Electronics category

Free electronics calculators — 15+ tools

Ohm's law, voltage divider, resistor color code, and circuit math.

15+
Electronics calculators
tools
Category family
$0
Forever, no sign-up
About electronics calculators

Electronics calculators do the arithmetic that sits between a circuit on paper and a circuit that works. Pick the wrong resistor and an LED burns out; misjudge a wire run and the voltage sags before it reaches the load. These tools size those parts for you from the same equations an engineer uses, so you get a number you can build with instead of a guess.

Ohm’s law is the foundation — voltage, current, resistance, and power from any two values. From there the practical tools branch out: an LED series resistor and a series/parallel resistor solver, a resistor color-code decoder, a voltage divider, and a voltage drop tool for wire runs. For AC and timing there is a capacitor and an LC resonant-frequency calculator, a precision Wheatstone bridge, and an electricity cost estimator for what a device adds to the bill.

Every formula is the textbook standard — Ohm’s law (V = IR), the power law (P = VI), the resistor-network and divider equations, and the LC resonance formula f = 1 / (2π√(LC)) — and each page shows the equation, the units, and a worked example. The results are exact for the values you enter; real parts carry tolerances (a ±5% resistor, an electrolytic capacitor that drifts with age and temperature), so treat the output as the design target and check against the parts you actually use.

Questions

Electronics calculators — frequently asked questions

What is Ohm's law and how do I use it?
Ohm’s law states that voltage equals current times resistance: V = I × R. It ties together the three core quantities in any DC circuit, so if you know any two you can solve for the third — and with the power law P = V × I you also get wattage. It is the starting point for almost every other calculation here, from sizing a resistor to checking whether a component will overheat.
How do I pick the right resistor for an LED?
Subtract the LED’s forward voltage from your supply voltage, then divide by the current you want through the LED: R = (Vsupply − Vforward) / I. For a 5 V supply, a 2 V red LED, and 20 mA, that is (5 − 2) / 0.02 = 150 Ω. Round up to the nearest standard value (here 150 or 220 Ω) and check the resistor’s power rating with P = I²R. The LED resistor calculator does all of this and flags the nearest E12 value.
How do I read a resistor's color code?
Each colored band maps to a digit, a multiplier, and (on the last band) a tolerance. Reading from the end opposite the tolerance band, the first bands give significant figures, the next is the power-of-ten multiplier, and the final band is tolerance — for example brown-black-red-gold is 1, 0, ×100, ±5% = 1,000 Ω (1 kΩ). The resistor color-code calculator decodes 4-, 5-, and 6-band resistors both ways.
What is the difference between a voltage divider and voltage drop?
A voltage divider deliberately uses two resistors to produce a smaller reference voltage from a larger one: Vout = Vin × R2 / (R1 + R2). Voltage drop is the unwanted loss along a wire because of its resistance — it tells you how much voltage is lost over a long cable run so you can choose a thick enough gauge. One is a design tool; the other is a loss you want to minimise.
How are these electronics calculators accurate enough to build with?
The equations are exact, so the computed value is correct for the inputs you give. What varies in the real world is the parts: resistors come in ±1% or ±5% tolerances, capacitors drift with temperature and age, and wire resistance changes with heat. Use the result as the design target, pick the nearest standard component value, and leave headroom on power and voltage ratings.
Browse more

Looking for a different topic?

See all 17 categories on Calculators Cloud and pick a different area to explore.

All Calculators

Want a calculator built for your business?

Customize any of our 400+ tools to match your brand, or commission a new one tailored to how your business actually calculates — pricing, payroll, quotes, anything. Deployed on your domain, math runs in your visitors' browsers.