Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Designing Electronics That Work: Real-World Hardware Development

Rate this book
Read it cover to cover or use it as a go-to reference manual on electronics and hardware design—either way, this book is an indispensable compendium of all the practical stuff they don’t teach in engineering school.

Put your entry-level electrical knowledge to use and build elegant hardware that works on the first try. A uniquely practical guide, this book teaches you the things most engineers learn only through experience—with an emphasis on explaining the reasoning behind each method in order to ensure your designs are driven by insight, not blind rule-following. It’s also packed with hundreds of highly useful tricks and techniques that speed up workflow and save hardware designers time and money.

You’ll learn the entire process for developing a device—from conceiving an idea to the final schematic, including prototyping, selecting components, layout, fabrication, assembly, working with suppliers, cost-engineering, regulatory testing, and even troubleshooting when things go wrong.

360 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2025

8 people are currently reading
43 people want to read

About the author

Hunter Scott

4 books2 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
5 (55%)
4 stars
1 (11%)
3 stars
3 (33%)
2 stars
0 (0%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 of 1 review
19 reviews3 followers
June 14, 2021
Hunter Scott offers clear best practices in designing hardware that scales. He seems as knowledgeable on the minutae of leading an engineering effort -- best practices when sourcing PCBs, how to haggle prices with a factory engineer, how to test new PCBs for temperature/vibration sensitivity, etc -- as he is on big picture items: how to talk to users, what's worth including in an MVP, etc.

While parts of the book are really specific to circuit design (he presents an exhaustive list of his preferred companies to source transistors/resistors from at one point) the first 1/3rd and last 1/3rd of the book are worth reading if you're looking for any kind of inspiration to kickstart an engineering project.
Displaying 1 of 1 review

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.