A video blog about MATLAB

[VEGETA]

Many people like MATLAB and claim it is the best software to use by electronic/electrical/mechatronics engineers.

Thing is, among all these great episodes of EEVbolg, I haven't seen anyone about MATLAB and that's why I am suggesting it.

If you don't want to make a good video blog about it, just write your opinion.

thanks Dave, Keep doing it ^_^

[tszaboo]

Matlab costs 2500$, it is worthless without Simulink 3500$, and other toolboxes (1000$+ each). If you have that money, you know how to use it. Also, people don't like math in general, and it takes 100+ hours of learning to use it effectively. And then you realize you could do the whole thing in excel 95% of the time.

[c4757p]

I do own a semi-legitimate copy of MATLAB (student version, I suspect used under terms I no longer comply with, and loaded with add-ons acquired through *ahem* alternate channels)... but Octave does most of the useful stuff and is free. I vastly prefer it to Excel, but that is just personal preference of course.

[Christe4nM]

Our DSP lecturer told me about a good alternative to Matlab called SciLab, which is free and also open source IIRC. It supposedly has a Simulink-like toolbox too, and seems to be able enough for those you don't need the extensive endless possibilities of Matlab. Then again I still have to testdrive it to get a feel of what it's worth. The first impression from their site and a quick glance after installing it is good, but experience using it is what counts ultimately.

[awallin]

Octave is a free/open-source alternative and will run more or less all basic m-files without modifications. Someone said they measured the performance of some numerical methods and found matlab was much faster - at least a few years ago - this would be an interesting investigation for someone to look at.

pylab (based on numpy and matplotlib) for python is also very similar, although the syntax is obviously python and not matlab.
AFAIK numpy (C or C++ extensions to python) is used for very real research on supercomputers etc. so the performance should be good.

[EEVblog]

Matlab costs 2500$, it is worthless without Simulink 3500$, and other toolboxes (1000$+ each). If you have that money, you know how to use it. Also, people don't like math in general, and it takes 100+ hours of learning to use it effectively. And then you realize you could do the whole thing in excel 95% of the time.

That's my summary too!

[Fsck]

Matlab costs 2500$, it is worthless without Simulink 3500$, and other toolboxes (1000$+ each). If you have that money, you know how to use it. Also, people don't like math in general, and it takes 100+ hours of learning to use it effectively. And then you realize you could do the whole thing in excel 95% of the time.

That's my summary too!

additionally, hobbyist EE isn't too heavy on numerical analysis so I wouldn't really expect to see a video on it. the joy of matlab for me is the easy integration of gpgpu and parallel computing, so easy use of cluster resources

[codeboy2k]

I use Octave for numeric calculations writing matlab programs, and Maxima (actually wxMaxima, the GUI version) for symbolic computations. There are some GUI's for Octave that make it look more like MATLAB.

I also really like SMath Studio, a free, but not open source , MathCad clone, for Windows and Linux (using mono .net runtime)

I've used it in the forum here before, you can see a few pages from SMath Studio in this link:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/lm399-based-10-v-reference/msg219394/#msg219394

[geo_leeman]

Though Excel may be sufficient for many engineering tasks, it really is incredibly powerful to know a simple language.  Python offers most of the Matlab benefits, but with a $0 price and the open-source factor.  Since learning how to read data, do basic processing (signal and other), and plot it all in one script, my productivity has greatly increased.  At my University (I'm a graduate student) we even have a class called "Anything But Excel".  The idea is to speed up and reduce the repetitive tasks that we have to do.  Even as geologists we've began to get a large computer user following and just started a users group.  I suppose the moral is that learning something other than Excel can be a gradual process and with Python you get many Matlab benefits, but for a much better price.   

[owiecc]

Matlab/SciLab are very good tools because there is a big support community. Mathworks fileexchange server has masses of ready made scripts shared by scientists and engineers. You can directly connect Matlab to your measurement instrument, gather data, analyze it, save it and plot it. The language is quite easy. You can do a dirty script in few minutes and only when you want to optimize it you need to spend some time and learn how Matlab works. Excel code is not reusable so every time you have to implement the same thing over and over. Matlab is not cheap but there is a good reason why most universities have the license. It has all the god stuff built-in. Loading measurement data from a sftange format txt file: loop+one-liner (three lines). Analyze data: one line of code (because you can make a sub-function which will help your code visibility and reusability). Fit three dimensional data to NxN polynomial: one-liner. Evaluate the fitted surface at X=32: one-liner. Test step response of a system based on the above data: one-liner. Want to do a sweep to see the effect of varying parameters you put your last command in a loop. It is really that easy.

[Bored@Work]

Large amounts of Excel sheets have errors. It is almost unavoidable, because Excel sheets are difficult to debug. I don't trust any "engineering" work coming in the form of an Excel sheet, and I despise "engineers" doing "engineering" work in Excel.

[alm]

It also surprises me how engineers perform way too complex calculations in Excel. Almost any tool, including pencil and a piece of paper, is superior to Excel in my opinion. Because I can glance at that piece of paper and immediately see all the relevant calculations. The same applies to a MATLAB/Octave/NumPy/etc script. The Excel developers, however, worked hard to hide all those complex equations from the user, making verifying someone else's Excel worksheet a very annoying. Does that D3:D47 range include all values, or did they add new data after entering that equation? I've never worked with an experienced programmer that would name a variable 'A43', yet this seems perfectly acceptable in spreadsheets.

Excel also seems completely unsuitable for most engineering work. Error bars (am I clicking on the horizontal or vertical error bars?) are a pain, for example. Plotting a histogram takes way too many clicks. It lacks built-in support for non-linear curve fitting. It also used to be that after every Excel release statisticians would publish examples where Excel would return incorrect values for fairly basic statistic calculations (I haven't checked if this is still the case). Not just rounding errors, but completely wrong. I consider this unacceptable in an engineering tool.

[8086]

Oh man, I remember MATLAB from uni.

Fuck MATLAB.

[c4757p]

Fuck MATLAB.

I would if I could.

[codeboy2k]

Oh man, I remember MATLAB from uni.

Fuck MATLAB.

Then you don't get it.
 
re-read the post above by owiecc
I'll even link it for you: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/suggestions/a-video-blog-about-matlab/msg323823/#msg323823

I'm a Lisp programmer, a Forth programmer, I've done FORTRAN once, it never stuck... a C programmer, a C++ programmer, a python programmer.. all those I am very good at with over 25 years experience (python is too new, yes I know)... I could choose any language to use... however for engineering I choose MATLAB, as a language, and these days using GNU Octave as the platform. This is because it's a domain specific language, and it does engineering well.  I think the only thing that comes as close to it in ease of use is python with numpy and scipy loaded, but even still, a one-liner in MATLAB can be 5-10 lines or more in Python.

And as for live data Excel spreadsheet like stuff, my preferred tool is MathCad or a clone, for live documents. As I said above, SMath Studio is free and very good.

[Fsck]

if we're talking just pure performance, then I agree with owiecc+others in that box

however, I don't believe matlab (software) is a viable product for hobbyists, due to cost and only cost.

if we're going with octave as a hobbyist alternative, then I'm all for it. however (and not relevant, but possibly interesting), I do know some HPC guys who dislike it for cluster computing uses.

[VEGETA]

Just as I thought

everyone hates MATLAB ^_^. Yes, cost is the first thing to consider... and then comes the learning curve which is very very hard. It's not like any easy thing like learn it for a week then you can do normal stuff in it... no no, it requires years! << no I am not over-thinking here because I meant doing real ggod stuff using MATLAB.

What I really wanted to know is using it in Electrical/Electronic engineering. I only know it from University, the only thing we've done is simulating drive circuits. Is that simulation of electrical machine and logic circuits really beneficial in real world?

MATLAB is not compatible with microcontrollers which is what most of us needs...

[Bored@Work]

Just as I thought

everyone hates MATLAB ^_^.

No.

Yes, cost is the first thing to consider...

Not if the boss pays.

and then comes the learning curve which is very very hard.

Well, if that is really an issue for you, than you have serious problems. Making use of Matlab is not more difficult than a simple scripting language. It is the BASIC of technical computing. A bit of knowledge about simple procedural programming and vectors/matrices gets you not only started but brings you a long way.

It's not like any easy thing like learn it for a week then you can do normal stuff in it...

Actually I think it is. You can do "normal stuff", like doing some calculations with it within minutes. That doesn't take weeks.

no no, it requires years!

Bullshit. You should be proficient in Mathlab in a few days.

  << no I am not over-thinking here because I meant doing real ggod stuff using MATLAB.

You are apparently mixing up understanding the theory, algorithm and math behind something with coding some stuff in Matlab. No tool in the world will help you if you have no clue what you are doing

What I really wanted to know is using it in Electrical/Electronic engineering. I only know it from University, the only thing we've done is simulating drive circuits. Is that simulation of electrical machine and logic circuits really beneficial in real world?

You seem to lack some imagination. Just because you have only done some particular stuff in it, and apparently badly, doesn't mean the tool is limited to that stuff. It is a general purpose tool for technical calculations.

MATLAB is not compatible with microcontrollers which is what most of us needs...

Sorry, are you serious or are you trolling? Fish soup is also not compatible with microcontrollers ...

[VEGETA]

Learning MATLAB is not easy at all! learning how to do m-files and all that simulink stuff! you make it like it's the easiest thing ever.

I said about microcontrollers because MATLAB is used in electrical engineering labs in my uni. we used to simulate various circuits, perfectly not badly as you assumed with no proof, like drive circuits, logic stuff, motor control circuits and more... and it wasn't that easy not to mention it's not a light program on average PCs (but that is not a "real" problem).

I didn't say "MATLAB is crap"! All my topic was to know if Electrical/Electronic engineers need it in their work and what they do with it... I know it's a powerful software but I am a Mechatronics engineer about to graduate, what do I need in MATLAB? mostly, I will work in factories and deal with PLCs and automation stuff (conveyors, PLCs, sensors,...)... can MATLAB be good to me?

And if I worked in say electronics design company, what are the uses of MATLAB I will need?

If you are a big MATLAB genius, you must be able to answer these questions precisely, right?

I am following Dave's blog for long time and I haven't seen him talking about MATLAB! that made me write this topic to know why an electronic engineer never said anything about it while we use it in college labs... don't u see this worthy of a standalone topic?

I am waiting you answer.

[c4757p]

MATLAB is awesome for general data processing. If you can do it in Excel, you can probably do it better and easier (less the learning curve, of course) in MATLAB. That's even if it didn't have Simulink. (In fact, I never use Simulink, and half the time, when I am in MATLAB evangelist mode I don't even remember it exists)

[alm]

If you're familiar with any procedural programming language like C, then the basics of the MATLAB language are trivial to pick up. The matrix calculus is also quite easy if you're familiar with the mind behind it. Domain-specific functions from toolboxes (eg. signal processing or curve fitting) are usually sufficiently well documented. An example of a simple MATLAB application that I wrote without being very familiar with it involved reading data files acquired for a few dozen parts. I read to read the data file for each part in a for loop (Google MATLAB read csv), do some simple math on it, plot histograms (try hist()) and scatter plots (scatter) and save these to a PNG file (Google MATLAB save plot png), outputting a list with some descriptive statistics for each part, and selecting certain parts based on those stats.

I could have done the same in any other programming language, but it would involve a bunch of external libs, and wouldn't have been any simpler. It would also likely involve less vectorized calculations and be slower. Doing this in Excel for a few dozen parts wouldn't have been much fun either (since plotting a histogram is so much easier than typing hist() in MATLAB, note that these instructions stop short of the actual plotting). Especially if it would have to be repeated, as is often the case. I often see people perform very repetitive operations in Excel because its scripting language has a fairly high barrier of entry (it's not much easier than MATLAB).

[Six_Shooter]

I was introduced to MATLab this semester, and have only used it for the first lab or two, then we started using other stuff, like O'scopes and real circuits.

Anyway, how about instead of an entire blog dedicated to MATLab, how about a Blog that discusses alternatives and why or why not these programs can be beneficial to an electronics engineer.

Apparently we need to use MATLab in a lab this week to make a program to generate Smith Charts... Uhg, programming is not my strong point, my favorite programming language is solder, but I can muddle through some programming languages given enough time, which seems to be more than I have.

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, it would be nice to know what else is out there, that compares or has similar functions/uses as MATLab that could be used by the hobbiest and up to professional.

I'm not going to mention if I do or do not have a copy of my own...