DC and AC circuit fundamentals, power supplies, relays and contactors, circuit protection, transformers, PCB fundamentals, and sensor signal conditioning — the electrical foundation underneath every sensor and actuator in this program, worked with real numbers.
Every sensor, drive, PLC input card, and motor winding covered later in this program is, underneath its function block on a system diagram, just a set of resistances, reactances, and switching devices obeying the same handful of electrical laws. This module works through Ohm's and Kirchhoff's Laws, AC reactance and phase, linear versus switching power supplies, relay and contactor switching and coil suppression, fuse and breaker selection, transformer turns ratios, PCB trace current capacity, and sensor signal conditioning — the electrical vocabulary Modules 5 through 9 build on without re-deriving.
Worked examples anchor each concept in real numbers: sizing a current-limiting resistor, comparing linear versus switching regulator efficiency, sizing a control transformer from its turns ratio, and converting ADC bit resolution into an actual voltage step size.