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Ask HN: How to learn Engineering, Electronics, or prototyping a big project?

4 points by willpower102 ↗ HN
I've read just a couple threads like this but I'm wanting to expand beyond them a bit. I know the books people recommend, I have my physics and calc fundamentals, I know limited basic components, I solder well, and I have done a few Arduino projects with display out.

But say I had a huge project I wanted to prototype: a new type of e-reader, automated kitchen, a robotic steering helper on a car (or gokart), or a mini-segway, all of which integrate with a mobile...

Besides reading academic circuits and engineering books what would be the next step for me to work towards a bigger project like that?

How do I learn what chips to select, how they work together, and how to start planning the circuit design?

5 comments

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willpower101
Sigh. I don't understand the "submitting too fast" error. But the advice to create a second username on a proxy worked :P
lien
What do you want to build? It seems like you want to work with embedded systems. So there are two design considerations: wireless or non-wireless. dummy non-wireless things are that interesting, so i guess you're going to want to design a wireless device.

GainSpan designs Wi-Fi modules and the whole software ecosystem. You could prototype things pretty quickly as they already design the whole chip-level firmware and application-level software that goes into building a prototype.

what's really neat about GainSpan chips/systems/software is that they built everything from ground up, so their software is optimized for the embedded space. Sure you could take an ARM-core and design the whole circuit board, and etc, but why would you want to do that?

once you get started, you will then probably realize that to differentiate your prototype is the software and not the hardware. if your wireless device can't perform the correct provisioning mechanism to communicate with the router, you're going to have to spend a lot of time on that too.

well, anyway, I have to disclose that I used to work for a Wi-Fi chip company before we got acquired and I still sometimes do consulting at GainSpan. check out the website and get an evaluation kit to start tinkering. the EVK is fairly inexpensive and it'll help you understand the design process.

best lien

willpower101
Thanks I'll definitely take a look at GainSpan. Yeah I don't necessarily want to build everything from the ground up if the components have already been built.

Here's an example though. Lets take the fitbit as a very basic example. Mainly it's a well written piece software that needs to interact with multiple sensors: gps, gyroscope, heart rate monitor, probably temperature.

Now, I can grab a gyro and an arduino project to read and utilize data from that gyro, as well as all the other components... Separately. But I'm not sure where to go from there in order to turn all that into a single embedded system. It's possible I'm just repeating myself and you've already answered my question, lol. Maybe I just haven't gotten my hands dirty enough yet.

lien
well, arduino can only take you so far and is limited in where you could go. I've known arduino as a prototyping platform only and there's very little you can go after that.

I'd start with the EVK because it has the temperature and light sensor on the board built in. GainSpan did a demo recently to control the board over an iPhone. This is something you can only do with Wi-Fi.

Well, once the prototype is done, you should be able to buy the module and look into the module datasheet to develop your own products. Also, note that GainSpan modules currently work with Freescale MCUs so you get access to their customer support team as well. (Basically you could turn on the ARM core in the GainSpan chip or use an external MCU.)

homofaber
Best thing you can do is start with small.projects (as you did) and growing incrementaly. During that time you will learn how different circuits work together and problems with more complicated circuits boards will need to be solved one at a time.

Contacting local hardware groups can help.

Basically, same as programing books can take you to some point, but when your project outgrows and become complicated with multiple rarely combinated libraries... you are on your own and, hopefully, you will be ready to take that bite.

Also, being more concrete in explaining your needs could get you more help.