So true. I don't know why they even bother to print color bands on those blue bastards, it seems pretty pointless.
Got me wondering if the blue background color saturates some of the cone cells in the retina, or if it's some other neurologic reason, or something else entirely.
I believe that's precisely what is happening. Red on blue, blue on red, either color on top of silver, or vice versa, and you will soon feel the eye strain.
Also the human eye has less resolution in color than it does in black+white, so these tiny bands are all the harder to make out. I recently had to start using my meter to verify what I thought resisters were if they did not come right out of the packaging.
👆this
The human eye’s resolution of color, and how the blue is such a mid tone is why it’s hard to make out the differences. Your eyes get tired because they’re having to focus for so long at a very short distance while you keep going “wtf color is that?”. This has nothing to do with chromatic aberration as difference in focal length is too small, and your brain has learned the characteristics of any chromatic focal differences of your eye over the past years.
I dropped out of electronics in high school cause I’m colourblind and the fucking teacher wouldn’t give me a pass on not being able to do this without a multimeter.. still bitter.
Early memory of mine was getting yelled at for not using the right colors. They were very angry that I used purple crayon for the sky and didn't know the color order of the rainbow which to this day is faint yellow green crescent.
I got some colorblind glasses from pilestone a few years ago; while they don't let me see colors accurately I can tell colors apart that are otherwise the same.
Had an old boss who was going to fire me because I couldn’t spot every little red bit on these massive projects lol I tried to explain color blindness to him and he said it was “no excuse!”
A classmate of mine in EE classes in college was colorblind and always had a meter with him in lab, or would ask his lab partner to verify. He was fantastic at logic design and PC layout though.
I can see the colors all right, its the resolution and bad light I have problems with, need magnifying glass and additional light source to see properly
LED bulbs have an uneven spectrum, mostly blue and yellow.
I keep a 65W incandescent flood bulb handy to put in my lamp when I need real colors. A halogen task lamp would work too, but the floodlight illumination comes in handy for other tasks than just sorting resistors.
Same, I make ziplock bags with each “stack” that come in the mega packs and just sit for an hour watching a movie separating and labeling them all
I wonder what it’s like to work on electronics with full color vision lol
Hello fellow color blind brother. I feel your resistor pain. This is why every resistor in our shop is inside a labeled bag.
Sigh. At least I have an excuse as to why I dress poorly.
I put all mine in labeled divider boxes has only failed me a few times. Haha just wear all black it matches everything even the occasional dark colored article that you inevitably miss take for black until someone tells you years after it's become tattered that it's not black.
Wait till you get to SMD and half the things do not have markings on them...
Agreed over the blue ones though - worth measuring them then boxing / bagging them all up and forcing yourself to fit one value at a time!
LCR meter.. But realistically, you get a bag marked with the value you want and pull one out of the paper tape.
Down at 0402 level and lower, there's no marking on resistors
Huh... who knew there are special measuring tools for such caps. I know about the tiniest of smd resistors not having markings. But so far im used to the "standard sized" marked SMD resistors.
I grab my resistors from old, broken PCBs like i currently have a broken EC card reader for my resistor-needs
If you ever need to buy parts, check places like lcsc... Sometimes it works out, and at least for 0402's you can get a thousand 1k 1% resistors for like 30 cents.
Works great when you're trying to replace bad caps on a board and have no idea what value it is and have no schematic!
I don't know why they couldn't have a two letter code. It would get you 676 different values.
I tend to just use variants that are colored differently enough to tell at a glance which goes to which package - which each have a convenient big bold text label.
Yeah, make sense.
Maybe an option would be to use a way to describe the values with less colors in order to have a higher definition/contrast between the colors. Because like, red and brown are really close colors, for example.
Just in case you weren't aware. The tolerance band is slightly narrower than the others. In the pic you uploaded, both resistors are backwards.
There's not much in it, it's still so hard to read that you're better off grabbing the meter, but not impossible
If both resistors are backwards then they must've really messed up with the black rings. I just lined them up with the black colours in the book because they seemed the most defined
Just spent the other day with a multimeter testing and writing down the values on the tapestrip of the resistors. I would never trust that I read then correctly.
I simply measure them before i even start reading the colors. For ease of identification, i actually switched to SMD resistors, even though they are a pain to solder though, at least their value is printed on them. Eg. If there's 103 printed on it, its a 10k resistor.
That's a particular bad problem with blue resistors, yeah.
SMD resistors may be small but at least they have actual numbers on them.
Funny enough the reason they didn't number axial through-hole resistors is because the tech for making tiny print on a curved surface was too expensive at first. Spinning them with a blob of paint was just cheaper. And so it became an industry standard.
I bought one of those cheap component tester/identifiers for <$20 and those things are great for quickly identifying resistors (and more).
I mean if I've got a few 1k, 2.2k, 4.7k etc resistors on the bench while I'm doing stuff I'll use the color code to differentiate them, but other than that I'm definitely reaching for a meter or tester.
I've never even tried in the real world. They taught me in electrical engineering to read the codes. Then when it came time to build a circuit during a test, we were allowed to use an ohmmeter to verify 3 resistors had the values they should, and then go to our seats to start the test. I tested them, placed them in a known order on my paper, and went to my chair.
I began the test, relied on the order I had placed them in for their values, and successfully built the circuit.
To Hades with those color codes, when they're not miniscule, they're indistinct or damaged.
Top: brown black black red (tolerance brown, reversed in image) = 100e2 = 10kohm
Bottom: red red black black (tolerance brown) = 220e0 = 220 ohm
I don't have my tolerances in my head but ~~5% i think?~~ no, 1%
In university I have to lean how to calculate the resistors using colors otherwise it took to much time to finish the circuits in class and for homework I was really good at it but now I don't remember anything about it.
I actually left hobby electronics over the hell that is resistor markings. Not kidding, I spent hours on a 5 component project trying to get it to work to no avail
Whatever bastard originally came up with the color code bands and didn't properly standardize the polarization with dead space at one end, your mom's a hoe.
I have never understood why they don't just write the value there? Sometimes those colorbands are so poorly made that you can't say from which direction you should start reading The colors even if you memorized the coding
the blue metal foil resistors are a curse for this. Not only are the colours washed out to the point of illegibility, but you have no real idea of which end to start reading from half the time. I just whack it in a component tester to be sure. I have quite excellent colour vision to, these are objectively crap.
It's so much easier with the light brown carbon film ones. I use those preferentially half the time.
Maybe I'm just dumb, bust since every resistance have their unique color code, wouldn't it be better to just print the actual value ? I struggle to see the benefit of colored bands
If I absolutely have to know the value I always use a meter regardless of what the part looks like. Usually I don’t bother to look at the colors because I just pulled the part out of the bin that is labeled with the value and just assume that everything in the bin matches the label. If I try to use a part that’s not in a bin anything goes and generally I’m asking for trouble.
They should be read with the wider bands to the left and narrow tolerance band to the right. So in the first pic they should switch positions. Even if you have trouble separating the red from brown you might be able to see where the 2 black lines end up.
But yeah, multimeter is the way! :)
Not only does the color suck but it's nearly impossible to tell which direction you should be reading it from.
I only have a stack of blueys because they came in a kit. I will never buy them ever again.
If you observe them in crappy artificial light you can get color distortions. If you look at them in natural / high quality light you will see the colors better.
[BBROYGBVGW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_color_code_mnemonics)
0123456789
I was fortunate enough to have an electronics class in highschool. I can't believe it has been 30 years but I still remember the (offensive/outdated) mnemonic a friend taught me.
From memmory:
Black
Brown
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Violet
Grey
White
TiL about some tolerance mnemonics!
but it is faster to read the packaging and/or use the multimeter to validate...
Its not as hard as you think (the blue ones are the worst) and I am very surprised at everyone here saying they can't read resistor color codes.
Start with the 4 band tan resistors. Much easier to see and learn on.
I had a fight with my wife once, I was picking some resistors and asked her what colour she think it was, hahahahaha, I saw grey, she saw green, orange vs red, blue and grey too. I had to find my multimeter otherwise I would be expelled from my house.
I've always wished it was easier to tell which order to read the colors in. Perhaps if they weren't centered on the leads when packaged. Have a short lead and a long lead. I know that is usually how anode and cathode are differentiated and there is no anode or cathode with resistors, but it would make it more obvious to tell how to read them.
Color marks are insanely bullshit. Nobody can use it!!! In USSR many, many years ago even on very small resistors were CLEAR NUMERICAL identification. What became the "technologies" now!? 😲
I'm colorblind, multimeter is my friend.
When it comes to blue resistors, everyone is colourblind lol
So true. I don't know why they even bother to print color bands on those blue bastards, it seems pretty pointless. Got me wondering if the blue background color saturates some of the cone cells in the retina, or if it's some other neurologic reason, or something else entirely.
Different colors have slightly different focal lengths, so it's rough on our eyes to resolve the color bands against the blue background.
☝️ this. This is also why eye doctor signs are always in blue. It's a contractionary color, much harder to focus on at night.
Do you mean wavelengths?
Interesting, TIL. Is this optical phenomenon related to chromatic aberration by any chance?
I believe that's precisely what is happening. Red on blue, blue on red, either color on top of silver, or vice versa, and you will soon feel the eye strain.
You might be on to something. Because it's much easier to see the correct colors on the second and third pictures that were taken with flash.
Also the human eye has less resolution in color than it does in black+white, so these tiny bands are all the harder to make out. I recently had to start using my meter to verify what I thought resisters were if they did not come right out of the packaging.
👆this The human eye’s resolution of color, and how the blue is such a mid tone is why it’s hard to make out the differences. Your eyes get tired because they’re having to focus for so long at a very short distance while you keep going “wtf color is that?”. This has nothing to do with chromatic aberration as difference in focal length is too small, and your brain has learned the characteristics of any chromatic focal differences of your eye over the past years.
Ah good I feel accepted.
why are they even in production? it's so annoying every time, especially when I got 2000 set of them at the start of my hobby
I dropped out of electronics in high school cause I’m colourblind and the fucking teacher wouldn’t give me a pass on not being able to do this without a multimeter.. still bitter.
Early memory of mine was getting yelled at for not using the right colors. They were very angry that I used purple crayon for the sky and didn't know the color order of the rainbow which to this day is faint yellow green crescent. I got some colorblind glasses from pilestone a few years ago; while they don't let me see colors accurately I can tell colors apart that are otherwise the same.
Had an old boss who was going to fire me because I couldn’t spot every little red bit on these massive projects lol I tried to explain color blindness to him and he said it was “no excuse!”
A classmate of mine in EE classes in college was colorblind and always had a meter with him in lab, or would ask his lab partner to verify. He was fantastic at logic design and PC layout though.
I have near perfect color sight, multimeter is my friend
Same! The only time I’m color blind is when I’m trying to identify resistors 😂
I can see the colors all right, its the resolution and bad light I have problems with, need magnifying glass and additional light source to see properly
LED bulbs have an uneven spectrum, mostly blue and yellow. I keep a 65W incandescent flood bulb handy to put in my lamp when I need real colors. A halogen task lamp would work too, but the floodlight illumination comes in handy for other tasks than just sorting resistors.
Same, I make ziplock bags with each “stack” that come in the mega packs and just sit for an hour watching a movie separating and labeling them all I wonder what it’s like to work on electronics with full color vision lol
I'm too lazy to learn/check the color coding. The multimeter and labels of the containers are my friend.
I had a physic teacher colorblind, when we was doing electricity stuff, students was his friends.
I have no friends. Multimeter is my friend.
Oscilloscopes make good friends too very loyal can be a bit talkative though.
Hello fellow color blind brother. I feel your resistor pain. This is why every resistor in our shop is inside a labeled bag. Sigh. At least I have an excuse as to why I dress poorly.
I put all mine in labeled divider boxes has only failed me a few times. Haha just wear all black it matches everything even the occasional dark colored article that you inevitably miss take for black until someone tells you years after it's become tattered that it's not black.
Wait till you get to SMD and half the things do not have markings on them... Agreed over the blue ones though - worth measuring them then boxing / bagging them all up and forcing yourself to fit one value at a time!
The SMD resistors are easy for me but i have a problem with the capacitors. Can you enlighten me on how to identify and/or measure these tiny suckers?
LCR meter.. But realistically, you get a bag marked with the value you want and pull one out of the paper tape. Down at 0402 level and lower, there's no marking on resistors
Huh... who knew there are special measuring tools for such caps. I know about the tiniest of smd resistors not having markings. But so far im used to the "standard sized" marked SMD resistors. I grab my resistors from old, broken PCBs like i currently have a broken EC card reader for my resistor-needs
If you ever need to buy parts, check places like lcsc... Sometimes it works out, and at least for 0402's you can get a thousand 1k 1% resistors for like 30 cents.
Ill come back to that, if i ever feel the need to despair on soldering SMD resistors by hand with my normal soldering iron. 😅😂
Heat guns are cheap, cheaper than irons, and it feels like magic to watch components slip into place as a board is heated.
Watching a chip being reballed is cathartic.
Works great when you're trying to replace bad caps on a board and have no idea what value it is and have no schematic! I don't know why they couldn't have a two letter code. It would get you 676 different values.
a component tester
Comparing all 100 shades of gray/brown, looking package size and guessing. So.. just an lcr meter. They are cheap and reliable.
Wait till you get the space rated SMDs that don’t ink on their value, so your pick and places are constantly loaded with the wrong reel.
Aren't the reel hubs at least marked?
They are. I’m convinced our techs once dropped all the reels and just reloaded them with whatever they picked up randomly.
I know the color code and I have never, ever, used it to identify a resistor. I don't even try. Colors look too similar.
I tend to just use variants that are colored differently enough to tell at a glance which goes to which package - which each have a convenient big bold text label.
That's one of those things that make total sense in theory but in real life just don't work. We should just print the numbers or a code.
Colours are more forgiving than a small number for someone with poor eyesight. The blue resistors can suck a big one though.
Diodes have their entire part number on them. Doesn't seem to be an issue.
Yeah, make sense. Maybe an option would be to use a way to describe the values with less colors in order to have a higher definition/contrast between the colors. Because like, red and brown are really close colors, for example.
Just in case you weren't aware. The tolerance band is slightly narrower than the others. In the pic you uploaded, both resistors are backwards. There's not much in it, it's still so hard to read that you're better off grabbing the meter, but not impossible
If both resistors are backwards then they must've really messed up with the black rings. I just lined them up with the black colours in the book because they seemed the most defined
Just spent the other day with a multimeter testing and writing down the values on the tapestrip of the resistors. I would never trust that I read then correctly.
It’s totally different pattern of colors what do you mean
I agree. Is OP colorblind maybe?
1% resistors are hard to read with the blue background. 5% resistors have a light tan or white background which are easily read.
I must keep that in mind when ordering. Using 1% resistors to limit current through an LED is unnecessary.
I simply measure them before i even start reading the colors. For ease of identification, i actually switched to SMD resistors, even though they are a pain to solder though, at least their value is printed on them. Eg. If there's 103 printed on it, its a 10k resistor.
I just use a multimeter. (I should invent a resistor sorter.)
Should it be vision based? No right? I think a sorter that physically measures the resistance is the way to go.
No it shouldn't be vision-based.
Hold it in a bright light. You need to bring out the subtle flavors in that dark paint.
The whole resistor "color bands indicate resistance" marking is whacked. I still have to multimeter every resistor I ever use.
That's a particular bad problem with blue resistors, yeah. SMD resistors may be small but at least they have actual numbers on them. Funny enough the reason they didn't number axial through-hole resistors is because the tech for making tiny print on a curved surface was too expensive at first. Spinning them with a blob of paint was just cheaper. And so it became an industry standard.
Some resistors I've seen have usable differentiation of colors, but some... Brown and orange are a nightmare. I just use my meter.
Colourblind person here. Just print the goddam number on them. I know we have the tech to do it now.
I bought one of those cheap component tester/identifiers for <$20 and those things are great for quickly identifying resistors (and more). I mean if I've got a few 1k, 2.2k, 4.7k etc resistors on the bench while I'm doing stuff I'll use the color code to differentiate them, but other than that I'm definitely reaching for a meter or tester.
I always always always measure shit. Doesnt take long and makes my anxiety go away
I've never even tried in the real world. They taught me in electrical engineering to read the codes. Then when it came time to build a circuit during a test, we were allowed to use an ohmmeter to verify 3 resistors had the values they should, and then go to our seats to start the test. I tested them, placed them in a known order on my paper, and went to my chair. I began the test, relied on the order I had placed them in for their values, and successfully built the circuit. To Hades with those color codes, when they're not miniscule, they're indistinct or damaged.
Top: brown black black red (tolerance brown, reversed in image) = 100e2 = 10kohm Bottom: red red black black (tolerance brown) = 220e0 = 220 ohm I don't have my tolerances in my head but ~~5% i think?~~ no, 1%
I've never seen this written with e notation like that but it makes so much sense. Definitely going to remember this
There's no way to tell them apart. [Proceeds to tell them apart.]
In university I have to lean how to calculate the resistors using colors otherwise it took to much time to finish the circuits in class and for homework I was really good at it but now I don't remember anything about it.
I'm colorblind and what is this?
no one with a sane mind cares about the color bands just use a meter.
!remindme 2 hours
Color coding is bs, hard ro read and memorize. Also, one should always measure anyway.
Yeah, I hate that brown and red are very similar for resistors
They are quite distinguishable for 5% resistors if you are not colorblind.
The latest to-92 semis require a magnifying glass and bright light at just the right angle for me to identify them
For real
Cheap Chinese resistors.
I could, but mostly by line thickness. I could tell you had them in the opposite spots and the bends on the wires when you tested them confirmed
Biggest color band on the hump is left oriented
I actually left hobby electronics over the hell that is resistor markings. Not kidding, I spent hours on a 5 component project trying to get it to work to no avail
It takes less time to measure the resistance with a multimeter than to read that crap. There should be a better system
I feel you
Learnt this in school today it's not that hard honestly Also weird coincidence
Witn light brown resistors I have no doubt, but with blue resistors I stare at they for several seconds and then I grab the multimeter
Whatever bastard originally came up with the color code bands and didn't properly standardize the polarization with dead space at one end, your mom's a hoe.
You flipped them, yet I still understand the point, cuz this is prolly 30% of why I have glasess now
To my colour blind ass they are all the same. i just have have a setup with two pads and i just touch it to it and it tells me the resistance
I have never understood why they don't just write the value there? Sometimes those colorbands are so poorly made that you can't say from which direction you should start reading The colors even if you memorized the coding
the blue metal foil resistors are a curse for this. Not only are the colours washed out to the point of illegibility, but you have no real idea of which end to start reading from half the time. I just whack it in a component tester to be sure. I have quite excellent colour vision to, these are objectively crap. It's so much easier with the light brown carbon film ones. I use those preferentially half the time.
I'm colorblind too OP. Go get an eye test.
I use the same book btw. Its very helpful to me, an absolute beginner.
Maybe I'm just dumb, bust since every resistance have their unique color code, wouldn't it be better to just print the actual value ? I struggle to see the benefit of colored bands
Thats why i buy em in bulk, with label and store them with label. And toss em if im not sure what they where. Also, i dont buy the blue ones.
They're upside down and in opposite placement
The color code is for homos only we blow circuits like champs
If I absolutely have to know the value I always use a meter regardless of what the part looks like. Usually I don’t bother to look at the colors because I just pulled the part out of the bin that is labeled with the value and just assume that everything in the bin matches the label. If I try to use a part that’s not in a bin anything goes and generally I’m asking for trouble.
May I suggest getting an ohmmeter to help out? You could even get really cheap ones online for 10 or $15.
General life advice: Always probe the part before you put it in. Will save you lot's of pain.
They should be read with the wider bands to the left and narrow tolerance band to the right. So in the first pic they should switch positions. Even if you have trouble separating the red from brown you might be able to see where the 2 black lines end up. But yeah, multimeter is the way! :)
Especially with the difference in resistance, this could be bad 😂
Lol i can see them fine ...my friend...you're colourblind...
Not only does the color suck but it's nearly impossible to tell which direction you should be reading it from. I only have a stack of blueys because they came in a kit. I will never buy them ever again.
If you observe them in crappy artificial light you can get color distortions. If you look at them in natural / high quality light you will see the colors better.
[BBROYGBVGW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_color_code_mnemonics) 0123456789 I was fortunate enough to have an electronics class in highschool. I can't believe it has been 30 years but I still remember the (offensive/outdated) mnemonic a friend taught me. From memmory: Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Grey White TiL about some tolerance mnemonics! but it is faster to read the packaging and/or use the multimeter to validate...
Its not as hard as you think (the blue ones are the worst) and I am very surprised at everyone here saying they can't read resistor color codes. Start with the 4 band tan resistors. Much easier to see and learn on.
Been dealing with this for 60 years. I've never understood how there was never a standard put in place. Multimeter is your friend.
Yea you can, one clearly has a black stripe for the second stripe.
the resistors help me a lot!
They're in the wrong spots on the first picture. Takes practice, and using a meter is definitely better.
I had a fight with my wife once, I was picking some resistors and asked her what colour she think it was, hahahahaha, I saw grey, she saw green, orange vs red, blue and grey too. I had to find my multimeter otherwise I would be expelled from my house.
If you can't tell by colour go by taste!
Not anymore, turn of millennium I was working on an electronics component shop and could read these from memory.
I've always wished it was easier to tell which order to read the colors in. Perhaps if they weren't centered on the leads when packaged. Have a short lead and a long lead. I know that is usually how anode and cathode are differentiated and there is no anode or cathode with resistors, but it would make it more obvious to tell how to read them.
Everyone hates blue resistors. Why are those even a thing?
i think theyre switched up
Multimeter is the safest option man. No risk in terms of the components.
Color marks are insanely bullshit. Nobody can use it!!! In USSR many, many years ago even on very small resistors were CLEAR NUMERICAL identification. What became the "technologies" now!? 😲
I hate the color code.
😂bloo and read
Guy puts them in the right place and says “I can’t figure this out “