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My self-study plan for electrical engineering

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Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#41

Post by aj7 »

krapht wrote: post #14
exmadscientist wrote: post #8

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…

> (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. Aca…

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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#42

Post by Badfood »

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

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#43

Post by stochastician »

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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#44

Post by sabujp »

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

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#46

Post by sleavey »

exmadscientist wrote: post #8

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…

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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#47

Post by WillSlim95 »

madengr wrote: post #21
WillSlim95 wrote: post #13

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…

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.

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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#48

Post by WillSlim95 »

stochastician wrote: post #43

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 opt…

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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#49

Post by bucket2015 »

stochastician wrote: post #43

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 opt…

OP here - Thanks! I'll put back the optics courses I deleted then

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#50

Post by mackmgg »

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.

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