[HN Gopher] My self-study plan for electrical engineering
___________________________________________________________________
My self-study plan for electrical engineering
Author : bucket2015
Score : 338 points
Date : 2021-03-20 20:00 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (i-kh.net)
| stochastician wrote:
| I used to build BMI systems in graduate school, from the lowest
| level (mixed-signal analog design for 70 uV extracelleular
| signals) to DSP (128 DSPs doing real time analysis) to the
| network (built my own ethernet MAC, foolishly!) to all the vis
| and RT-linux-based analysis. I left the area and switched into ML
| in grad school, but if I had to do it all over again there's one
| thing I think is missing:
|
| Optics. Optics optics optics.
|
| A tremendous amount of neural interfacing, especially in non-
| human primates and other organisms, is done via optics. ~All the
| advances in neural data acquisition over the past decade have
| been optical. Microscopy is the future for a tremendous amount of
| neuroscience and more and more people are considering it
| seriously for human-scale BMI.
|
| I know optics isn't always thought of in an EE context, but it
| should be! Many people doing amazing computational imaging and
| optics work are in EE departments. Computational imaging is the
| new hotness and can let you combine your existing CS skills with
| signal processing and optics to do things like build a lensless
| camera! https://waller-lab.github.io/DiffuserCam/
|
| If I were you I would ditch the RF part of your plan and study
| optics. Yeah, it's all EM, but the order-of-magnitude differences
| in the frequencies involved makes the underlying engineering
| quite different.
| dboreham wrote:
| > Optics. Optics optics optics.
|
| Maxwell would have agreed.
| WillSlim95 wrote:
| OP I highly recommend you listen to this guy here, among all
| the replies here they have the most experience with what you
| are aiming for.
| bucket2015 wrote:
| OP here - Thanks! I'll put back the optics courses I deleted
| then
| Balgair wrote:
| Bit late to the party, but this person is very much correct.
| I also do BMI work and optics is undoubtedly the future for
| neuroscience. The optics book you want to get is Hecht:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Optics-5th-Eugene-Hecht/dp/0133977226
|
| That's a good intro into real optics.
|
| It's much more than the optics chapter you'll get in a
| physics textbook. It goes over the classical ray optics in
| good detail, does a great job with traditional matrices and
| that formulation of optics (the one that the design programs
| like Zemax use), goes well into the real meat-n-potatoes of
| wave optics (including birefringence, a huge part of
| biological optics), gives you a good accounting of how lenses
| and other optical devices are actually Fourier transformers,
| and also dives into the more esoteric optical devices (a must
| for practical neuro-optics).
|
| It's an upper-division/graduate level book, fyi. So I'd back-
| load it in your study course. Though in terms of neuro-optics
| it's more of a keyhole book.
|
| If you are particularly interested and really want to know
| what's actually going on with EM, then you need to go through
| Jackson:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Electrodynamics-Third-
| David...
|
| This is _the_ book on EM, but is very much physics graduate
| student level. And honestly, I don 't think you's need it for
| BMI stuff. But if you don't go through it, you'll just be
| trusting other people when they say your ideas won't work and
| they can't really explain it to you. Just going through
| Jackson is a bit of a hazing experience and will earn
| respect.
| stochastician wrote:
| Feel free to email / dm me (HN and twitter handle are the
| same) if you ever have any questions.
| 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.
| CalChris wrote:
| Yes, it is too broad. You should look at a school like Berkeley
| and look at their concentrations. Maybe RF isn't important if
| you're doing systems (unless you're interested in RF).
|
| https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fberkeley.box.com...
| dboreham wrote:
| I don't think you can call yourself an EE if you don't know
| anything about RF.
| BeetleB wrote:
| RF is not a required course in most universities. Some
| don't even have it as an elective. Were you thinking of
| electromagnetics? RF is a very specific subfield.
| posterboy wrote:
| That's true maybe because it became such a big and deeply
| complex field that it has no space in the basic
| curriculum?
|
| One might think that it's historically closely tied with
| the development of the radio and the telephone, see
| Tesla, Eddison, Bell Labs.
|
| The common wisdom about electromagnetics with regard to
| EMI and such things seems to be that it's pretty much
| black magic. Similar for inductor selection in SMPS
| design.
|
| It's pretty much physics, so a good deal about radiation
| can be found in medical physics for example, which is
| simply a different course of study with electronics as a
| side show, and maybe better as consecutive program for
| sophomores.
| 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.
| WillSlim95 wrote:
| As someone who survied a BSEE, the range is too huge. I work
| with digital design as my day job, I only intuitively use
| EE101, digital logic and computer architecture and
| occasionally analog when dealing with post silicon issues.
|
| The OP wants to study EE because he has a specific goal. My
| suggestion was that instead of trying to study everything EE
| focus only on those subjects that are relevant.
|
| For example: If I was interested in robotics , I would not
| bother with digital,RF or Analog or eveen communication
| systems. I woud primarily focus on Control Systems and
| Embedded Systems.
| imtringued wrote:
| I did a basic project and I don't see how you can do
| robotics without analog systems unless you don't intend to
| build custom actuators and just buy very expensive off the
| shelf parts. The digital portion is absolutely trivial.
| WillSlim95 wrote:
| Analog systems and Analog Integrated Circuits, Analog
| Systems deals with using Analog chips, analog integrated
| circuits chips deals with designing such chips, a
| robotics engineers needs the first one not the latter.
| And the first one requires EE101 knowledge and signals
| and systems knowledge for filters etc which the OP is
| already covering in other courses
| shagie wrote:
| > The OP wants to study EE because he has a specific goal.
| My suggestion was that instead of trying to study
| everything EE focus only on those subjects that are
| relevant.
|
| This is something that I've seen often in self study plans
| for software development - the "learn everything and then
| try to use it" rather than "learn what you need to start
| solving the problem... and start solving it."
|
| In software development this often takes the form of a
| self-learner learnings Java, JavaScript, Python, C, and
| C++. Once in an interview it becomes apparent that they
| don't know enough about any one language to solve a problem
| _in_ that language.
|
| This is where a university class (and degree) have an
| advantage - they've got a set of problems for the student
| to solve (homework and labs) and then take the student
| through learning specific knowledge to solve those
| problems.
|
| This also shows what self teaching often lacks - those
| small problems that can be accomplished as part of learning
| how to solve the big problems.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| OP has a formal background in applied mathematics and is
| an experienced software engineer, I don't think he will
| have any problems with generalization.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > It seems to cover your typical BSEE, and you need an
| exposure to all of it.
|
| Hard disagree. Much of the page involves what normally would
| be electives. You need exposure to some subset, but not all
| of it.
|
| To give you an idea, my undergrad in EE did not require a
| course on materials (although it was an elective).
|
| Everything in "Phase 2" was an elective - none was required
| (although many universities do require the "electronic
| devices" course).
|
| Needless to say, if everything in Phase 2 was an elective, so
| was everything in Phase 3.
|
| Also, when I look at pretty much any job requiring EE, and
| intersect it with the courses I took as an EE undergrad, I
| find that most courses are not needed. EE (and an EE
| curriculum) is often quite broad. For any given course, there
| are plenty of jobs that will need that course, but most EE
| jobs will not. If the submitter has some specific goal in
| mind, he won't lose much by skipping courses not related to
| that goal.
|
| To give you an idea, when I worked as an EE, I had to use
| basic circuit theory 2 or 3 times, digital logic only once,
| and the physics of electronic devices a lot. The level of EM
| I needed was satisfied by high school physics, so I won't
| even count EM. Everything else I took: Control theory,
| communications, electronic circuits, power/machines: Never
| used it.
| madengr wrote:
| I design RF/Microwave circuits and antennas. I've used
| everything I learned from my BSEE at one time or another,
| and they keep popping up.
|
| The analog/EM/RF/Comns/DSP is a given.
|
| Control theory showed me s-parameters are derived from
| Masons gain rule. Root locus stability plots are another
| method of power amplifier stability analysis, and of course
| closed loop circuits such as PLL and AGC.
|
| I use discrete logic all the time for sequencing circuits.
| Do a lot microcontroller programming in C to get my RF
| circuits going, and have needed to do simple Verilog to
| test my RF stuff connected to FPGA.
|
| The only thing I don't use professionally is
| Thermogodamics, but now I'm glad I took it. I was watching
| a YouTube video the other day on a power plant tour.
| Entropy, enthalpy, nozzles, steam saturation tables. It's
| all good to have some knowledge of.
| 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.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Videos of Anant Agarwal's lectures that closely follow his
| "Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits" book
| are online: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-
| and-compu...
| bucket2015 wrote:
| These are awesome recommendations - thanks!
| WillSlim95 wrote:
| Also for Digital Control Systems, check out this book by Tim
| Wescott
|
| Applied control theory for embedded systems
|
| It is less math intensive and more intuitive and aims at
| folks with a software background like yourself.
| bsder wrote:
| The one problem I see is "The Art of Electronics".
|
| I Horowitz and Hill is a _LOUSY_ textbook. And, personally, I
| find its usefulness as a cookbook overrated.
|
| Going through the Forrest Mims notebooks/cookbooks/etc. for a
| solution to your problem is generally a way better idea than
| Horowitz and Hill. The Mims stuff does a really good job of
| pointing out the pitfalls you're likely to hit as well as the
| basic pedagogy.
| throwaway348422 wrote:
| Totally agree it's a lousy textbook, but it's not a cookbook
| either. It's more like the Cliff's Notes version of many many
| many application notes. One needs to be somewhat experienced
| to take advantage of it. For example, you might be decent at
| amplifiers but now you need to do a low noise measurement.
| Read the low noise chapter on AoA first. Now you know the lay
| of the land and you can understand the vocabulary of the area
| and navigate the actual datasheets and application notes.
| sabujp wrote:
| The most interesting EE class I took was on MEMS, NOEMS, and
| MOEMS, i highly recommend you learn how that stuff works esp if
| you're going to work on human/brain interfaces. Then there's also
| biomedical engineering stuff, i.e. learning about strength of
| materials, micro fluidics, etc
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I would add this cheap book to anyone interested in EE, or
| fooling around with circuits. The book just basically goes back
| to Ohm's law, but I guess there are EE whom graduate, but forget
| the basics?
|
| Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in
| School
| rramadass wrote:
| I disagree; this book is too shallow and uneven. It is one of
| the books that i bought when i started on
| Electrical/Electronics self-study and was disappointed.
| 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.
| brighton36 wrote:
| Autodidacts > Students. This is fantastic. I love it.
| 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.
| geeB wrote:
| I think a lot depends on what your goal is. Is it to better
| understand the methods section in the papers you are reading, or
| do you want to do some experimental work, or you have a job you
| are going after, or...
|
| This is extremely broad and ambitious. Younger me would have said
| go for it as I loved to learn everything, but older me has
| forgotten much of the stuff that I so much loved to learn, so I
| moved to the camp of learning what you need.
|
| Unfortunately I don't know too much about brain-computer
| interfaces, especially if it's cutting edge research.
|
| At a high level, these are my recommendations:
|
| The basic ideas about how circuits work is presented in any
| introductory book, the E&M book (Purcell) would mostly be useful
| for device physics and transmission lines plus other RF topics
| (mostly EMI, crosstalk, and other things that can go wrong). Some
| purists might argue on which side of the equation an inductor
| voltage should be, but it has zero practical effect. Also, this
| is a book for usually the second physics course in college, so
| you might have done that already and just need a refresher.
|
| Similarly, unless you expect to be either developing novel
| devices, or be involved in fabricating existing devices in new
| nodes/conditions, you can skip anything about devices (types,
| structures, fabrication, materials, electron bands, doping
| concentrations, diffusion, drift, etc) and just the
| voltage/current behavior between pins should be plenty (these are
| covered in any introductory book). The chemistry book is mostly
| irrelevant for EE, although in the neuroscience case it's more
| applicable if we are talking about invasive electrodes (but
| still, probably too general and broad).
|
| Books on integrated circuits depend a bit on whether you need to
| learn about some other topics that are not usually presented on
| their own, such as fast amplifiers, mixers, oscillators, etc with
| CMOS technology. I'd say though that RF/MW integrated circuits
| differs considerably from discrete RF/MW work, so again most
| likely you'll get away with treating various parts as opaque
| building blocks, connected by transmission lines. And I'm going
| to guess that for BCIs the frequencies involved are quite low, so
| this whole branch might be irrelevant.
|
| Probably you'll need to learn the basics of data converters to
| digitize the brain signals, but again I'm not sure this warrants
| going through a course versus just the wikipedia page and a
| datasheet of a specific part you want to use. As with the other
| things above, courses are usually designed for people making
| converters, not people using them.
|
| Signals, systems, feedback, control systems are very fundamental
| "mathy" engineering tools that apply to more than just EE, so
| probably a good tool to have in general.
|
| I see your questions about wireless systems. Again as above.
| Usually these books are designed for people wanting to develop
| these things professionally, and if you just want to communicate
| wirelessly it's mostly learning the "API" that some chip has to
| do what you want. Not to mention the compliance nightmare to roll
| your own if it's beyond a handful of prototypes.
|
| I think you get the theme. Sadly EE outside the companies making
| ICs has become very similar to software where you are basically
| plumbing black boxes together. And if you don't have a standard
| application, with lots of time spent on figuring out hacks to use
| existing parts in non-standard ways, because if you can't find
| the perfect part the barrier to rolling your own is much steeper
| than not in software.
|
| So in a way, The Art of Electronics is very applicable.
| Unfortunately I think it's terrible to learn from unless you
| already know the stuff, and (unless it has been refreshed to the
| point of a major rewrite) the copy I have is extremely outdated
| that I never really recommend it to anyone, and I haven't opened
| it in a decade.
|
| Unfortunately I don't know of such thing, but if anyone here
| knows a course from the Neuroscience side doing experimental
| work, you could see what the prerequisites for that are, and go
| from there.
|
| But if you are not like me and can still learn a lot of new
| things without forgetting too much, go for it all and live the
| dream!
| 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)
| nom wrote:
| Don't try to do too much at once, you won't get anywhere. You
| probably got inspired by the recent growth of interest in BCIs,
| right? Please realize how complicated that subject is - it dwarfs
| AI and it's closest applications like self driving by one or two
| orders of magnitude, depending on who you talk to.
|
| Assume that workable consumer BCIs will come within ~2 decades
| and focus on only a small part of it, that's the only way you can
| contribute meaningfully.
|
| > I am almost certainly missing something important, but I don't
| know what.
|
| You will know once you start. Don't plan too much - pick a
| realistic goal and just start. Build a clock. Program a
| microcontroller. Log your heartbeat. Measure your brainwaves with
| OpenBCI. Build a feedback loop of some kind. Get a feeling for
| it.
| mjfl wrote:
| How much time does this person have to devote to this?
| dboreham wrote:
| 35 years since I graduated. A little surprised to find that many
| of the books are the same.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Noticeably absent from the curriculum is anything to do with
| gate-level electronic design, which makes up a vast percentage
| of the bulk of 2021 electronics.
|
| I sometimes wonder how much of the practical and theoretical
| know-home related to designing modern cutting-edge silicon is
| actually buried in the brains of private sector workers and how
| much of it makes it back to academia.
| 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.
|
| Edit:
|
| A suggestion: Along with the list of EE areas you want to learn,
| why not add to your post a list of all the areas you already know
| in maths? HN readers may be able to link the areas that you want
| to learn with what you already know. It's hard to make such links
| yourself, as you don't yet know what each EE topic contains.
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| The core of EE is Fourier analysis and BCI is no exception but
| you should be strong there because you've studied applied math.
| Most of your target books are good after your HN update, but one
| thing you are missing that will probably make a big difference
| are some books on measurement science. You'll want to get some
| focused both on EE and biomed/biology because they will focus on
| different things and both are relevant to your interests.
| Eventually you'll also want to touch on some non-linear and
| statistical control which play into the implementation of the
| more modern cutting edge BCIs. DSP overlaps a lot with this but
| still has some uniqueness you'll need to learn to put things into
| practice.
|
| Just an FYI, a lot of BCI companies are running stuff like
| repurposed audio analyzers ala the U8903B for lab work and bench
| testing their designs. Parallelism is the name of the game, and
| analog performance requirements aren't super strict so you won't
| be designing custom ICs any time soon unless you want to work on
| the probe interfaces themselves (which are more MEMS than circuit
| design but need a little of both).
|
| Something like Medical Instrumentation: Application and Design by
| Webster is a great place for a beginner who wants to toy with
| human interfacing circuits. Back it up with something like The
| Art of Electronics and that will get you to professional lab tech
| territory.
| 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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| since raspberry pi came out, I did read about electronics, and
| one thing that surprised me is that physics and electricity are
| only one side, you may need electrochemistry, material science,
| mechanics .. it's wide
| 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/
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| YMMV, but I tried to self-study out of "Art of Electronics" and I
| ended up giving up because I didn't feel like I was getting the
| fundamental basic circuit analysis skills that I needed to
| actually comprehend everything they were doing. The difficulty
| level ramped up very quickly, at least for me. I suspect that it
| might be better as a reference for a project than a self-study
| textbook.
|
| I ended up reading through "Foundations of Analog and Digital
| Electronics" and was quite happy with it. Though I believe there
| are other textbooks that are more commonly used for learning
| basic circuit analysis.
|
| And I am going through Oppenheim & Wilsky now and have no
| complaints. The last chapter is on linear feedback systems so
| you'll get a bit of the control theory background there.
|
| Not sure what I want to read next... maybe digital signal
| processing or control theory. I have no real goal in mind here
| (outside of an interest in RF), just reading for fun.
| [deleted]
| avaldeso wrote:
| > YMMV, but I tried to self-study out of "Art of Electronics"
| and I ended up giving up because I didn't feel like I was
| getting the fundamental basic circuit analysis skills that I
| needed to actually comprehend everything they were doing. The
| difficulty level ramped up very quickly, at least for me.
|
| Same here. "Practical electronics for inventors" ended up being
| way more approachable.
| 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.
| mackmgg wrote:
| I've got some good free resource recommendations if you want:
|
| https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/text/... -
| An excellent free "Intro to Electronics" course from Analog. In
| fact, all of the courses on their website are pretty good, I
| would say comparable to what you would get at a university minus
| the TA support when things don't work. But /r/ECE or Stack
| Overflow can probably help if you ever end up really stuck.
|
| https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/softwa... -
| Another from Analog, it's a great resource for learning SDR. It
| assumes you're coming from an EE background though, so it would
| be helpful to do the fundamentals first.
|
| http://freerangefactory.org/pdf/df344hdh4h8kjfh3500ft2/free_... -
| Free Range VHDL is what my FPGA class used, and it's free!
|
| I would also suggest playing with some ECAD software like
| DipTrace or KiCAD. It's generally not part of a normal EE
| curriculum, but really should be! Being able to draw a schematic
| or lay out a circuit board will be useful if you have any
| advanced projects you want to try at home. Especially with cheap
| fabs like OshPark it's a good skill to have.
| 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
| jacobolus wrote:
| Unfortunately these kits are unavailable from either digikey
| or mouser, because they include various obsolete parts which
| are no longer sold.
|
| Here's the website for the book
| https://learningtheartofelectronics.com
| 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.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| I have undergrad degrees in EE and physics. There is barely
| any similarities besides a class or two in electrodynamics.
|
| I even went a step further with how involved with physics I
| was during the EE degree and specialized in RF; hardly any of
| that was covered in my physics degree.
| achillesheels wrote:
| I think it's eye opening that physicists cannot explain how
| a computer operates physically lol
| BeetleB wrote:
| > but there is a humongous overlap between your typical
| undergraduate physics and electrical engineering degree
|
| As someone who has a degree in both: Hard disagree. The
| physics curriculum had one course on circuits/electronics
| combined, and they covered almost nothing practical when it
| came to tools like oscilloscopes, etc. Few physicists I know
| have heard of "3db point". No statistics in the physics
| curriculum (no, quantum mechanics and stat mechanics don't
| count). Absolutely nothing with regards to digital,
| communications, or control theory.
|
| The only real overlap was math, EM and semiconductors. Most
| people who get an EE degree are not targeting that world.
| aj7 wrote:
| No. I disagree, and I'm a Physics SB and PhD (lasers). EE is
| a discipline unto itself. A stack of physicstextbooks and
| coursework is useless when you need to build a circuit that
| does what you need. Indeed, even writing down the desired
| circuit specs in a reasonably professional manner has zero
| overlap with physics.
| billfruit wrote:
| Also perhaps units conventions etc may be different in EE
| and Physics, like use of Gaussian units in electrodynamics
| in Physics, and also things like the mysterious
| 'Z'-transform that seems to pervade much of EE.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Gaussian units seem to be on their way out. I, for one,
| won't miss them. (Or cgs.)
|
| The Z-transform is much more related to the others than
| is clear at first glance. This post on transforms [0]
| from the The n-Category Cafe is fascinating, and my go-to
| for understanding what the Laplace transform really _is_
| , even if I don't quite grasp many things in the post.
| (And I also have a math degree! But not a graduate one in
| active use, as most of the people around there do.)
|
| https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2019/07/what_is_the_
| lap...
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| > the Laplace transform is really just a generalization
| of the familiar Laurent series representation of complex
| analytic functions, but where the exponents are allowed
| to be non-integers and to "vary continuously" rather than
| discretely.
|
| I understand some of these words... they're very familiar
| to me...
|
| I'm saying this as someone who's dealt with the discrete
| and continuous time Fourier transforms, and Z-transform,
| and wants to get into Laplace transforms.
| posterboy wrote:
| https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2018/02/mlab.html
|
| it might as well be from a random text gwnerator
| aj7 wrote:
| Gaussian units make physics prettier.
|
| "Avoid for new designs"
| krapht wrote:
| If it's just circuit design, the difference between an EE
| and a physicist is 6-9 credit hours of courses. You will
| both share all the necessary prerequisites in mathematics
| (mostly Fourier analysis, linear algebra, basic statistics,
| and differential equations) and electromagnetics.
|
| New graduates in EE also can't do the things you listed :)
| throwaway348422 wrote:
| Very good point. Often I think the hardest part about
| being an EE is using our CAD tools.
| aj7 wrote:
| 6-9 credit course of courses and you're a circuit
| designer? You are dreaming. Which capacitors are used for
| what function? What kind of trouble can you get into if
| your comparator is too fast? Do they tell you that a 7800
| series regulator needs a load? Going to school is good.
| But if the alternative is 6-9 course hours, I'll get
| further with scope, meter, soldering iron, app notes, and
| LTSpice in the same time than that student. And I assure
| you, from the bottom of my heart, as a near-expert in
| both, that the Fourier analysis in quantum mechanics,
| solid state physics, optics, etc. bears little
| resemblance to that used in signals and systems and DSP.
| LITTLE. RESEMBLANCE.
| madengr wrote:
| Ha ha, no way there is only a 9 credit difference. I'm an
| EE, and had 6 specific physics courses in undergrad.
|
| Engineering Physics 1 & 2 EM 1 & 2 Thermo Modern Physics
|
| That in no way takes me near a physics BA, in the same
| way it takes a physics BA a BSEE.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| > New graduates in EE also can't do the things you listed
| :)
|
| That was the spirit of my point, yes :)
|
| More than once I've heard a coworker complain that "I
| wish I had learned about _that_ in school instead of
| [filler course so useless that I forgot what they said].
| "
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm a physicist too, and learned electronics on my own. I don't
| have an engineering job title, but have done fairly extensive
| design work. In my workplace, I'm the go-to person for anything
| analog and quantitative, such as figuring out a noise budget
| for a measurement system, as well as for figuring out how to
| prove that it actually works. Horowitz and Hill had a chapter
| entitled "digital meets analog," and there should be another
| chapter, "analog meets physics."
|
| Like others have said, there's a lot of overlap, especially for
| experimental physicists, which is what I studied. The stuff
| that makes studying engineering hard for a lot of students is
| the math and physics.
|
| There are subjects that we don't learn in physics, such as
| control theory. Yes, that's worth learning. I defer to
| engineers for really hard feedback control problems. My
| approach is instead, to design the hardware so its physical
| characteristics make the control problem easy. That's not
| always possible.
|
| One reason why we can find a way to fit in, is the huge
| diversity within engineering itself, leaving some niches that
| look a lot like what physicists do. When I taught in an
| engineering department for one semester, the professors always
| had their latest papers posted outside their office doors, and
| I noticed that one prof seemed to publish everything in
| _Physical Review_.
|
| Out in the work world, a lot of people with engineering job
| titles don't really do engineering: They can be quite busy and
| productive, and rewarded, for basically arranging things,
| fitting things together, troubleshooting, dealing with vendors,
| and so forth. In fact, they can get so busy at that stuff that
| they forget their math and theory, leaving the physicist as the
| go-to "math person" when a quantitative problem needs to be
| solved.
|
| Then there are what I call the _real_ engineers, for whom the
| engineering skill is accompanied by an attitude and discipline
| about making things safe, reliable, maintainable, and traceable
| to documented and published information. These are the ones who
| won 't accept a measured value, but need to see it guaranteed
| on a data sheet. I'm not that kind of engineer, and I admit it.
| And we definitely need that kind of engineer for systems that
| potentially involve public safety or massive economic
| liability.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > a lot of people with engineering job titles don't really do
| engineering: They can be quite busy and productive, and
| rewarded, for basically arranging things, fitting things
| together, troubleshooting, dealing with vendors, and so
| forth.
|
| In my work, the title "manufacturing engineer" title goes to
| people that work all day (and at a hard pace) doing nothing
| other than working in the PLM system, orchestrating ECO
| bureaucracy, and BOM work. To them, the actual products are
| nothing more than a collection of part numbers and rules
| applied in a cumbersome framework. I _almost_ feel sorry for
| them. The sad thing is, there 's an increasing population of
| these types, along with product/project managers and supply-
| chain specialists, while at the same time a decrease in
| engineers and techs.
|
| I also have a physics educational background and make my
| living doing a weird mix of EE, software, and failure
| analysis work. I love my job, I see myself as a kind of
| general purpose problem-solver. Unfortunately actual hands-on
| technical generalists, IMHO, are in a downward spiral these
| days as far as status within large organizations goes.
|
| The OP, I hope, is aware of this. He might be happier
| specializing in his interests and teaming up with other
| specialists who focus on EE.
| throwaway348422 wrote:
| > The sad thing is, there's an increasing population of
| these types, along with product/project managers and
| supply-chain specialists, while at the same time a decrease
| in engineers and techs.
|
| This makes total sense to me. The bulk of time I've spent
| on many projects goes into supply chain management and
| factory coordination. I can easily see how the work of one
| engineer can keep 10 people like this busy full time.
| analog31 wrote:
| Something I keep thinking about is that 100 years ago we
| had a huge cadre of workers called "clerks," whose job was
| basically to gather, organize, and transfer information.
| You'd think those people would be replaced by computers,
| but there's always a bit of complexity in each transaction
| that needs the human touch: Does this ECO make sense, for
| instance.
|
| Outside of engineering, a lot of people with "manager"
| titles are similarly engaged. Their supervisory work, while
| important, is about 4 hours of work per week. The rest of
| the time is spent on tasks assigned to them, such as
| creating a new process for replenishing the hand sanitizer,
| or approving documents.
|
| It's just that we _believe_ that by now we should have
| eliminated clerks, so to make ourselves seem modern, we re-
| title them engineers and managers.
| posterboy wrote:
| they are titled engineer if that's what their diploma
| says, which is indeed not that rare, and maybe paires
| well with software engineers fresh out of college who
| fail fizzbuzz (as mentioned before in this thread),
| precisely because so much of software engineering is
| glueing packages together.
|
| I'm not saying that's a bad development. It's just what
| it is, probably follows a smooth bell curve distribution
| of expertiese. The hard stuff is just, like, really hard
| (as is English!)
| analog31 wrote:
| I think it's an inevitable outgrowth of complexity. If
| the number of pieces grows by O(n), then interactions
| between pieces grows by O(n^2). It doesn't take much
| complexity before gluing pieces together becomes the
| dominant activity in an enterprise.
| madengr wrote:
| > So much of what EEs learn in their coursework is of low
| utility.
|
| >I have never had a single EE course
|
| Enough said.
| sleavey wrote:
| I'm interested in how you found the transition from physics to
| EE. Did you target any particular "entry" jobs in the industry
| that were more genial towards physicists for instance? I'm a
| physicist with some electronics experience and I've got the
| idea to move into some EE-related field one day.
|
| And +1 for Art of Electronics, it's the bible for physicists
| working with electronics.
| rasz wrote:
| >or you can dive in to projects and refer to textbooks when you
| get stuck
|
| You dont know what you dont know. Its better to at least read
| all of the coursework even fast and without understanding than
| go green and make basic I didnt know that existed mistakes.
| 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?!').
| throwaway348422 wrote:
| Also, there are big differences within the field of just
| something like analog signal processing, which will be very
| important for this project. The textbook linked (Sedra&Smith)
| is great if one plans to pursue analog in VLSI but not so great
| if one wants to do it on a PCB (I think Franco's amplifier text
| is way better here).
|
| Brain-computer is going to be very tough, even ignoring all the
| safety and physically wiring into a brain stuff. The signals
| are irregular, weak and fast which makes them very difficult
| (but not impossible obviously) to measure.
| apcragg wrote:
| As a practicing EE / RF comms engineer, I will say that it is
| very obvious when you're working with someone who thinks that
| their EE coursework wasn't useful for the real world.
| eigenvector wrote:
| As a practicing EE (power systems), I agree. It often becomes
| clear when someone is unable to distinguish a practical limit
| (this equipment is not rated for X, our operating procedures
| prohibit doing X) from a physical one (X is not possible
| because of underlying physical principles).
| disabled wrote:
| This. There are so many real world, practical, and
| pragmatic uses for EE. This example, which is basically
| knowing that the hardware specifications cannot meet the
| claims that are being made about a product, in an accurate
| or reliable fashion, is one I use on an everyday basis.
|
| You don't fall for marketing gimmicks.
|
| Another thing is you know the relative price (ballpark
| figure) of the technology, as in how much it costs to make
| something, often just by eyeballing the actual product or
| by looking at its specifications. Sometimes this translates
| to more abstract and somewhat unrelated fields such as
| medications (if you read the patents and study them).
| someguydave wrote:
| Yeah I have run into plenty of EE's who don't understand how
| to model a simple filter, for instance.
| cushychicken wrote:
| The first interview question is always an RC filter.
|
| It's an easy leading indicator of who has their shit
| together.
| panda88888 wrote:
| RC filter is like fizzbuzz for EE.
| cushychicken wrote:
| And, like fizzbuzz, lots of people fail it.
| someguydave wrote:
| yep exactly, even with training and degrees and claims of
| competence
| rasz wrote:
| One of those is a basic building block used in pretty
| much everything, the other is software bullshit.
| randomchars wrote:
| Looping through a list of items, and doing different
| operations based on their value is an extremely common
| occurrence, and you'd hard pressed to find a codebase
| that doesn't use that pattern somewhere.
| jmchuster wrote:
| Welp, this is why interview fizzbuzz exists, because some
| people think of it as "software bullshit" instead of the
| simplest possible program you can imagine that should
| come out as fast as you can type it.
| krapht wrote:
| I feel attacked. I'm a DSP engineer and I haven't
| implemented an analog filter since I graduated. If we got
| into detail on RC filter gain and phase shift I'd fail.
| Do I have to give my EE degree back?
| posterboy wrote:
| Don't the software methods have very similar problems?
| rasz wrote:
| As an EE you should know what goes in front of ADC to
| avoid aliasing.
| throwaway348422 wrote:
| I think it depends on what is meant by details. For a DSP
| engineer, if details are not knowing the difference
| between and RC made with ceramic or film cap, I'd give a
| pass there. If details are not solving continuous time
| equations in the form 1/s, that's probably a fail.
| posterboy wrote:
| or you buy a _basic building block_ ADC and follow
| instructions.
| eigenvector wrote:
| No, but you at least realize an analog filter is a thing
| that exists. You don't remember the specifics, but you
| could study them if you needed to.
| posterboy wrote:
| fizzbuzz is literally a filter, albeit digital, and it
| involces a circuit, well a loop in most realizations,
| too.
|
| It's probably at the same level of complexity, give or
| take.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| You are not going to start anywhere near the area where you
| have to go "full custom". That is, you won't be spinning
| custom ICs, you'll be assembling custom PCBs from off-the-
| shelf components. Possibly expensive ones. But that $1000 OTS
| part is an _insane bargain_ compared to any chip fabbed just
| for you.
|
| First make your thing do something, anything at all. Second,
| make it do something useful. Third, make it do the _right_
| thing, the thing you need, your goal from the beginning. Only
| _then_ should you optimize it, making it smaller or cheaper
| or lower power or prettier or.... This is the road to success
| in the "R" phase of R&D.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| sleavey wrote:
| > analog circuits
|
| Can you expand on how analog electronics benefits in
| particular from a formal EE education? I build analog
| circuits (amplifiers, filters, power supplies mostly) very
| frequently in my job as a physicist. We have to care about
| noise so I've picked up a knowledge of how to deal with it in
| analog circuits. Is there some other area of analog
| electronics that "hackers" like me might not get exposed to,
| compared to an EE undergrad? I'm thinking of moving into EE
| and would like to work out the gaps in my knowledge. I also
| ask because I can see obvious reasons why your other example
| - RF electronics - would benefit from formal training but
| none for analog electronics.
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| Physics and EE have a lot of overlap and exposure to analog
| circuits in undergrad is pretty shallow. There will
| typically be a class that covers RLC and switched circuits
| in time and frequency domain and the basic uses of
| amplifiers and filters. After that it's theory applied from
| Fourier analysis and control theory and then they'll have a
| class on semiconductor physics and another that covers
| basic amplifier design. These days a lot of focus is on
| integrated chip design instead of board design. As far as
| most board level design these days, someone coming from a
| physics background will pick it up just fine on the job or
| in the lab as long as you have solid fundamentals.
|
| More advanced stuff that you probably lack vs a practicing
| EE or an EE graduate education is going to be edge cases,
| advanced stability analysis, translinear logic and exposure
| to all the different types of component design. There are
| tons of different types of say amplifiers used in specific
| applications whereas most people working in a lab just slap
| opAmps on everything. A lot of advanced analog design is
| just applied control theory. Also keep in mind that these
| days Digital, RF, and Analog all blur a lot in a cutting
| edge design environment.
|
| Quick Edit: A lot of the more traditional EE design
| companies will consider someone with a physics degree to be
| equivalent to someone with an EE degree unless they are
| looking for a very specific niche.
| sleavey wrote:
| Thanks for the reply! Happy to hear they might consider
| my physics background. Stability is another thing I have
| to deal with a lot.
| someguydave wrote:
| Probably not. I'm thinking of things like Laplace
| transforms and their relationship to differential
| equations, and stability analysis for things like amp
| feedback. Most of that you should have gotten academically
| in physics, just with a more specialized application when
| applying it to how you model an inductor or capacitor for
| instance.
|
| But if you can design an amplifier or power supply, you
| probably already understand how to think of all the basic
| circuit elements and write down a differential equation
| modeling the circuit behavior.
|
| With respect to RF, it's also a large field. In lower
| frequency regimes you can model everything as a lumped
| circuit element. As you get into higher microwave
| frequencies, you start needing to worry about modeling
| things as a distributed circuit. If you are focusing on
| things like antennas then you need to know more about
| electromagnetics. These days practicing engineers dealing
| with things like antennas and feedlines typically model
| them with computers. In some ways RF analog circuitry is
| disappearing as ADCs and associated digital circuitry are
| becoming advanced enough to swallow large bandwidth
| signals.
|
| In many ways EE is pretty close to "applied physics", just
| focusing more on emag and less on mechanics.
| sleavey wrote:
| I don't tend to dig down into equations and just use the
| simple heuristics I've built up from examining other
| designs. I guess with a bit of practice I could do it
| though. Thanks for the info!
| apcragg wrote:
| I would suggest adding Communication Systems by John Proakis. It
| is the seminal text for digital comms and should be included,
| given the plan's foray into SDRs.
| 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.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Depending on the level of electronics background, I have great
| luck have people fall in love with the subject using _Forrest M.
| Mims III_ authored books.
|
| Specifically with the " _Getting Started in Electronics_ " and
| his " _Engineer 's Mini-Notebook_" series.
| bschne wrote:
| Onur Mutlu's Digital Design & Computer Architecture course at ETH
| Zurich seems to be quite well regarded, and all the lectures &
| materials are openly available online. It uses Harris & Harris as
| a textbook, IIRC.
|
| https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/lecture-videos.html
| [deleted]
| pasttense01 wrote:
| Why don't you go to Amazon and buy some books on brain-computer
| interfaces, start reading them and when you get stuck read the
| relevant electrical engineering information?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brain-computer+interfaces&i=strip...
| person_of_color wrote:
| Study backend SWE, higher RoI
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Before any of that, read the book "Div, Grad, Curl, and All That:
| An Informal Text on Vector Calculus" by H. M. Schey. It will make
| math of EE, particularly the interaction between electricity and
| magnetism (Maxwell's equations) a lot easier to understand.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Radio - Get an RTL-SDR dongle kit, and install GNU radio. Being
| able to get signals from the real world, and manipulate them via
| a flowgraph lets you do far more hands on than years of labs used
| to.
|
| I've implemented all the standard things, AM, FM, SSB radios,
| etc.. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to decode and display
| the local VOR beacon near my house.
|
| You can also play with audio frequencies, and your microphone and
| speakers... it's fairly easy to get an intuitive idea of what a
| _negative_ frequency really means if you have an IQ channel.
| rramadass wrote:
| Neat idea. I have been wanting to do something like this for a
| long time to really understand Wireless RF.
|
| But i find Gnu Radio somewhat intimidating (not having a
| Signals/DSP background). Are there any books/articles/videos
| etc. which will ease my learning curve? Note that i already
| know of Michael Ossmann's course with HackRF
| (https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/)
| mikewarot wrote:
| Everything in GNU radio is a flowgraph (a fancy flowchart,
| actually a directed acyclic graph).
|
| The thing is you can take an existing flowgraph, modify it,
| and see what happens in about 30 seconds.
|
| This video seems to be a good starting point:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufxBX_uNCa0
| aj7 wrote:
| I'm kind of self-trained in EE. It is important to have basic
| courses in Signals & Systems and logic design. The former, in
| particular, is not something that you are likely to acquire on
| your own. You and I share a love for Purcell. However it has
| little to do with EE. It is a physics book, and EE is not
| physics. You will never use or need to even know that the
| magnetic field arises from a relativistic transformation of the
| linear charge density of a current. I have a recommendation.
| Become an expert in LTSpice. Also, for about $2k, you can
| assemble a nice lab of Chinese scope, power supply, multimeter,
| soldering station, selection of ICs, resistors, caps, and a power
| supply. And if you are going digital, you need to learn VHDL.
| 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. COB 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
| keeping find lame excuse "I'm not a logic/power/high
| speed/rf/motion control/asynchronos
| circuit/metrology/network/audiovideo engineer! I did not study
| this at school!"
| hvasilev wrote:
| Given that you already have a job and a family to support (at
| some point?), I would say that this is realistically a 15+ year
| plan that you've built yourself.
|
| I also had a hardware interest later my career and my approach
| was slightly different. I found an embedded systems job that pays
| about 3 times less than what I used to get paid (since I have no
| experience). It is definitely fun and I learn a lot, but I
| definitely don't have the financial freedoms that I used to have.
| I'm not sure which is the correct approach, but surely there is
| no "easy" way of getting there.
|
| Please have in mind that this is a very serious time (and
| financial in my case) commitment that you are about to make.
| ci5er wrote:
| Nicely written. For certain.
|
| Would it be cruel to suggest that you might want to advance a bit
| more before weighng in ?
|
| I'd say that semiconductor physics, real math, control systems,
| real mixed signal and a couple of others should get a go ... but
| my eldest child didn't get much past this, so maybe the state of
| the art today?
|
| Again- I mean no cruelty in my comments, but seems as if modern
| curricula are not teaching a person what a person needs to know
| to go into any related industry job...
|
| (And I could be wrong - as I often am)
| dboreham wrote:
| > not teaching a person what a person needs to know to go into
| any related industry job
|
| I'm not sure they ever did. They should imho be teaching the
| ability to learn and adapt to changing and emerging
| technologies, and to think critically. I'm still using the
| mathematics I learned in college, to understand things that
| didn't exist back then such as elliptic curve cryptography.
| ci5er wrote:
| Well, I don't know how old you were, but ECC has existed in
| college for a long time - but may not have been so useful to
| a lot of engineers building machines (for sure), at the time.
| 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.
| Avtomatk wrote:
| And why not build a team with professionals in each field? Create
| a cooperative.
|
| I am currently investigating more efficient forms of study (which
| would imply creating a new language) for the compression of
| academic text (which is often very long and not very accessible
| to inexperienced people).
|
| Whoever is interested in studying with me, my email is:
| fabricioteran06@gmail.com (I speak Spanish)
| OnlyOneCannolo wrote:
| Some of your reference materials are overkill and better suited
| to guided classes than self-study.
|
| For basic circuits and electronics, I'd recommend _Electronics
| with Professor Fiore_. It 's comprehensive with free lecture
| videos, textbooks, and lab manuals.
|
| https://www2.mvcc.edu//users/faculty/jfiore/index.cfm
|
| For digital, _Introduction to Logic Circuits & Logic Design with
| Verilog_ by LaMeres (not free, sorry).
|
| https://www.montana.edu/blameres/
|
| For electromagnetism, Electromagnetics Volume 1 by Ellingson is
| free.
|
| https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/84164
|
| I don't have a signals & systems reference that I actually like
| and would recommend to anyone, unfortunately.
|
| That's pretty much the core of EE. Everything else is a
| specialization.
| Haarisgrey wrote:
| Of course we got people like this!. I smoke and I've been a
| smoker for years. Most of the time I am surrounded by people who
| do not smoke at all. Doesn't amaze me. I have some close friends,
| we hangout together international;y and vacation parties but they
| both have never smoked weed and I am a regular smoker and this
| thing doesn't affect our friendship at all. It's not about
| something being legal or illegal. If a thing is facilitating you
| either way it is totally okay for the other person to use it. I
| started using it for my chronic pain and eventually ended up like
| this. https://www.weedmarket420.us/ Being a marijuana enthusiast
| I keep on researching for good material and here I came across 5
| new researches! Have a good day!
| imranq wrote:
| I would spend more time understanding your motivation for brain
| computer interfaces. It seems more like a research project with
| some applications to neurodegenerative diseases, but to actually
| get anything done you'll need to master several fundamental texts
| which takes most people years.
|
| Spending just a week or two talking to all the experts could save
| a lot of wasted effort.
| 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, the EE analogue of the famed _Machinery's Handbook_.
|
| I also recommend _Signals and Systems_ by Oppenheim for any
| aspiring EE.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| mng2 wrote:
| Hi, I have degrees in EE and Physics. It's good that you want to
| get a well-rounded education, but I think focusing on E&M and
| circuit design will probably pay the most dividends.
|
| Purcell is a physics book, but I think with your math background
| it might be fine? From there I'd suggest Griffiths E&M, as far as
| setting up more complicated problems goes. I don't really like
| the EE-oriented E&M books, but if you need some of the "calculate
| this value" style of problem maybe you'd want to take a look at
| them.
|
| Circuit design is kind of unsatisfying these days since on the
| professional side there's a lot of throwing stuff in the
| simulator, especially with IC design. I'm an advocate for more
| hands-on stuff. For the absolute basics I feel there's no
| substitute for getting some LEDs, resistors, breadboard, and
| multimeter, and doing some kid level projects. Then there's audio
| projects, and RF projects, since once you've learned the textbook
| fundamentals of amplifiers, there's no substitute for building
| some. Pozar and the ARRL RF project book will take you a long
| way, though you'll have to buy some test equipment...
|
| But honestly, do you really want to get distracted from your main
| focus? You may have lost interest by the time you're done with
| the curriculum. There's a lot you can get done by forging ahead
| and just learning what you need to as you go along. Why learn
| amplifier design when the industry is all too happy to sell you a
| black box gain block? Why learn digital design when
| microcontrollers are getting faster and cheaper all the time? ;)
| rramadass wrote:
| You might find the following books (in addition to those listed
| by others here) helpful;
|
| _Practical Electrical Engineering by Makarov et.al._
|
| _Electronic Circuits: Handbook for Design and Application by
| Tietze, Schenk et.al._
|
| _Sensors and Signal Conditioning by Ramon Pallas-Areny et.al._
|
| _Introduction to Embedded Systems: Using Microcontrollers and
| the MSP430 by Jimenez et.al._
|
| _Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems by Michael Pont._
| 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.
| Badfood wrote:
| I took up EE professionaly at around age 38. I learned really
| quickly, and am currently quite productive. But there is a catch.
| I learned the basics when I was a kid, and got into ham radio. A
| basic knowledge and 'feeling' for what's going on in the
| electromagnetic space meant 25 years later I could learn at a
| rapid pace.
|
| So of course you can't go back in time and replicate that, but
| you can do this... Get SPICE, or better a real lab, and start
| messing around with the absolute basics until you can dream it
| like when you finally do when learning a second language.
|
| Without that primal understanding all the advanced stuff will
| just be rote memory learning.
|
| It will feel slow and you sound like someone who wants to move
| fast. But getting a feel for voltage and current and their basic
| interaction in a hands on way will set you up to absorb the more
| advanced stuff like a sponge.
|
| Just because you 'know' ohms law etc doesn't mean you can 'think'
| in ohms law like you do when you speak your first language.
|
| So go deep on the basics. Give it lots of boring hours. Then
| start getting into the more esoteric stuff.
|
| Enjoy the trip. Its been a wonderful one for me and I hope you
| get the same joy
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