Electronic Engineering - as in circuit design, routing, computer archetecture and so on.

[BiggestKai]

I'm curious if we have any electronic engineers on the farms. Have any insights on the industry, horror stories, learning resources?

I'll be completely honest, mainly interested in learning resources. I'm trying to relearn evertyhing I can think of from scratch just so I'm a hundred percent sure I don't have any obvious gaps in my knowledge and mainly because my profession is more a glorified tech support center for the software provided to actual hardware vendors instead of actually working with design/architecture in a hands on manner. The issue is that I don't really know where to look and quite frankly too many courses or books appear to be focused squarely on what should be the ABCs(diode physics, BJT, mosFETs,

With the exception of debugging a customer's shitty code or attempting to conjure up a smaller, inhouse scenario that hits the same piece of spaghetti code producing an error as a user it's mainly just planning for future releases and putting out fires and I feel like I'm getting very rusty with what I had hoped to have originally made my living in.

Resources:

• Princeton - Computer Architecture: A free course on Coursera where enrollment only really gets you a degree if you care for that.
• Nand2Tetris : Very well compiled project based course where you create a simple processor from literal scratch, starts off with an HDL language all the way to the decoder/ALU logic.
• <more to add as the thread goes on>

 

[SNEED.EXE]

I've been an electronics hobbyist for a few years. The most fun way I've found of learning digital electronics is by creating replicas of 8-bit computers.

Ben Eater's computer project is a good starting point. After learning how it works, I'm currently studying how computers generate a video signal with off-the-shelf components (e.g. Galaksija, Sinclair ZX80, clones of the ZX81/ZX Spectrum).

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

I've been an electronics hobbyist for a few years. The most fun way I've found of learning digital electronics is by creating replicas of 8-bit computers.

I think those Commodore PC in a keyboard solutions are really cool, but I haven't found a use for them. I've seen people use Box x64 to run some indie games, or stuff like Diablo II, on them though. I don't think the Pi 5 is fast enough to support them at a decent frame rate however.

 

[Another Char Clone]

I wrote a simple 4-bit toy processor with memory fetch/write purely in VHDL using D-latches and other logic gates. You can find ghdl to compile and do waveform simulations. Sadly ghdl isn't maintained enough anymore.

 

[SirCliveSinclairdabbing]

This isn't solely at you op but it needs saying in general about electronics.
Is it demotivating that the whole thing is full of people using Arduino's and years of programming to turn the kettle on? There is a time and place for software but isn't there a place in your heart for a couple 74xx chips with sensors on one end and a relay on the other? Wouldn't it be nice to own something that works without regular updates?

 

[Byte Doctor]

I really need to get up on my Butt and get to work on a project in SystemVerilog. As, I just have some Altera Fpga Boards and Electrical components that could really be getting put to some good use. The problem is sometimes Just overthinking things and being scared of failing. Though, now I'm feeling motivation to do things again with the beginning of a new year upon us.

 

[srppsoidteerr]

This isn't solely at you op but it needs saying in general about electronics.
Is it demotivating that the whole thing is full of people using Arduino's and years of programming to turn the kettle on? There is a time and place for software but isn't there a place in your heart for a couple 74xx chips with sensors on one end and a relay on the other? Wouldn't it be nice to own something that works without regular updates?

It bothers me at least, to an unhealthy degree. I think about that sort of thing every single day.

THE BOOK that originally got me into electronics was "Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels." If you haven't read it, the whole book is about scavenging components from trash and making very simple, entirely analog robots. Circuits simple enough that an IC itself is used as the frame to freewire a circuit. The book was intended for older kids/teenagers who had no prior experience with electricity, but I still highly recommend it to anyone interested in electronics, no matter your skill level. There are very few technical books I've read since ever gave me the feeling that electronics design can be a form of artistic expression, in and of itself. It was one of those rare books about a topic the author was so passionate about, and discusses with such warmth and love, that it gets the reader into it as well, despite their previous predilections.

I got slightly older. My voice cracked a lot and with it came some more income. I got an Arduino and thought I had found Jesus. I got an ORIGINAL Raspberry Pi Model B for my 13th birthday and I thought YHWH was french kissing me. But around this time, Make: magazine went soy, for lack of a better term. Every project just felt like some variation of gluing an Open Source (TM) (R) (C) board to something. It made my hobby feel like an Arduino was like a pronoun pin to affix to my shirt so as to join the oppressed minority LE EBIN HACKERINOS. I remembered how brilliant Junkbots made a single 74AC240 chip seem. I also remembered the book warning me not to buy "...very old devices, with vacuum tubes inside, as they contain voltages lethal to budding roboticists."

I grew slightly physically older. I became a budding BIGOTED LITTLE CHUD. The local gun nut schizo took time off from his busy schedule of praying for Democrats to have abortions and sold me a 1947 Admiral vacuum tube radio. I realized Satan had deceived me in the desert and found Antiques, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.

Antique analog circuits STILL blow me away just how much you can do with so few active elements. Maybe some people find wonder in having a full operating system run a Python script in order to turn an appliance on. AM/FM radios that only need 5 vacuum tubes, and that STILL work quite well usually after the capacitors are replaced impress me more somehow.

 

[George Lucas]

This isn't solely at you op but it needs saying in general about electronics.
Is it demotivating that the whole thing is full of people using Arduino's and years of programming to turn the kettle on? There is a time and place for software but isn't there a place in your heart for a couple 74xx chips with sensors on one end and a relay on the other? Wouldn't it be nice to own something that works without regular updates?

It’s because retail stores in America need to sell higher priced items to stay open. You can get basic gear from China (or a restaurant supply store).

 

[BiggestKai]

It’s because retail stores in America need to sell higher priced items to stay open. You can get basic gear from China (or a restaurant supply store).

I think it's more just far easier to program circuits than it is finding ICs for them, especially if it's a rarer IC. There's a certain appeal to just printing out your output on a PC terminal than going out and shelling out money for components and actually putting them together and troubleshooting something physical, and just installing an open source library for a common component preprogrammed with everything you'd need is a lot easier too.

I still 100% support the practice of getting people into circuitry by actually having them build something fairly involved on a breadboard without any programmable components and then slowly introducing microcontrollers. It really flexes creative thinking when it comes to more expensive problems and just the act of troubleshooting physical components is a very good learning experience.

 

[BeckhoffAX5702]

I still 100% support the practice of getting people into circuitry by actually having them build something fairly involved on a breadboard without any programmable components and then slowly introducing microcontrollers. It really flexes creative thinking when it comes to more expensive problems and just the act of troubleshooting physical components is a very good learning experience.

Definitely, speaking from experience in the industry. Solving problems the "analogue" way is quite rewarding due to the KISS factor, mainly by how reliable and robust the solution is.

Regarding getting people into circuitry, from my experience you can explain mechanical concepts and easily convey those concepts using physical examples, such as with weights, springs and dampers. Stuff you can touch and feel. But electrical concepts remain vague due to abstract nature of how electricity works.

Interestingly enough I've seen this puzzle board game at an education fair a while back: Spintronics. Their goal is to translate electrical circuits into physical, practical objects. For instance a wire being a chain which shows the flow of electricity, a battery source being a wind up spring storing lots of energy, a capacitor being a small spring storing little energy etc. I do see the value of such puzzles as a good stepping stone into electronics, before diving into bread board circuitry.

 

[BiggestKai]

Interestingly enough I've seen this puzzle board game at an education fair a while back: Spintronics. Their goal is to translate electrical circuits into physical, practical objects. For instance a wire being a chain which shows the flow of electricity, a battery source being a wind up spring storing lots of energy, a capacitor being a small spring storing little energy etc. I do see the value of such puzzles as a good stepping stone into electronics, before diving into bread board circuitry.

There's another one I've seen called Turing Tumble. My sister had gotten one for one of her friend's kids and had me test it out. It's a good intro but fairly involved since it uses relatively heavy metal ball bearings/marbles and as far as I recall it less modeled inductance and capacitance and more modeled logical gates and digital design.
I also recall it being loud as hell to operate. Those ball bearings would really slam into the gates.

 

[Cherenkovblue]

Regarding getting people into circuitry, from my experience you can explain mechanical concepts and easily convey those concepts using physical examples, such as with weights, springs and dampers. Stuff you can touch and feel. But electrical concepts remain vague due to abstract nature of how electricity works.

There isn't really anything "abstract" about how electricity works so much as some people have a real hard time visualizing what's going on. This is whence some books aimed at children using the hydraulic analogy to explain circuit elements. Personally I favor a musical analogy ... circuit elements exist to guide lattice vibrations to perform useful work, i.e. conductors conduct lattice vibrations, resistors scatter them, transistors use vibrations to gate vibrations across a gap and thus act as switches, etc. This works well enough for most circuit elements, although it doesn't provide an adequate explanation for magnetism (and hence inductors and transformers), but is sufficient for a wide range of applications. If you get to a point where you're ready to cover inductors, transformers, and antennas... then you can introduce them to those elements despite the lack of clear physical realization / analogy to work with and they should be fine with it.

Also: Nobody has mentioned any of Forest Mims' books? Shame!

 

[BiggestKai]

Also: Nobody has mentioned any of Forest Mims' books? Shame!

No idea who that is. Looked up his bibliography and a lot of this seems like the relearning stuff from scratch I've been looking for for a while.

 

[Cherenkovblue]

No idea who that is. Looked up his bibliography and a lot of this seems like the relearning stuff from scratch I've been looking for for a while.

The short version: He's this guy. The long version: He used to work for MITS, writing the user manual for the Altair. He published a slew of introductory books for electronics that used to be carried at Radio Shack back when that was still a thing. He was, more or less, the guy who introduced a whole lot of people to electronics through those books.