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Any Electrical Engineering hobbies,skills,books to get into while in quarantine?
We still have over a week left till things start open up, I'm a sophmore EE student.
Any hobbies, skills, books to check out to become a more valuable engineer!?
Thank you for your help and time.
#engineering #engineer #student #student #electrical
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5 answers
Updated
Richard’s Answer
An EE with time to spare?
get to the geek!
buy a simple cheap micro-controller ... admit it .. you know where to go ... (hint.. ARDUINO) should cost less than $30
ok... drop every language you ever learned and study the actual machine instruction set!
Put led's on the output port and "pulldown" buttons on the input ports ( some boards already have them
Now were going to do the "blinky" state machine project...
study that processor! you will need to use machine coding ONLY to create a project that 1) polls the input for a "state" 2) uses and algorithm to convert that state into its decimal number of "blinks" 3) blink one of the output ports that number of times.
is the covid scare over? no? moving on
create a timer pulse with another output... hook it into a input and NAND it with the other inputs.
Use that to generate "interrupts" and set a "service" routine ( hint, minimize what you do in the service routine and return to a processing loop that reacts to a "state change" ... practice this concept ... get that routine FAST and efficient)
then set the "state" of your "interrupt service" on the other outputs ( three of em should do )
covid scare over?
use a countdown interrupt to bit shift and reduce your blinks to zero... practice bit shifting instead of math routines! Get that sucker going FASTER FASTER FASTER ... figure out how to shave every microsecond off your routine.
covid scare over?
make prank calls or whatever...
Richard "over in a blink" Wolf
get to the geek!
buy a simple cheap micro-controller ... admit it .. you know where to go ... (hint.. ARDUINO) should cost less than $30
ok... drop every language you ever learned and study the actual machine instruction set!
Put led's on the output port and "pulldown" buttons on the input ports ( some boards already have them
Now were going to do the "blinky" state machine project...
study that processor! you will need to use machine coding ONLY to create a project that 1) polls the input for a "state" 2) uses and algorithm to convert that state into its decimal number of "blinks" 3) blink one of the output ports that number of times.
is the covid scare over? no? moving on
create a timer pulse with another output... hook it into a input and NAND it with the other inputs.
Use that to generate "interrupts" and set a "service" routine ( hint, minimize what you do in the service routine and return to a processing loop that reacts to a "state change" ... practice this concept ... get that routine FAST and efficient)
then set the "state" of your "interrupt service" on the other outputs ( three of em should do )
covid scare over?
use a countdown interrupt to bit shift and reduce your blinks to zero... practice bit shifting instead of math routines! Get that sucker going FASTER FASTER FASTER ... figure out how to shave every microsecond off your routine.
covid scare over?
make prank calls or whatever...
Richard "over in a blink" Wolf
Updated
Ramniklal’s Answer
In addition to the recommendations by others, my thoughts revolve around:
* Data Analytics
* IoT sensors and solutions (Positioning such as Lidar, Environmental such as air quality, etc.)
* Security (Physical and Cyber)
I hope this helps.
* Data Analytics
* IoT sensors and solutions (Positioning such as Lidar, Environmental such as air quality, etc.)
* Security (Physical and Cyber)
I hope this helps.
Updated
Dexter’s Answer
Hi Taner,
The most fulfilling EE course I took at UC Berkeley was EE192, which was a semester-long course to design a autonomous toy car to follow a magnetic track and make it go around a race course as fast as possible. You can find more information here:https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/EE192/. At the end of the year, we went to UC Davis and raced in the "NATCAR" tournament: https://ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar .
This isn't to tell you to go make a car exactly like that, I think it'd be really difficult to do it by yourself in your sophomore year. Rather, it was when I learned how fun it was to think about problems, not just in the software sense, but to think about the marriage of software and hardware. For instance, the middle of the EE192 course, we found out this one nagging flaw with the car, as we couldn't get it to accelerate as fast as it should. We thought it was the magnetic sensor getting lost and it causing our motor to slow down. After hours of debugging, we couldn't find the issue. But when we took the car apart and cleaned the axel (and greased the moving parts), we found that it fixed the issue!
I would highly recommend you get an Arduino like Richard suggested, and go try a few of these that you find interesting: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-great-arduino-projects-for-beginners/ . I hope you have fun and I hope it makes you fall in love with EE. :)
--
Dexter
The most fulfilling EE course I took at UC Berkeley was EE192, which was a semester-long course to design a autonomous toy car to follow a magnetic track and make it go around a race course as fast as possible. You can find more information here:https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/EE192/. At the end of the year, we went to UC Davis and raced in the "NATCAR" tournament: https://ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar .
This isn't to tell you to go make a car exactly like that, I think it'd be really difficult to do it by yourself in your sophomore year. Rather, it was when I learned how fun it was to think about problems, not just in the software sense, but to think about the marriage of software and hardware. For instance, the middle of the EE192 course, we found out this one nagging flaw with the car, as we couldn't get it to accelerate as fast as it should. We thought it was the magnetic sensor getting lost and it causing our motor to slow down. After hours of debugging, we couldn't find the issue. But when we took the car apart and cleaned the axel (and greased the moving parts), we found that it fixed the issue!
I would highly recommend you get an Arduino like Richard suggested, and go try a few of these that you find interesting: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-great-arduino-projects-for-beginners/ . I hope you have fun and I hope it makes you fall in love with EE. :)
--
Dexter
Updated
Mikaela’s Answer
Hi Taner,
There are a lot of fun projects you can work on with a Raspberry Pi! For example:
- Bluetooth speakers
- Radio station
- Retro gaming machine
Most of my co workers do these projects in their spare time.
Also be sure to practice your ability to present/discuss in front of a crowd once covid is over!
There are a lot of fun projects you can work on with a Raspberry Pi! For example:
- Bluetooth speakers
- Radio station
- Retro gaming machine
Most of my co workers do these projects in their spare time.
Also be sure to practice your ability to present/discuss in front of a crowd once covid is over!
great idea here, and including the the presentation part. so key these days. could practice that by posting a youtube how to video!
David MacBeth
Updated
Robin’s Answer
Hi Taner,
I would suggest you to join LinkedIn, if you haven't done that already, and follow companies and people with your similar profile. Some companies provide free training and certificates while others will charge you for the training.
You can connect with people and widen your network. There is good chance you could meet someone there who might help you get an internship or even a job after you graduate.
You can follow people such as engineers, managers, CEO's and browsing through their profile can be an inspiration for you and help your career.
I would also suggest you to create general job searches for yourself on LinkedIn so that you can understand what skills companies are looking for in the market. You could browse through job portals as a form of job market research.
Hope this helps.
All the best.
I would suggest you to join LinkedIn, if you haven't done that already, and follow companies and people with your similar profile. Some companies provide free training and certificates while others will charge you for the training.
You can connect with people and widen your network. There is good chance you could meet someone there who might help you get an internship or even a job after you graduate.
You can follow people such as engineers, managers, CEO's and browsing through their profile can be an inspiration for you and help your career.
I would also suggest you to create general job searches for yourself on LinkedIn so that you can understand what skills companies are looking for in the market. You could browse through job portals as a form of job market research.
Hope this helps.
All the best.