AI can explain a circuit. It can’t tell you why yours isn’t working. This is a hands-on apprenticeship for people who want to design, build, and debug their own boards — and actually understand what’s happening under the mask.
You write firmware all day, but when the board doesn’t work you’re stuck. A structured path from schematic to fab, with someone who’s done it thousands of times showing you what to check and why.
→ Start with the coursesYou ship boards, but there are corners you’ve always worked around — signal integrity, power, systematic debug. Stop guessing, start reasoning about the parts you’ve been avoiding.
→ Browse the libraryYou’ve watched the videos. You’ve read the tutorials. But you don’t have a portfolio of boards you designed, built, and debugged yourself. That’s what this program produces.
→ See how it worksIt isn’t linear. It’s a loop — and the back half (test, troubleshoot, revise) is what turns a tutorial-follower into an engineer.
Why this trace, not where the button is. Visualization, constraints, and an internal map of how the electrons move.
Simulations don’t burn your fingers. Component selection, soldering, part programming, and the physical gotchas.
Power up, probe nodes, capture waveforms — confirm the design behaves the way the schematic said it would, before you trust it in a system.
When the smoke clears and the LED is dark, what do you do? A rigorous process of measurement and deduction beats guessing every time.
What you learned at the bench feeds the next rev. Better symbols, tighter footprints, smarter routing — every cycle makes the next board faster to debug.
Chris is authoring the fifth edition of Practical Electronics for Inventors, due 2028. The Book Community runs alongside the writing: early access to the video course Chris is building in parallel — same material as the book, different format — plus a voice in what goes into the next edition. You don’t need to own the book to join, and you don’t need to join to read the book.
Available standalone for $1/mo, or included with the Apprentice and Master tiers below.
One piece of feedback that catches a mistake before fabrication saves you a respin — and pays for months of membership. Cancel anytime.
