This video is to promote my transmitter – receiver component sets that I sell over www.electroniclessons.com. For educational purposes only. Thanks for watching!

Circuit diagrams show how electronic components are connected together. Each component is represented by a symbol and a few are shown here:

Circuit diagrams and component layouts
Circuit diagrams show the connections as clearly as possible with all wires drawn neatly as straight lines. The actual layout of the components is usually quite different from the circuit diagram and this can be confusing for the beginner. The secret is to concentrate on the connections, not the actual positions of components.

The following is a general block diagram of a radio receiver:

Notes:

• Aerial – picks up radio signals from many stations.
• Tuner – selects the signal from just one radio station.
• Detector – extracts the audio signal carried by the radio signal.
• Audio Amplifier – increases the strength (power) of the audio signal. This could be broken down into the blocks like the Audio Amplifier System shown above.
• Loudspeaker – a transducer which converts the audio signal to sound.

This is an important action when checking the circuit performance for analysis or when you repair a circuit/electronic device.

When testing circuits you often need to find the voltages at various points, for example the voltage at pin 2 of a 555 timer chip. This can seem confusing – where should you connect the second multimeter lead?

Measuring voltage at a point

• Connect the black (negative -) lead to 0V, normally the negative terminal of the battery or power supply.
• Connect the red (positive +) lead to the point you where you need to measure the voltage.
• The black lead can be left permanently connected to 0V while you use the red lead as a probe to measure voltages at various points.
• You may wish to fit a crocodile clip to the black lead of your multimeter to hold it in place while doing testing like this.

Block diagrams are used to understand (and design) complete circuits by breaking them down into smaller sections or blocks. Each block performs a particular function and the block diagram shows how they are connected together. No attempt is made to show the components used within a block, only the inputs and outputs are shown. This way of looking at circuits is called the systems approach.

Power supply (or battery) connections are usually not shown on block diagrams.

source: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/study.htm