires registration, but, among other things, allows you to search a part number to see what distributors have inventory.

One nice thing is if you search a root part number, it will list all the extensions of that part for you to select.

For example, I did an inventory search for CY8C21534 and it came up with the 5 different extensions of that part. Select whatever one you want and the inventory will be listed.
 

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At Educypedia you can find an incredible amount of links about all areas of electronics:

http://educypedia.karadimov.info/electronics/electronicaopening.htm

But many of the comments for the links are rather short. So it is not always clear which of the links are the best, and you have to spend some time going through all of them if you don't want to miss the best stuff.
 
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Oscilloscope and probe tutorials (introductions and more advanced material):

http://www.wisewarthog.com/electronics/recommendations-oscilloscope-introductions.html

From Tektronix, Agilent, BK Precision and the classic app note AN47 by the late Jim Williams



Videos:

DSO tutorial, discussing the fundamental specs - http://www.eevblog.com/2009/06/17/eevblog-13-part-1-of-2-digital-storage-oscilloscope-tutorial/

Comparison (and general criticism) of 3 PC-based DSOs (2009) - http://www.eevblog.com/2009/06/17/e...ased-digital-storage-oscilloscope-comparison/

A plea for the (2nd hand) analog scope - http://www.eevblog.com/2010/05/11/eevblog-86-buy-a-real-analog-oscilloscope-please/

Trigger holdoff tutorial, quite detailed - http://www.eevblog.com/2011/03/30/eevblog-159-oscilloscope-trigger-holdoff-tutorial/
 
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There are a good few here too.

http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=9538
 
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Oberst Villa said:
At Educypedia you can find an incredible amount of links about all areas of electronics:

http://educypedia.karadimov.info/electronics/electronicaopening.htm

But many of the comments for the links are rather short. So it is not always clear which of the links are the best, and you have to spend some time going through all of them if you don't want to miss the best stuff.

I was just browsing for relevant posts for my project and I happened to stumble upon yours. Thanks for the useful information!

dave
 
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This is a SPICE simulation community for electrical and electronic SPICE engineers and enthusiast www.youspice.com
A lot of resource and SPICE projects to download for different SPICE simulators.
 
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Hi guys, also you might be interested in a price comparison website and search engine for electronic components www.oemsecrets.com

Should save you a lot of time and money on projects.

Thanks

Sam
 
  • #23
studio2100 said:
This is a SPICE simulation community for electrical and electronic SPICE engineers and enthusiast www.youspice.com
A lot of resource and SPICE projects to download for different SPICE simulators.

samc_19 said:
Hi guys, also you might be interested in a price comparison website and search engine for electronic components www.oemsecrets.com

Should save you a lot of time and money on projects.

Thanks

Sam

Kind of spammy first posts, but the websites look useful so I'll leave the posts for now.
 
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This is a handy site when you need to select a resistor, good reference on different materials and types:

http://www.resistorguide.com/
 
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This company (Analog.com) offers free samples of some of their offerings. You are limited to 2 samples of 4 different items but you can get new samples every two weeks. I submitted my first order yesterday.
 
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DigiKey's free schematic drawing tool SchemeIt has a nice and intuitive web-interface and a rich library of components and accessories. Hassle-free export to .png or .pdf formats is available without (free) registering.

Great tool if you need to sketch up something fast!
 
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www.nptel.iitm.ac.in video lectures from IIT
 
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The resource in this reply by Greg (to a user asking for practice problems for diodes) is great! It's a large compilation of practice problems and answers in many fields of electricity and EE. Check it out! :smile:

Greg Bernhardt said:
How about this
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/socratic/doc/topical.html
 
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FREE - Arduino ... well Virtually - Autodesk 123D.

Found this 123D site -- basically simulate circuits ( basic ones anyway) and has an arduino simulator and programmer, serial monitor - etc. - All webbased so you can use it anywhere that you have a connection.

Can switch from Breadbord to Schematic to PCB lay out views - even at this very simple level this is pretty powerful tool.
 
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From a recent thread in the EE forum asking about outlet ratings and the National Electric Code (NEC):

EM_Guy said:
This is a good article: http://ecmweb.com/code-basics/branch-circuits-part-one

In short, if you have more than one receptacle on a 20-A branch circuit, then the NEC permits receptacles rated at 15 A.

jim hardy said:
try a search on NEC 210.21(B)(2)
one of the early hits i got:

http://ecmweb.com/code-basics/branch-circuits-part-2

EM_Guy said:
Thanks, Jim!

This is another good source: http://freenec.com/T28.html
 
  • #35
Another useful website is www.everythingRF.com - Targeted at the RF & Microwave Electronics Industry.
 
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