July 18, 2026
Resistance is futile
Tech note: making your own V-I plots at home
Book author goes full DIY to make real circuit charts, and the comments got spicy
TLDR: The author built a homemade lab setup to capture real, accurate charts for an electronics book instead of relying on recycled diagrams. Commenters turned it into a debate over old-school tools, whether the book is too beginner-friendly, and who has the most battle scars from doing this stuff the hard way.
A circuit-book author set out to do something weirdly radical: make real charts instead of the hand-wavy drawings people have been copying for years. To pull it off, he built a home setup that zaps tiny electronic parts in careful bursts, cools them in non-conductive liquid, and pipes the measurements into a computer. It’s the kind of detail that makes hardware nerds swoon — and also the kind that instantly summons the comment section’s favorite pastime: arguing about how it should have been done.
The loudest reaction? A mix of nostalgia, gatekeeping, and nerd flexing. One commenter rushed in with a classic “kids these days” reminder that old-school machines called curve tracers used to do this job just fine, basically turning the thread into a mini museum tour. Another took a much harsher swing, saying the book’s “intuition over formulas” vibe is a wasted opportunity, which is comment-section code for: I wanted a more serious textbook and I’m mad about it. Meanwhile, one former researcher popped up with a war story about student-lab measurements being painfully tricky, which gave the whole thread a “this looks easy until you’ve actually done it” energy.
And yes, the humor writes itself: readers were clearly enjoying the image of delicate parts taking a bath in oil while a $9,000 lab gadget — snagged for a bargain on eBay — plays hero. The article is about charts, but the comments made it about old tools, old grudges, and who gets to define ‘real’ electronics.
Key Points
- •The article explains how the author gathered real measurement data for about 290 illustrations in *The Secret Life of Circuits* instead of using recreated textbook-style diagrams.
- •Semiconductor V-I plots were difficult to obtain because of very small measurable currents, rapid current increases that can damage devices, and temperature-related drift caused by self-heating.
- •The author used a benchtop digital multimeter and pulsed power from a lab supply to improve sensitivity and reduce heating effects during measurements.
- •The device under test was submerged in non-conductive liquid, with mineral oil named as one suitable cooling medium.
- •To automate data collection, the author used SCPI-capable instruments and ultimately bought a used Rohde & Schwarz NGU401 SMU, whose FastLog mode supported 100 to 500k samples per second.