/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>706496
Short answer: yes. Bit longer answer: it's a pretty central concept. For example, let's say you want to amplify something. One option would be to drop in pic related.

electronics noob here, I'm trying to build a sonar rangefinder.
I don't understand opamps, they don't seem to do what they're supposed to do
the basic setup is like this:
receiver - amplification - microcontroller
right now I'm just trying around and hooked the output of the amplifikation to the Analog-Digital Converter (which works like it's expected to) and have the microcontroller send the results to my PC.
So when I just connect the receiver to the ADC, I get a reading between 0 and 1, but when I put a non inverting amplifier inbetween with like 16x amplifikation, suddenly I read like 800
I also tried imitating various setups I found on the internet, but nothing seemed to work
I have to admit though that I have no formal education whatsoever concerning electronics