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Voltage Guild

Learn electronics by building it

Read a short lesson, build the circuit, and find out precisely why it does or does not work — with real computed voltages and currents rather than a checkmark.

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No account needed for First Circuits, or open the sandbox and build anything.

LED current 6.41 mA

This is the real solver, the one that grades every lesson. The dots are the current; watch them slow as the LED dims.

How it works

Three steps, every lesson

  1. 1

    Read a short lesson

    One idea at a time, in plain words, with the arithmetic worked where you can follow it.

  2. 2

    Build the circuit

    Place parts on a schematic and wire them. Voltages and currents appear as you go, and the wires show where the current flows.

  3. 3

    Find out why

    Submit it and a real solver grades what you built. Pass and you earn XP and keep your streak; miss and it says what the circuit actually did.

The courses

125 lessons across 9 courses

From a first closed loop to a transistor switch, each course opening the next.

  1. 1

    First Circuits

    What makes a circuit work: loops, voltage, current, polarity and ground — and the three faults that account for most of what goes wrong.

    13 lessons · open to guests

  2. 2

    Ohm's Law and Resistance

    One relationship between voltage, current and resistance, used in all three directions — then series, parallel, and the real resistors you can actually buy.

    15 lessons

  3. 3

    Dividers & Networks

    The voltage divider, what happens when you connect something to it, and the laws that explain both.

    14 lessons

  4. 4

    Measurement & Troubleshooting

    Use a meter properly: what each setting connects to, what a reading is between, and how to find a fault instead of guessing at it.

    14 lessons

  5. 5

    Power, Limits & Real Components

    Work out how much heat a part is producing, measure it rather than guess at it, and choose components that can survive it.

    12 lessons

  6. 6

    Diodes & LEDs

    Why a diode is not a resistor, how to size the resistor that keeps an LED alive, and what a part that only conducts one way is good for.

    15 lessons

  7. 7

    Switches & Control

    Wiring switches in series and parallel, reading the logic that results, and the pull-up resistor that stops an input floating.

    12 lessons

  8. 8

    Capacitors & Time

    A part that takes time to change, the one number that says how long, and circuits that do something at a moment you chose.

    15 lessons

  9. 9

    Transistors

    A switch closed by a signal rather than a finger. What the base current buys, how to size the resistor that supplies it, and how to drive a load nothing else in this curriculum could.

    15 lessons

The Workshop

Then take it to a breadboard

A simulator can only take you so far. Build sheets unlock as you finish lessons, and each one asks you to predict a reading, wire the thing up for real, and enter what your meter actually says.

Your prediction is measured against your own supply, because a “9 V” battery rarely is.

A dimmer built on a half-size breadboard: a potentiometer, a 470 ohm resistor and a red LED.
The dimmer, one of five build sheets.

Free while we test

Everything here is free right now

Voltage Guild is in testing, and every course is free while it is. No card, no trial clock.

Try the first course with no account at all, and add an email when you want to keep your progress.

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