Frustrated EE student

General project help for Adafruit customers

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
amnorster
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:43 pm

Frustrated EE student

Post by amnorster »

I'm an EE student in college right now. I've got great grades, but I was wondering if someone could tell me when I will actually be able to build something cool? I don't feel like I'm learning anything from kits and I don't feel any closer to being capable of the cool stuff I see on here or on other sites.

Where did you people actually learn this stuff? Should I order one of those crazy expensive heathkit learning platforms? I've been doing a lot of reading, but the gap between what I read and what I see around me is enormous.

Sorry for the rant, but any help would be appreciated.

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88093
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I was wondering if someone could tell me when I will actually be able to build something cool?
Many people build cool things without any formal training. If you have an idea, dive in and figure out how to build it! :D

User avatar
chuckz
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Mon May 30, 2011 11:54 am

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by chuckz »

amnorster,

What would you like to build? What do you consider "cool"?

I think it takes a while to learn what building blocks are out there so I spent two years just reading about products.

I would read the blogs every day and that would include videos and magazines on electronics.

I would find a microcontroller package to learn. Arduino is easy because it has a bootloader.

I would add basic electronics to your list. Find out how resistors and capacitors work.

You need a basic tool kit and a multimeter and soldering iron is on the list. Get the best tools that work. Adafruit has a tested toolkit.

Trying by doing with a breadboard is where you could start and is where I start.

Ask for help but realise that people aren't going to do homework for others.

Ask what concepts you need to learn to fully master a microcontroller.

Survey the available microcontroller companies and what they make and what they cost. You will find something that fancies you.

Chuck

amnorster
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:43 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by amnorster »

Thanks for the advice adafruit support and Chuckz. I guess waiting for things to make sense isn't the most fun way to go about things.

Cool for me falls mostly under power generation and control systems. I've been working with an arduino for almost a year. I've also been trying to figure out how to put together a solar charger for several months--either a buck converter or one like adafruit sells (since it's :( of stock). Also, quadcopters. I would love to put one of those together.

What blogs would you recommend? What magazines do you suggest? I read hack-a-day, sparkfun, and keep up with adafruit stuff.

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88093
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

What blogs would you recommend? What magazines do you suggest? I read hack-a-day, sparkfun, and keep up with adafruit stuff.
Those are all great sources of inspiration - as well as links to other inspiring sites. These and other forums are a great source of collective wisdom. But as Chuckz says, people are more willing to lend a hand to people that have done their homework.

User avatar
aubrey
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2011 11:14 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by aubrey »

Hi

I'm not a trained engineer but have been working my way through more and more challenging Arduino projects for the past year. One source of information and tutorials I would strongly recommend (apart from those you have listed) is tronixstuff.com There is probably a year's worth of tutorials there now and it keeps growing.

I also find myself using the Arduino Cookbook regularly.

I also found that actually working through tutorials, even very simple ones or ones that weren't all that relevant to my goals, did help my understanding enormously. Reading the datasheets for components used in the tutorials was also a great way to learn.

I have recently found a local hackspace with quite a few Arduino adepts doing some very challenging projects. That will probably my next step in learning.

Good luck

User avatar
chuckz
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Mon May 30, 2011 11:54 am

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by chuckz »

amnorster wrote:What blogs would you recommend? What magazines do you suggest? I read hack-a-day, sparkfun, and keep up with adafruit stuff.
I got out of a political science class because my professor wanted me to become poliholic. Poli stands for political and holic stands for chronic. I didn't have 20 hours to watch political t.v. every week but to learn electronics, you probably need to put in 20 hours a week or more. I would go to the library and most libraries aren't up to date so you won't find anything under "microcontrollers" so I would suggest "electrical", "engineering" and so forth. They have books for kids and those are the best for explaining things. But you have to become Micro or Engineering-holic and spend a lot of time learning.

See if the library has a magazine called "Nuts and Volts". I follow a lot of blogs like Hackaday and Dangerousprototypes. Visit the Arduino forum.

You will want to study the plans for other people's quadcopters. PJRC made a quadcopter. Parallax made a quadcopter. I'm sure Instructables or Make probably has a quadcopter. There might be videos on Youtube and Hackaday. You would also have to visit some of the Radio Control forums as they might already have plans drawn up that you can build. Some of these companies sell bodies for quadcopters but the type and size are all up to you. You need motors and probably a radio and receiver. I wouldn't go out and buy the expensive parts right away unless you know you can do it through a basic concept. And you also know that you probably need to know something about aerodynamics that the quadcopter is going to pull a certain way unless you calibrate it and if you have all the propellers going the same way, it could spin so you might need a countering propeller.

You also have to be goal oriented. Write down your goals. And the point of achieving your goals is to be specific. Here are the steps: 1), 2), 3), etc. Here are the components I need: 1, 2, 3. Here are the skills I need: 1, 2, 3.

I suggest "Electronics For Dummies" and you can probably google it or find the book on Amazon. You will also have to learn how to use a servo, an accelerometer (and learn what is level), etc. Sometimes it takes math like trig.

Also, you might learn that you need a faster microcontroller or different components. And you probably need a support system of people who are already in the business. Are there any clubs near you that you could find on meetup.com or through the paper? You are looking for retired engineers or people who wouldn't mind giving you advice and people you could call or come over to you.

But I think Adafruit could come up with a badge for Micro-holic or something like that....Just saying.
Last edited by chuckz on Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

meseta
 
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:57 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by meseta »

Quadcopters are a great way to start if you grab a kit. Because with a kit you start out with a fully functional flying quadcopter, and then you can start tinkering - if you're into the electronics, you can start by altering the coding to make it do more things (automated stunts? automatic shutter control for camera for mapping?). If you're into mechanicals, you can start altering the frame, adding parts to it (gyro-stabilised camera gimbal? mechanical arm for grabbing and lifting?). Loads of possibilities, great fun, and definitely has the COOL factor.

It's interesting that Chuckz mentioned quadcopters that microelectronics companies have built, we're exactly the opposite - we started out building quadcopters and then realised that our flight controllers made awesome development boards since they're designed to be extremely hackable, small, and powerful. Take a look: http://www.universalair.co.uk/content/rofl-kit

amnorster
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:43 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by amnorster »

Wow, thanks Aubrey. tronixstuff.com looks amazing. I'll start going through those tutorials. That should certainly be some good learning. I'd kill for a hackerspace in my area. Not much interest in Maine outside of some circuit benders and the university programs. There is a group of four on meetup, but not much activity there.

Thanks again Chuckz. I've been looking over some other people's builds and trying to sort through what's what. This one (http://aeroquad.com/), especially. I'd shell out the money in a second like BANNED suggests but, being incredibly poor, it's not an option. I've been trying to salvage what i can in order to learn something about sensors. Also, goals. That's a great suggestion. Maybe lots of smaller projects leading to one bigger project.

Didn't mean to sound whiny earlier, or like I wasn't willing to do the legwork. Just wanted to hear from someone who had been there that school would 'click' eventually... either that or that I was doing extra to make sure it did.

thefatmoop
 
Posts: 352
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 4:36 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by thefatmoop »

It is frustrating how the first 2 years of college involve virtually nothing to do with EE. Even after you take circuit analysis, computer engineering (Digital Logic) classes there still really isn't anything to build.

They're teaching you the fundamentals of electronics, and not necessarily how to build cool stuff. Anyway as a senior ELE student i would strongly suggest get an arduino and start playing around. Get a multimeter, soldiering iron, and an oscilloscope if you can afford it.

Sadly there are so many ELE students at NIU that are just getting through the classes and not really doing anything with their EE skills outside of class.

User avatar
easternstargeek
 
Posts: 347
Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:39 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by easternstargeek »

Well, here's my $0.02-
I'm a degreed EE (1983) but I have been building stuff since I was 6 years old. I was very fortunate that my Dad worked for the aerospace industry, and would go dumpster-diving on my behalf. He also taught me how to solder and use basic tools. As a kid, I voraciously read hobby books and magazines and made a terrible pest of myself at the local TV repair shop (Run by Paul R.- a brilliant autodidact with the patience of a saint!).

Before I went to engineering school, I built stuff. Lots of stuff. Mostly, what I built was derivative of existing designs or published projects. As I became more experienced, I built more and more original things, not all of which were successful, but the silver lining of each acrid puff of Magic Smoke contains a learning experience.

I did find engineering school to be a tough grind. At best, I was a middling student, but at least I did all of my own work. I can say this, however- I was never exposed to anything in my classes that would have made it any easier to build anything real if I didn't already have the benefit of my prior experience. 99% of what I leaned that was of any use to a working engineer I learned outside of school, either before or after. This is not to say that school was without its benefits, but that is a different discussion.

As an engineering professional, I used the same approach when learning how to do new things- programming industrial PLCs is a good example. In the absence of actual projects, I had to invent problems to solve, and then solve them. I worked side-by-side with highly experienced colleagues who gave generously of their time to help me. (Many weren't even engineers.) The more I did on my own, the more eager they were to help. It was also helpful to work with less experienced colleagues, because one of the best ways to learn something is to learn it well enough that you can teach it to someone else.

All of the people who build "cool" stuff have most, if not all of these things in common:
1. The desire to build something cool
2. A vision of what they want to build (sometimes their initial vision leads to unexpectedly marvelous places!)
3. Resourcefullness: The desire and ability to seek out Information in all forms, especially from other people with the required experience.
4. The time and desire to do a lot of hard work getting there. (Hint- if you are doing what you are meant to do, it won't feel like work)

It's like uncrating a brand new Steinway and expecting to sit down and play Rachmaninoff piano concerti. Sure you can do it, but you have to study and practice. A lot.
It's fortunate you came here. You will learn much by participating in the forums and reading the blogs.

You'll get there, but you're gonna have to get busy!

Oh, and when you do build something cool, come back and tell us all about it, won't you?

Good luck, and have fun!
Last edited by easternstargeek on Mon Dec 19, 2011 11:47 am, edited 7 times in total.

User avatar
easternstargeek
 
Posts: 347
Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:39 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by easternstargeek »

Oh, by the way- Industrial Control Systems is what I have been doing professionally for over 20 years. Ask me anything- if I can help, I will.

User avatar
westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by westfw »

Mostly what "thefatmoop" said.
An EE program does a lot of teaching how to understand how to build something, but pretty much the only neat things you'll actually build are self-defined projects (senior design project/thesis, some classes with major projects, etc.) You might look for "work" in a lab. Some of them will let you play with assorted equipment, especially if you have useful skills (like soldering!) Especially see if the EE lab needs help; it's pretty common to have equipment that needs to be set up, calibrated, tested, etc, beyond what the students in the lab class are expected to accomplish.

If you're into radio, there's probably a club.

Several universities have student-accessible shops (like MITERS ?)

User avatar
jwhance
 
Posts: 28
Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:54 am

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by jwhance »

I'll just add my voice to what most of these others have said. I too am a (long ago now) EE graduate but NO CLASS I TOOK ever taught me the "cool" stuff. I learned the underlying theory, but that really didn't start to make sense until I started trying to do things _I_ was interested in and started to solve real problems. Then those "AHA!" moments start to come.

When I was in college I got involved with a couple of other guys, upperclassmen, who were working on controlling lights with music for way cool party effects. We started with incandescent lights and just sequenced the lights in a simple pattern. This led to the wildest lighting display I've ever seen. It was basically a giant "VU meter" using green, yellow, orange, and red instant-on florescent lamps. Not little ones either but 10 ft. long industrial ones! These were hung from the ceiling and covered the entire room.

So we had to solve some real engineering problems for this. The manufacturer of the lighting ballasts said you couldn't turn them on and off as fast as we wanted. We found a way. We had to build an ADC to take the music input. All this was built with state-of-the-art (at the time) 7400 TTL family logic on about 12 "super strips" which is what we called solderless breadboards at the time. So we had low-level audio coming in, 5V TTL logic, analog-to-digital conversion, and high voltage outputs. You just can't help but learn a lot of cool stuff doing that. What made the difference? I was interested because I thought this was COOL! And in 1976 everyone who saw it thought it was cool too. Especially after a few drinks!!

The next year I (I was now the upperclassman) and a couple of underclassmen "computerized" it by replacing most of that TTL logic with a KIM-1 single board microcomputer. (See: http://oldcomputers.net/kim1.html if you don't know what these were.) We could now have it automatically switch between different modes, VU-meter, "random" pattern, etc.

I wanted to know HOW a microcomputer worked because I was fascinated with them. I quickly became an expert. I later took a microcomputer class at my college, they had just started offering one and I aced it. My project was to program a 2708 EPROM using a KIM-1. Sounds trivial today but in 1978 there were a lot of engineering challenges involved, very tight (for a 1MHz microprocessor), controlling 24V signals with TTL levels out of the micro. Handling 1K of data on a computer that had 1K of RAM total (and on a KIM-1 you have to fit all your code, data, and stack into that 1K - no FLASH!!) was not an easy task.

So the bottom line? Dive in and built something that fascinates you! That's what will keep you up past midnight to get it working just right. No for anyone else, just because you want the satisfaction of seeing your own creation work!

amnorster
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:43 pm

Re: Frustrated EE student

Post by amnorster »

TheFatMoop, and EasternStarGeek, thanks--that's exactly what I needed to know. I'll make a list of projects and just start trying to build them. Worst case is I create some magic blue smoke. Maybe some of my classmates will be interested after I share this with them.

Luckily, soldering is the one thing I do know how to do! I'll ask around about lab work.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “General Project help”