[HN Gopher] My self-study plan for electrical engineering
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My self-study plan for electrical engineering
Author : bucket2015
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-03-20 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| WillSlim95 wrote:
| I have some recommendations for you as an EE graduate, you can
| club Digital Circuits and Systems, Embedded Systems and Digital
| Hardware with one book in one continuous course with
|
| the book Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris and
| Harris (A RISC V Edition will release soon in 2-3 months, buy
| that one)
|
| For Electronic circuits choose Microelectronics by Behzad Razavi.
| Instead of Purcell go for "Engineering Electromagnetics with
| Ida", it is more intuitive.
|
| And th first book you should start with is "Foundations of Analog
| and Digital Electronic Circuits"
|
| Then you go for DDCA and Ida in parallel.
|
| The list does give me head scrather, this is too broad to be ever
| accomplished. My recommendation to redo the list is first find
| out what piques your interest in EE, Digital hardware, analog
| hardware or control systems or embedded systems and try to have a
| self study focus in that concentration.
|
| The way I see it with this plan you are setting yourself up for
| failure.
|
| Edit:Removed the ditching recommendation as I see it relevant to
| OP's goals.
| madengr wrote:
| Why is it to broad to be accomplished? It seems to cover your
| typical BSEE, and you need an exposure to all of it.
|
| Razavis RFIC is a good one too, but that's really getting too
| specialized. Pozar is good for undergrad microwave.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think it's a bit of a pessimistic take, to be sure, but I
| do agree that most people will not make it through this in a
| self-directed manner. Sure, some may, and I wish the OP the
| best and hope it all works out, but it's hard for most people
| to tackle much simpler, straightforward topics in a self-
| learning environment.
|
| In this case, though, I think OP's approach to this shows
| that they're serious about keeping with it, which is really
| cool to see.
| bucket2015 wrote:
| These are awesome recommendations - thanks!
| fsociety wrote:
| In phase 2 for analog circuits and DSP you should brush up on
| discrete math, calculus, and most importantly learn Laplace
| transforms . That's the only thing I see missing.
| bucket2015 wrote:
| OP here. Nice, thanks! I didn't put math down because my
| undergrad was in applied math and I got to use it a lot early
| in my career. But sounds like I'll definitely need a refresher.
| dasb wrote:
| I've wanted to do the same for a while now, but I'm unable to
| find a curriculum that lists the textbook for each subject.
|
| It looks like the article author is just "guessing" textbooks.
| I'm browsing the U. Waterloo curriculum and it doesn't specify
| any books.
|
| The article is still useful, don't get me wrong, but I would love
| to see a list of the textbooks that are actually used at a
| university program. I've Googled it many times and I only find
| the names of the courses.
| bucket2015 wrote:
| About 1/2 of the textbooks came from the old course outlines
| (e.g. https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~ece207/) and class shopping
| lists on UWaterloo book store. About 1/4 were guesses, and the
| other 1/4 I don't know where to even start looking.
|
| The higher the course the lower the confidence of having the
| right book.
| human4fter4ll wrote:
| for anyone thats interested: OSSU
|
| Open Source Society University
|
| Path to a free self-taught education in Computer Science
| https://github.com/ossu/computer-science also bioinformatics and
| data-science
| ivan_ah wrote:
| @Iouri I have two links for you that might help you on your quest
| to learn EE:
|
| 1/ A complete set of tutorials on computational neuroscience as
| Jupyter notebooks: https://github.com/NeuromatchAcademy/course-
| content/tree/mas... This is the material from last year; I think
| they will be running a summer school again this year so you might
| be able to join and learn as part of a group.
|
| 2/ If you need a review of linear algebra, you can check out my
| book No Bullshit Guide to Linear Algebra. In particular the
| Applications chapter contains a summary of everything I used most
| often from back in my EE days (Fourier transforms, circuits,
| least-squares, etc.) See a preview of the book here:
| https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSLA_v2_preview....
| (note it's not a free book, but not expensive either)
| femto wrote:
| > Digital Control Systems. Do I need this?
|
| Yes, you do.
|
| "Control" is another name for "optimisation" or "systems with
| feedback".
|
| It is the theory covering _any_ system that has a closed loop in
| it. Optimisation is a mindbogglingly broad field with application
| to nearly everything in the physical world. Other branches of
| engineering, science and maths study this area but give it their
| own name.
|
| Examples of systems with cycles:
|
| * _Any_ system that does optimisation: Deep learning, adaptive
| systems, ...
|
| * Error control decoders in digital communications systems.
|
| * The majority of non-trivial circuits.
|
| * Pretty well every circuit operating at high frequencies.
|
| * Echo cancellers in telecoms.
|
| * Computer networks (eg. TCP congestion control)
|
| * Systems of chemical reactions
|
| * The brain (your area of interest) is a seething mass of
| feedback paths.
|
| Optimisation (a.k.a. Control Theory) and Information Theory (some
| of which is covered under the name Communications Theory) are
| fundamentals. "Digital" in their title doesn't mean they have
| narrow application, as Information Theory (Shannon, ...) treats
| everything, including analogue, in terms of bits.
|
| Given your background in maths, one of the first things you
| should do is to try to construct a "Rozetta Stone" to relate a
| complete list of Electrical Engineering topics back to what you
| already know. For example, you will have already done a lot of
| control theory, but have learned it as optimisation. Part of your
| task is to recast your existing knowledge in terms of EE jargon,
| identify the gaps, then fill them in. Unlike an undergraduate
| you're not starting from the bottom.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| Electrical engineering is very hands-on. Reading the textbooks
| should not be #1 on your list. You do need a solid base, but once
| you have it, you'll get more from building and testing circuits
| than from reading more textbooks.
|
| I recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It
| strikes the right balance between theory and practice. You will
| need to dig deeper in some theoretical areas later, but this will
| give you a very good starting point.
| spapas82 wrote:
| I don't see any mathematics nor psychics books. During the first
| two years of our 5 year ECE degree we mainly did theoretical
| courses. Some examples: single variable analysis, multi variable
| analysis, differential equations, arithmetic analysis, algebra,
| mechanics, electronagnetism, waves.
|
| All these were full semester courses. These courses were actually
| needed if somebody wanted to properly understand the whole theory
| of electrical engineering (signals, em transmission, antennas,
| microwaves, optical fibers, theory of electronics, electrical
| machines, electric power systems, etc).
|
| Depending on which subject you want to focus on you may not need
| all these mathematics and physics but your will definitely need
| _some_ theoretic knowledge to actually understand it!
| lnsru wrote:
| This gentleman has an applied mathematics degree. So he lacks
| only physics. To work on that brain computer interface this
| gentleman needs basic chemistry and basic biology. For
| interaction on that interface solid understanding of analog
| electronics is needed. These topics aren't trivial, I wish good
| look and strong motivation during this few year long journey.
| cameronperot wrote:
| I would suggest leveraging MIT's OpenCourseWare [1]. You can
| filter for courses that have lecture videos, notes, etc. These
| courses are usually very well organized and taught by some of the
| best professors in the world.
|
| [1] https://ocw.mit.edu/
| kurthr wrote:
| I didn't get a degree in EE although I've done quite a bit of it.
| I really liked The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, which
| has an associated lab book you could use for little projects. It
| covers a lot of real world issues that are missing from the more
| ideal academic books.
|
| Also, I'd mention that the use of cgs in Purcell can be a bit
| annoying as you move on (it's very physics based) since most
| constants (permittivity, dielectrics, etc) are usually in mks
| instead. Those are used in the EE books.
|
| One thing you will definitely want to learn is SPICE for
| simulation (any real job will probably be using Spectre or
| something built into your tool set), and luckily there are quite
| a few free ones. I'd recommend LTSpice for simple projects.
| Similarly there are "free" tools for building and testing FPGAs
| for the digital simulation side.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There are newer versions of Purcell.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Why push yourself through a degree-style path? So much of what
| EEs learn in their coursework is of low utility. (I'm a physicist
| who transitioned to working as an EE. I have never had a single
| EE course, and yet I find myself with no obvious deficits
| compared to my colleagues who have.)
|
| There are two ways to learn an existing technical-ish subject:
| you can spend a lot of time reading textbooks, then do some
| projects (the "slow-fast" approach); or you can dive in to
| projects and refer to textbooks when you get stuck (the "start-
| stop" approach). In the slow-fast approach you will go slowly
| through a lot of textbooks for a long time, and then in theory
| you will be able to do projects very quickly once you are done.
| In the start-stop approach you will start a project, quickly get
| stuck and spend a while searching for and understanding the
| answer, then go back to your project.
|
| In my opinion electrical engineering, being a subject where fast
| feedback is generally possible, is very well suited to project-
| first learning. I would recommend grabbing a few textbooks
| (Horowitz and Hill's _Art of Electronics_ holding pole position
| for a practically-oriented learner, in my opinion), reading their
| introductory material (table of contents, preface, etc.; enough
| that you know what each book has in it), and then setting all the
| books aside until you need them. Avoid books targeted at
| "makers"; most are fine but a sizeable fraction are written by
| people with no clue what they are doing, and they will actively
| set you back. (It is very difficult to learn from an author who
| does not themself understand the subject, and all the worse if
| they do not _realize_ that they do not understand. Since there
| are plenty of better sources out there, it 's little trouble to
| just avoid the whole class.)
|
| Trying to work on brain-computer interfaces is challenging
| because it blends biology with electrical engineering. The
| biology will naturally drive things, because you cannot really
| control it like you can the electronics. So learning EE in this
| context is about two things: 1) What can I do with circuits? and
| 2) What do organisms behave like and respond to electrically?
| Your project is then using your knowledge of circuits to solve
| R&D problems relating to bioelectric signals.
|
| This isn't easy (I think you know that), but the benefit is that
| you can quit with "just" EE skills and still come out ahead.
| zxexz wrote:
| I can't recommend The Art of Electronics highly enough - it's
| way more intuitive and informative than any other resource on
| the subject I've found. It's exceptionally great when paired
| with the self-paced lab manual Learning the Art of
| Electronics[0].
|
| [0] https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/edu/harvard-lab-kit
| vvanders wrote:
| I'll second this, despite the first version being written
| over 40 years ago it's still one of the best books I've seen
| on the subjects.
|
| The more recent versions bring it up to date well, it's a
| dense book but one I find myself coming back to more than any
| other for the incredible depth of practical engineering
| knowledge.
| krapht wrote:
| > (I'm a physicist who transitioned to working as an EE. I have
| never had a single EE course, and yet I find myself with no
| obvious deficits compared to my colleagues who have.)
|
| Not to dunk on the rest of your reply, which I agree with, but
| there is a humongous overlap between your typical undergraduate
| physics and electrical engineering degree, and I think you're
| able to be successful because they're so similar. Academically,
| the required courses are mostly identical until your 3rd year
| and if you choose an RF, microwave, or semiconductor physics
| specialization it's just more of the same applied physics, so
| it would make sense you would easily be able to pick up the
| concepts necessary with experience.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it's way more about what suits the learner than what
| suits the subject.
|
| I studied EE, and got on better with the the more theoretical
| textbooks than I did practicals ('huh, ok.. why?!').
| bucket2015 wrote:
| That's a good point. The project-first approach worked very
| well for me when learning new software frameworks/libs/etc.
|
| My main concern with EE is that once I'll get to the brain-
| computer interfaces, I'll be in a situation where there aren't
| many off-the-shelf components/solutions available, and at the
| same time I'll likely need to know how I can push physics
| closer to the edge. I suspect I may need a better theoretical
| foundation to do that.
|
| That said, I definitely like the idea of focusing a lot on
| hands-on projects.
| someguydave wrote:
| It definitely depends on what you want to do. If you really
| want to design RF or analog circuits, having a mastery of
| undergrad EE signals and systems courses would be helpful. But
| if you only want to make digital logic work, you only need some
| basic knowledge of circuitry.
|
| EE is a vast field that encompasses everything from high power
| transmission to designing semiconductors. Even full course work
| from undergrad to PhD in EE is going to be fairly specialized.
|
| All that being said, I agree that if you just want to learn how
| to build a catalog of reasonably simple circuits, learning
| academic EE is a waste of time.
| phkahler wrote:
| I would suggest a dive into neural networks from the bottom up.
| Getting the electrical interface is the physical part. For a real
| brain interface though it's probably going to look like NN at the
| interface from a software point of view.
| baybal2 wrote:
| As somebody who got self-learned into electronics engineering on
| the workplace, I'd say self-learning is the hard way.
|
| I want to underscore the
| e[?]n[?]g[?]i[?]n[?]e[?]e[?]r[?]i[?]n[?]g[?] in the electronics
| engineering. Engineering everywhere is very hands on, and you
| cannot be an "engineer in theory only" if you want to perform on
| a job.
|
| Learning from mistakes in a class setting is much easier, and
| c[?]h[?]e[?]a[?]p[?]e[?]r[?] than casually failing a USD $1M
| design in a very simply way, but a way not taught in any
| textbook.
|
| Not to disparage you, I know many people who were similarly
| dragged into electronics engineering by necessity, and got to the
| level of degreed engineers over many years.
|
| But those guys had years, and years to perfect their skills in a
| time when the industry was more forgiving, and was growing with
| their skill.
|
| I would say that today, nobody will hire a 18 year guy who was
| just an electronics hobbyist to a factory, that was not the case
| 12-10 years ago.
|
| What I can say against modern electronics engineering education
| is that excessive focus on producing "workplace ready" cadres
| makes for worse workers past the basic level.
|
| I know people who are quite adept with digital electronics, but
| can't even understand how anything but textbook versions of SMPS
| power supplies work because of universities thought that analog
| circuits are now what people pay for. This the same for many more
| fields in electronics.
|
| I believe properly taught EE can figure out just anything with
| the right approach, and time, and this attitude is the best what
| education can give you, unlike mass produced engineers who say
| "I'm a logic designer, not a power engineer!" and other lame
| excuses.
| Araldo wrote:
| For Integrated Analog Electronics I'd suggest Design of "Analog
| CMOS Integrated Circuits" by Razavi instead of "Analog Integrated
| Circuit Design" by Carusone, Johns, Martin.
|
| The plan looks quite complete, similar to the list of courses I
| did in university. I remember I also did a power electronics
| course which I didn't see in your list.
|
| Fabrication of a chip is not really feasible to do at home. The
| chemicals you might be able to get, but not the equipment.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Electrical engineer turned software engineer, here. _The Art of
| Electronics_ by Horowitz and Hill has a permanent place on my
| desk. It is quite simply the bible of electronics engineering. It
| is the EE analogue of the famed _Machinery's Handbook_.
|
| I also recommend _Signals and Systems_ by Oppenheim for any
| aspiring EE.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I thought about doing this a while back, but I quickly gave up. I
| don't know if I'm just an idiot or something, but I quickly found
| my self way out of my league unable to understand a lot of the
| foundational theory and physics. I also picked up a handful of
| textbooks in the particular domains I'm interested in (boy were
| those expensive) and those were even worse, filled to the brim
| with notation I'll never understand. Part of it is likely to my
| extremely poor math education in fairness.
|
| I'll add, I was somewhat surprised, given the explosion in MOOCs
| over the past few years, to find very few courses equivalent to
| introductory undergrad EE classes.
| vsareto wrote:
| >Once I'm done, then what? At the present, I don't have a clear
| picture of how to transition from studying to working with brain-
| computer interfaces.
|
| Buy some BCIs and reverse engineer them, possibly. Maybe try to
| improve them. You might want to reach out to the authors of the
| papers you've been reading for advice. Neuralink put a BCI in a
| pig so try figuring out how they did it, and maybe they'll give
| you a job? Even Elon's pitch for recruitment during that
| presentation was "we don't know much about the brain anyway", and
| mostly just want you to have solved hard problems. There likely
| won't be a straight-forward path since this stuff isn't
| commercialized yet.
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