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| Need help getting back into electronics! |
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| solderjoint13:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on September 29, 2020, 07:46:23 am --- I disagree. I returned after 20 years, and very little had changed since the early 80s. What has changed?: * components and equipment is smaller, faster, cheaper; only the latter is important! * nanopower is a topic * ADC/DAC speed and resolution * surface mount * cheap high quality PCBs * wireless comms modules * ebay, for high quality old test equipment (if you are careful and have patience!) Don't be afraid of surface mount. There are many tutorials around, e.g. https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/category/homebrew-pcbs/ --- End quote --- I just meant that with the job i have I don't do any real electronics troubleshooting and building. I got so busy that I put electronics "tinkering" to the side all these years. I've forgotten a lot of my math and rules of thumb from university. I agree that not much has changed. Thanks for the link. Surface mount soldering is something I haven't really touched. --- Quote from: paulca on September 28, 2020, 08:19:08 pm --- Any of them really. For Arduiino anyway. You can go with an offical Arduino or a clone. You can get kits with lots of basic toys to play with, like sensors and displays. For ESP8266 Wifi MCU I currently like the Wemos Mini D1, but the Lolan boards are good too. From AliExpress they are like $2.99 each. The modern Arduino space (including the ESPs and more) is very accessible, although frowned on as not hard-core enough. Also while accessible the community can be a bit dumb and most of the code is awful. --- End quote --- oh nice! I honetly had no idea that MCU boards were going this cheap. I don't need anything hardcore right now. Just something to get my feet wet again. Thanks |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: paulca on September 28, 2020, 08:19:08 pm --- --- Quote from: solderjoint13 on September 28, 2020, 01:32:53 pm --- Back in high school we did program in pic basic and some pic micro controller that I can’t remember what it was. Arduino is something I was looking into full around with. Is there a development board you would suggest @paulca? --- End quote --- Any of them really. For Arduiino anyway. You can go with an offical Arduino or a clone. You can get kits with lots of basic toys to play with, like sensors and displays. --- End quote --- It took me a long time to warm up to the Arduino but I've eventually come to like it quite a lot. It has plenty of warts, no argument there, however it is easily the most accessible, it is SO simple to get something up and running and while the quality varies there are ready to use drivers for just about any random widget you can order from China. Displays, sensors, DACs, ADCs, there is a ton of different stuff out there and getting almost any of it to do something is dead simple. For ESP8266 Wifi MCU I currently like the Wemos Mini D1, but the Lolan boards are good too. From AliExpress they are like $2.99 each. The modern Arduino space (including the ESPs and more) is very accessible, although frowned on as not hard-core enough. Also while accessible the community can be a bit dumb and most of the code is awful. |
| paulca:
--- Quote from: solderjoint13 on October 01, 2020, 02:42:27 am ---oh nice! I honetly had no idea that MCU boards were going this cheap. I don't need anything hardcore right now. Just something to get my feet wet again. Thanks --- End quote --- Yea and they just plug in to the USB port and the IDE is a single free download. You can of course make it more complicated later and building a barebones ATmega circuit on a breadboard is an nice beginner achievement/goal. |
| bsodmike:
Quick tip, checkout https://platformio.org/ It has a lot of the tooling already setup and one aspect I like about it is that I can run the same "wire" code on an ESP8226, and with relatively little work, run it on an Arduino. I prefer working in Vim/CLI and you have total freedom doing that, or firing up VSCode and using that works just as well. |
| Kjelt:
--- Quote from: solderjoint13 on August 31, 2020, 04:36:33 pm ---I'm reaching out to the forum in hope that i could get some guidance. Any good suggestions for books and online resources to get back into electronics? I probably just need a beginning quick refresh and then get into the more general intermediate stuff. I still know the simple stuff like ohms law, how to use a DMM, oscilloscope, but all the equations and especially anything to do with semiconductors I am at a loss. :'( Any help would be appreciated! I started pulling my scopes, power supply, function gen, boards, and meters out of storage so I'm getting ready. --- End quote --- I would really think twice if this is what you really want. If so go for it. But if you haven't spent any personal time the last ten years on the hobby it probably is not that interesting for you, but you woukd like to do it 40hrs a week now? In my country Only 10-20% (my guess) of EEs end up in a EE related hardware job. Most go commercial or in subfields like embedded programming which is where I ended up since there are little hardware jobs left. Also little knowledge you gained in the formal training is actually used in the job, most is practical know how often very domain specific where the company products are involved. A lot is simulated nowadays so knowledge of those software packages is sometimes more important than knowing some formula. Just my two cents, it won't be easy for you to get back without some sponsor, a friend who already works in the field and can help you get a job. |
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