SEBASTOPOL, CA — Electronics is much more than resistors, capacitors, transistors, and diodes. There is a world of projects you can create by using comparators, op-amps, and sensors.

And don’t overlook the brainpower of humble logic chips. Make: More Electronics, Charles Platt's sequel to his 2009 bestseller, Make: Electronics, offers 36 new step-by-step experiments to teach how to add computational power to projects with chips like logic gates, counters, decoders, and shift registers.

Written in Platt's genial, humorous voice, this helpful guide is the definitive text on enhancing your electronics projects with analog ICs, power, motors, and random number generation.

Using the "learning by discovery" model, Platt, a former senior writer for Wired magazine, takes the reader step-by-step through intermediate electronics problems disguised as games. What's more, they're actually fun to play with.

"Other books teach theory and then, maybe, you get to verify it," Platt says. "This book asks the reader to do hands-on work from the start. You put components together, see what happens, and learn from the outcome."

Make: More Electronics teaches:

• Cast electronic I Ching yarrow stalks with a decoder and binary counter.

• Create a Telepathy Tester using NAND, NOR, and XNOR logic gates.

• Breadboard a Noise Protest Device using op-amps and smoothing capacitors.

• Combine a timer, counter, and multiplexer to design a randomized Hot Slot game.

• Construct Ovid's Game using magnets and SPDT reed switches.

• Adapt a rotational encoder to achieve serious randomicity.

Richly illustrated, including plenty of close-up views of circuits that help the reader to better create, Make: More Electronics can be purchased at MakerShed.com and other book retailers like Amazon.

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