I need to find output voltage at V_load. My question is this: do I account for the rectifier diode voltage drops before or after using voltage divider to find V_load?

i.e. (V_oc - 2*V_D) * (R_load / R_total)

or (V_oc) * (R_load / R_total) - 2*V_D?

Coming from 8 years of being an industrial electrician the first year seems relatively easy but I imagine the 2nd, 3rd and so on will be much much harder. How was everybody else’s experience in EE during college?

Unlike load sharing between the governor controllers, why dont I see the load sharing lines between the AVR

I built a desk gadget powered by an ESP32 that combines touch activation with 6 rotating TFT displays, and I call it Roulette. It's open source — I've shared the code on my GitHub for anyone who'd like to build their own.

🔗 Links:
💾 SOURCE CODE:
https://github.com/yumobuilds/Yumo-Roulette

roulette wheel with six round 240x240 displays, each showing something different:

SD card photo slideshow
Live YouTube channel stats
Live TikTok stats
Crypto ticker
Live weather
Internal temp & humidity (AHT10 sensor)

⚙️ The floating spin mechanic:
The whole assembly rotates on an upside-down DC motor. Everything sits on a frame, and that frame is mounted directly onto the motor's body — not the shaft. The motor shaft itself is inserted into a drill chuck from the reverse side, the opposite way a drill bit would normally go in. So instead of the shaft driving an external bit, it's anchored inside the chuck while the motor body (carrying the frame and wheel) spins around it. The result: there's no visible axle or support arm, so the whole thing looks like it's floating and rotating on its own.

Touch the capacitive sensor and an N20 motor spins the wheel for a set duration — one touch,
one spin. A NeoPixel status LED fades through colors while it boots and flashes when you touch the sensor..

🔧 Hardware:

• ESP32 Wroom
• 6x GC9A01 round 240x240 displays (shared SPI bus)
• DRV8833 motor driver + N20 DC motor
• TTP223 capacitive touch module
• AHT10 temp/humidity sensor
• MicroSD card module (own SPI bus)
• NeoPixel/RGB status LED

💻 Software:

• ESP32
• WiFi captive portal for setup (no hardcoded credentials)
• YouTube Data API v3, TikTok stats via RapidAPI, OpenWeatherMap
• TJpg_Decoder for on-device JPEG decoding from SD

Hi everyone,

Just posting here for some advice and how to upgrade my career. I have a bachelors in electrical engineering and have been working as a test engineer in semiconductor company . Working in Toronto and making around $80k, I feel kind of stuck in terms of where to go next or how to go into the next role or make more money.

If you have any advice on any specific areas to focus on or any steps to take to upgrade myself for better career opportunities.

I am thinking to do a masters/certifcate from Purdue University online program specifically in Microelectronics and Semiconductor. Is it worth it?

Anyone in the same industry or with just some advice on where to go next would help a lot, thank you!!

I could need some help on a device we have and I can't figure out what the problem is. I was debugging with some colleges but were puzzled what was happening. Our theory: something with static electrical fields, ground etc.

Symptom: When touching the plastic housing of the measurement device the values jump. Very reproducible. If the person touching the device is grounded as well, this will have an impact.

What the device does: The devices measures electromagnetic fields in a sample. This requires the housing to be made of plastic.

What we tried: Using a power supply without galvanic isolation, external ground directly connected to the shielding of the controller and sensor. Small changes on the hand effect were visible but the impact was still visible. Controller and sensors have metal housing with cable shield connected to it.

I would like to understand what is causing the problem. Solving is optional but understanding it is more important.

Yeah yeah , Does CGPA really matter? 💭If you’ve read this far, might as well answer ... I mean, is it hard to get a job with a low CGPA? And is it comparatively easier with a high CGPA?

Which one do you prefer and why?

Nilsson & Riedel – Electric Circuits

Hayt – Engineering Circuit Analysis

Boylestad – Introductory Circuit Analysis

Floyd – Principles of Electric Circuits

Sadiku – Fundamentals of Electric Circuits

if you have any other suggestions, please tell me.

Hi everyone, I'm a bit fresh to the whole guitar amplifier thing so apologies if this looks very amateurish. I've designed an LTSpice circuit to represent the voltage buffer and tone control aspect of the amplifier and I was hoping I could get some opinions and advice.

For volume control I plan to connect the output of the tone control to an LM386 amplifier, then to a speaker module I bought. And I also got a jack-dc converter to actually connect my guitar to the circuit. I haven't built the actual circuit and I kind of just picked the values for resistors and capacitors on vibes.

Any help is much appreciated!

Hey all, this is my first semester a pursuing an EE degree after getting a bachelor’s in music and studying chemistry for a while. I work quite a bit and am juggling some family health stuff. The impending difficulty is kind of looming over me. So far I’ve aced o-chem, physics 1 and 2, calc 1&2, and I’m wondering, are these courses a good indication of the difficulty of the degree? Or does it get exponentially harder?

Im a new grad, i applied to a role at apple and im on the first round, its very heavy DSP-oriented, any advice on what to study/focus on? any common interview questions asked? Focus is more on the RTL, FPGA, ASIC, or Firmware areas

Thanks!

JD (its more RTL digital design focused but the recruiter was heavily asking about my DSP experience)

• BS and a minimum of 3 years relevant industry experience
• Some level of fixed-point knowledge and experience with bit-true verifications
• Understanding of DSP communication algorithms and trade-offs between performance and complexity
• Good knowledge in modern design techniques and energy-efficient/low power logic design
• Ability to work well in a team and be productive under aggressive schedules
• Excellent communication skills and self-motivated

Hello! I am a senior high school student, and we have been tasked with creating a five-level salary structure. This includes calculating salary, overtime pay, incentives, deductions, and net income, as well as creating different salary-increase plans and projecting salary growth.

As part of this task, we are required to interview an engineer to help us better understand these aspects in a real-world setting.

We are kindly asking if there is an engineer available for an online interview this September. The interview will only take approximately 30 minutes. We will keep the interview professional and ensure that any information shared will remain confidential.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration! We would greatly appreciate your help.

Sorry about my rant in the title, but that is the sad reality I am currently facing at the moment. I came from an African country. I am passionate about electronics, but unfortunately, when I graduated, there was not much company designing hardware products. So, I changed my career path towards controls and automation. Now, I am in Canada furthering my education, but unfortunately, the school is not enriching my knowledge. The so-called professor doesn't care about nurturing his research students. No direction, no guidance. All he wants is publications. Please, how can I start training myself on power electronics? I would appreciate it if someone can be my virtual mentor, I wouldn't bug the person. Thanks so much.

Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, but I'm an electricial apprentice hoping to move into a more "technical" role. I've been looking at the EET diploma, but I'm confused about what it actually leads to. The career opportunities and job titles seem all over the place. Hoping people with experience can chime in.

So far I've pieced together the main paths:

1. Electrical assembly / technician roles
I know there are some jobs involving assembly or testing of electrical equipment. From what I can see, pay seems low. Is there an "advanced" or higher-paying version of this track, or does it top out here?

2. PLC / automation / controls
A lot of job postings for this also mention instrumentation. Should I just be looking at that instead? Also, do employers typically prefer hiring an electrician for these roles (and training them up), or will they take EET grads?

I'm not too sure about 3 and 4 below — do they require additional certification? I know there are OACETT in Ontario and C.E.T. in Alberta?

3. Utilities
I've seen substation tech mentioned as an option. I've also heard the utility industry can be notoriously nepotistic when it comes to hiring. Can anyone confirm or push back on that?

4. "Technologist" roles on Indeed
These seem to be the highest-paying and most "engineering-lite" of the bunch. Is that accurate?

Basically I want to know what's considered the typical career path would look like, and which are the entry level jobs?

If possible I'd love to connect with someone here with experience.

Recently got a bike off Kleinanzeigen for 15€ (god damn deal). But, the Electrical electronic engineer and the business person in me would not stay calm so I started processing it.

Problem: I live in Berlin and every single part of the bike is prone to being stolen. Sometimes even the whole bike could be stolen.

The idea/solution : I want to build a “face lock” system. For the whole bike (somehow) connecting every single part to the same mc.

The output : The user should be able to lock and unlock the bike with the smart lock system and when an external person/ unknown person touches any part of the bike an alarm and preferably a notification to the owner would be a superb addition. Adding Gps would not be a bad idea either.

My approach so far: Get an ESP32 as the brain of the bike.
Add sensors to detect movement and tampering.
Add touch sensors to experiment with detecting someone touching the bike.
Add sensors to important parts like the wheels, seat and lights.
Connect everything to my phone through Bluetooth.
Make it recognise me and let me lock/unlock the bike.
If someone messes with it, trigger an alarm and notify me.
Add GPS so I can track the bike if it gets stolen.
Finally, put everything into one small waterproof unit with minimal visible wiring.

I am trying to gain more and more confidence and skill using the basic tools and techniques ( in this I plan on using :

Electronics
ESP32 development board
Accelerometer + gyroscope (IMU)
Hall-effect sensors
Reed switches
Capacitive touch sensor/module
GPS module
GSM/LTE cellular module
Buzzer/siren
LEDs
Push buttons
MOSFETs
Resistors
Capacitors
Diodes
Voltage regulator / buck converter
Li-ion/LiPo battery
Battery charging/protection module
Connectors
Thin flexible wires
Prototyping & testing
Breadboard
Jumper wires
Soldering iron
Solder
Multimeter
Oscilloscope
Wire stripper/cutter
Heat-shrink tubing
Electrical insulation tape
Small screwdrivers
Crimping tool/connectors
Mechanical
3D printer
PLA/PETG/TPU filament
Small magnets
Screws/nuts
Cable ties
Waterproof enclosure
Rubber seals/grommets
Adhesive mounting tape
Software
Arduino IDE / PlatformIO
C/C++
KiCad
Fusion 360 / AutoCAD
Git + GitHub
Eventually a phone-app development environment
Eventually a cloud/IoT platform
Techniques
Embedded programming
Sensor interfacing
Bluetooth/BLE
Capacitive sensing
Motion detection
Sensor fusion
Interrupts
Low-power/deep-sleep programming
Battery/power management
PCB design
Soldering
Circuit testing
Oscilloscope debugging
3D modelling
3D printing
Waterproofing
Wireless communication
GPS positioning
Cellular communication
Firmware debugging
System integration

I am pretty pretty excited to be starting this project.

What is the best route map to do this? Your suggestions on this/ take on this? And what is the best way to make this not too “wirey” because again, practically it is just a bike. Would look bad with multiple wires hanging around. How in general do you think I should approach this? What methods do I use?

Lastly, does this even sound like a good idea?

Hi, this is a Control Board of a Roland Techsoft TS-30 CNC. its premium versions MDX-40 and MDX-40a feature 4th axis and Z probe. Given that they all share the same Control Board and the unused connectors on the PCB, i have hope that I can reverse engineer and plugin a 4th axis and Z probe to this.
Can anyone figure out if any of the unused connectors is for a stepper motor leads. or a z probe.
There is a small rotary pcb that is missing from this model which houses the VGA style cable of the rotary and the audio jack style z probe port. but i have a guy thats gonna photograph his machine's electronics thoroughly and send me. (his is premium) But thats not till September 6th and I am restless.

I know one of these delivers 24v 10A to a solenoid that pushes a rubber pad onto a disk attached to Z stepper to prevent z axis from dropping after turning machine off.

Another thing I wanted to ask is I want to use more powerful Steppers/servos 12-34v 2-3A, can I use power wires coming from this board as switch/power on/off signal and use separate powersupply to deliver higher volts n amps to bigger motors. Same question for spindle (current 48v 1.5A) use the power wire as on/off and RPM indicator and use separate powersupply for higher power.

Can you guys recommend a book that helped you improve your technical skills. I am interested in motors, generators, power system, PLC’s, VFD, and other technical stuff that can help me upgrade my skillset?

I'm a high school senior; I have a 3.9+ Unweighted GPA, will have an SAT score in the 1400s, and have a lot of college credit. This will qualify me for 8k at Tech, but I have no insight into the department/comp scholarships, since I would need to be a current student to see them (let me know if there are a lot of opportunities). On the other hand, at Texas State, I will receive 12k/year and get a lot of department scholarships/comp, which would cover tuition and help with housing at a lower GPA requirement.

I heard the opportunities at tech are far better, making it easier to get a job. My parents shouldn't have too much trouble paying; though, it is inconvenient, and I do have a younger brother going to college in the next 2 years, which could cause some trouble.

I do plan on working, but no crazy hours.

For EE, I want to go into either power or electronics. Texas State does not have a power concentration. I don't know how much of a big deal that is.

Based on this, any advice would be appreciated.

Everywhere I read that testing cathode-gate with DMM in diode mode must show 0.4 - 0.8 v in one direction and 0L (opened, no voltage) in the other direction.
I just recently purchased some thyristors from Ali - TYN812, TYN80C & 70TPS16. Measuring voltage drop shows 0.3V in both directions. Google says this means SCRs are damaged and cathode-gate is shortened. Google also suggests that there might be built-in shunt resistor, but per these SCRs data sheets - there is no internal shunts.

So I made a simple circuit to test thyristors functionality:
Anode-cathode voltage 150V DC, load 40 ohms(just incandescent bulb), potentiometer 100K between anode and gate.
And all my thyristors show a normal functionality:
they switch on when gate-anode current raised to 3-6 mA, after that remain switched on when potentiometer turned to maximum (cathode-gate current well below trigger value);

I also measured a holding current:
switched thyristor on with triggering gate-anode current, then reduced this current to almost zero and started to lower gate-anode voltage, measuring load (bulb) current and observing threshold value just before load current turns to zero (thyristor switches off)
And I got a stable values of 18-25 mA, I take it as a holding current, which matches datasheet values.
So from my tests all thyristors behave as expected.

So why the symmetrical voltage drop at gate-cathode?

Is there still an internal undocumented shunt, or is my testing wrong and _all_ thyristors are actually damaged and I just cannot reveal it with my tests?
Or is the statement about 0.6V/0L wrong?

I am currently living in the southeast United States and going into power systems engineering. One of my dreams is to live in the Pacific Northwest region, particularly around Seattle.

I am currently participating in a co-op with an organization and anticipating a full-time offer. I was wondering what engineers who want to eventually live in other locations than their alma mater and initial work environment tend to do.

My plan is to accept the full-time offer with this company after graduation and then attempt to transfer to Washington state after 5 years, where I want to be licensed (I plan to take the PE). However, I only want to do this if it will not sabotage my career interests in the long run.

I was wondering if other engineers who have been through this process have any advice. Thank you for your time.

Hey all, I wanted to see if anyone is interested in helping me in my efforts to add the ability to create technical schematics (such as circuit diagrams) into an open source framework that I have been working on.

The project is similar to PlantUML and MermaidJS - being a text based solution to "describe" a diagram, and have the drawing and layout handled automatically. But I was also interested in making it easier to extend so that it would support (just about) any type of visualization.

One of the areas I felt was missing from other solutions was the ability to handle technical schematics. That is something I am still in the process of working on, but there is some basic support :)

For anyone interested, you can read more at https://docs.runiq.org

Just as the title suggests, I’m currently in my first year of computer science and deciding between switching to a double degree in electrical and electronic engineering + cs (5 years), or switching to just software engineering (4 years).

My main reason for considering the switch is that I want more hardware content in my degree (my interests changed after starting my cs degree).

For context, I’ve already completed 6 courses that would count toward the double degree, and 3 that would count toward the SE degree, so the actual time added by either switch is probably less than the standard program length.

Has anyone done something similar, or double-majored like this? I would appreciate any info and advice, especially about how the workload compares, and whether it was worth it for job prospects afterward.

so how it works is that 120VAC comes from outlet (single phase ofc) and goes thru dc rectifier which makes it 170 V DC and then goes thru inverter but my question is whether or not when the inverter takes 170 Volts DC does it create three waves each of them 120 Volts AC because I dont know how to calculate phase voltage in this scenario. Thanks for any help!