Sup nerds. I know nothing of electronics so im merely joking about the previous statement as I admire what you do and are interested in. I am a music technology student who works with electronics and microphones and such i just don’t know the inner workings of the equipment. I was gifted a set of microphones from someone who has a studio that I have been mentoring with outside of school and he gave me them because 1 of them didn’t work and the return on them was a hassle and thought I could put them to use. 2 of them actually don’t work and they are a cheap knockoff brand so if i can’t even fix them its not the end of the world. I pulled this out of it and does any of it look off or like it might be the issue?

I'm a second year EE student going into my sophomore year third semester. Because of unfortunate circumstances I have to retake phys 2 which set back my classes by a lot. Retaking phys 2 forced me to take gen eds that I would only take later and I'm stuck with the problem of not having enough credits to be considered full time next semester. I thought that using one of my tech electives would be smart so I could take linear algebra but I'd still be missing some credits. So I thought I'd just pursue a minor in math since I'm good at it but I just don't know if it's worth it. Im still in my second year and I might concentrate in either power or control systems. I take any advice really.

I am trying to change an old (40yrs) roller transport paper processor from its old Shaded pole motor to a variable DC motor so I can control the speed in which paper will process. I'm trying to emulate this old video but my processor is slightly different so I'm a bit stuck. My initial question is, am I replacing the whole (circled in white) unit connected to the pulley and belt? Or only parts, as I’m not familiar with this motor and the electrical components attached to it.. Let me know if there's another subreddit that would be best for this. thanks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrH1isRBUM

Edit: corrected motor type

Could anyone help with identifying the dashed loop symbols? Do they represent wrapping the drain wire around the insulated wires?

I’m trying to fix an issue with an inconsistent servo on an 80’s CNC bender. I believe the issue is with the signal wire, as there is regular bending as the Y-axis changes. The wire is Belden 9873. Thanks!

Would anyone be willing provide their experience and any tips on transitioning to a different industry?

I’m currently in the utility industry with a bachelors of electrical engineering and 2 years of experience, but i’m much more passionate about the idea of a position in analog design. I’m also open to other positions, but I’d like to feel like I’m actually contribution to the design of a product and doing more in depth engineering. At a utility, it feels a bit basic at times whereas the things I enjoyed in school were involved and dealing with microcontrollers, circuit design, programming, etc.

I feel these questions get asked here once a month, but I guess I just need a sanity check for my situation. I just turned 34 and have been unemployed for almost 8 months (it was actually the second time I had been laid off within half a year). I'm a self taught software engineer, I got a degree in film in 2013, did some freelance video work for a while -> technical customer support -> software engineer (full-stack, mostly PHP and TS/JS/React, plus some game dev on the side). In my spare time I've been tinkering with some electronics work, started with Make Electronics, built a SNES cart, tinkering with some arduino projects etc and I quite like it, although I've put those projects on hold to focus on software development projects in a vain attempt to get another job.

My problem as a SWE now is I feel firmly mid level, and this is a terrible market. All roles are Senior or Principle, I can only get interviews from referrals, and I can't make it past the technical round for those. The feedback I'm given is that I come across as someone who can learn and study to do the job (very true), but I'm not someone with Senior experience who can come in and just do the job and bring experience with me that can level up a team. It seems like they also largely just want senior eng's to babysit Claude prompts now, which I'm also not interested in.

I'm frustrated because I spent 5 years studying and getting better as a SWE to climb out of the customer service dead end I was in, only for the field to be washed away overnight by AI and venture capitalists.

So I feel I'm at a point where I need to change careers again, and I think about all the electronics work I enjoy and the SWE experience I have and wonder if I'd really love electrical engineering. I worry I'm too old to go back to school and my job prospects will be nil by the time I finish again. So I guess I'm asking if this is a smart long term move, or if EE jobs are also going to be hit by AI down the road. I was making $140k at my last job and understand I'll take a pay cut, but I'm fine with that as long as it can lead to stability long term. I've also been remote for the last 10 years and don't know what my in-person job prospects are in my area, or if there are remote EE jobs even (I know there are some, my wife works for a company that builds microcontrollers and they have remote gigs, but I don't know if that's the norm.)

Anyway long post, this was half getting it off my chest. Thanks for reading :)

Has anyone gone through an internship interview with Eaton before? I recently had a phone screening with them and felt pretty confident about it so I’m interested to know what to expect in the actual interview. This is for a power systems intern role.

For my senior project I am working on a basketball electric wheelchair. I mainly am on the power system side and how we are providing power to the system. I have a rough outline for what the power system needs to do to power it properly and have added in a zener snubber to mitigate some back emf to the battery as it can only handle 4-6A going into it for charging. Here is a super rough draft of the power system, is there anything that comes to anyones mind that I may be missing for the main power supply to the two motors? I haven't sized my diodes or resistors yet as I wanted to see if there is something detrimental that I am missing before calculating those values to mitigate the back emf.

Rough Draft Below, any advice seriously welcomed!

Those of you that have been in both Controls Engineering & Power (Design/Consulting), what made you stick with one over the other? I am torn between staying where I am now, or changing fields and switching to something different:

Currently I have a decent job as a mainly power focused EE at a design/consulting firm. Current focus is drawings, specs, light load calcs, design packages, etc. In my future they will be adding Arc Flash Studies & Protection Coordination to my list of responsibilities. I would take the lead and spearhead that with some guidance from senior EEs. Essentially a traditional EE role.

I also have a great offer to pursue a controls engineering position. Panel design, testing, programming, commissioning. I'd be giving up some benefits for higher pay, traveling further distances than I am now (~20%) and performing the functions of a OEM/Integrator. The opportunity excites me as it would be office/shop, PLC programming, more in-person, more tangible that what I have experienced thus far in my career.

For my senior design project I was tasked with creating the BMS for our project. I do not know too much about designing a BMS other than it being mentioned in lower detail in a couple of classes. My teammates know even less than I do. Has anyone taken a class or researched the topic know any good books I can read to learn more about the design work and details of it and the options I have while designing it to get me started somewhere. If you have any other advice where to start too that will also be welcomed.

I was looking at past career fairs and saw that SJSU has much more/better companies going to career fairs than SCU.

I thought SCU was a feeder to top companies in Silicon Valley but it seems its career fair is lacking.

Was it all just marketing/hype or is SCU actually well respected.

SCU = Santa Clara Uni

SJSU = San Jose State

FYI: Me and my friend both checked handshake he goes to SJSU and me to SCU and his career fair was stacked compared to SCU. Both of us are EE

Hello everyone, I am going to get out of high school in a year and I will have a lot of free time after. I have a background in computer science and I have worked on projects that mostly involved information retrieval techniques. I would like to learn how to create my own usable computer, mostly for the sake of exploring the field, however I don'T really know where I should start. I am open for any suggestions, resources, books. Thanks

Any advice for someone setting up a Power Transmission honors course for juniors and seniors looking to either become linemen, apprentice electricians, or go to college for electrical engineering? I’m trying to connect with community colleges in the area to align my curriculum with theirs but haven’t heard back. I have taught engineering principles which was more based on mechanical engineering so electrical is new for me.!What are essential concepts, math skills to teach, and/or job skills I can help my students develop?

I'm mega super asocial/introverted. I hate socializing so much that it has even affected my gpa, since i was not attending classes and was self-teaching the materal.

I'd say i'm good at every kind of EE stuff and i enjoy everything in EE: Math,Physics,Coding , e.t.c

But i can't be jack of all trades and time has come for me to choose subfield.

I want to know what subfield should i choose and what subfield should i avoid.

Should i lean towards more Physics adjacent(RF,optics, semiconductors) or more CS adjacent(embedded, FPGA , e.t.c), if i want to spend as much of my time as possible working alone.

Got this old pop machine awhile back and we’re finally going to put it in my dad’s shop after getting it finished to keep beverages cold. I don’t believe the coin mechanism works. Is there anyway to bypass the coin mechanism so the machine will dispense a beverage when the button is pushed?

I've gotten my hands on a whole bunch of shop tools: Table Saws, Planers, Drill Press, Shop Vacuum, Welder. Only caveat is that it's all in 110v while our power grid is 220v. I'm considering using a transformer but some of the tools require quite a bit of current, especially on start of those big bulky brushed motors of tools like table saws. So I wanted to ask:

Can one wire up 4 or 8 220v-120v transformers in parallel to spread the load across them? What issues would that incur?

Ideally I wanted to create a separate "american" 120v line in my shop to plug these tools in. I believe a single large transformer would run into thousands. Another option was to hang individual transformers for each tool but there are a lot of tools and some tools just draw too much current on startup to even get up to speed.

Cheers.

Just saw a post asking about this on the opposite end, and it made me realize that I am a VERY social person and would like to be in communication with coworkers and people outside the EE field regularly.

What are some jobs, suggestions, or advice you can give to stay social in such a technical-heavy and isolating field?

Has anyone used MacBooks for their undergrad studies in EE in the last few years?

If so, what has your experience been?

I really want to stay in the Apple ecosystem so I’m thinking about purchasing a MacBook Air M4 with 24gb of RAM before school starts.

I know there are limitations with certain softwares but are VMs good enough to get around them?

Thanks so much for the advice!!

Title - I’m an incoming freshman studying electrical engineering. Please and thank you!!

Guys, could use some help identifying the connector from the attached pictures.

It is used in 24V AC compressor power supply circuit, so the current is up to 15-20A. Cables are 12 awg.

Asked Ai and it insists that this is the HB4/9006 connector, which is obviously not the case.

Thanks in advance.

Hey sorta looking for some insight on pay honestly I’m considering going to school to get my EE degree my only concern is pay . I’m currently going to be making next year 120k/yr currently I make 97k/yr I am part of the IBEW for sound and communication I finished my apprenticeship and just need hours to journey out , I could eventually get to $139k then $151k max at Base salary no overtime included I just wonder in the future when I get older if I’d still want to be working in the construction side of things or if I should go to school but pay is important for me since I’m the only one working at the moment with 2 kids. How has your guys journey been i live in San Jose Monterey area in California. I do work in installing fire alarm systems data racks running and herniating fiber installing security systems and access controls and other low voltage appliances. Hence why I’m interested in an electrical engineering degree I’m currently 27 and rather start sooner then later thanks for any responses going to be out so I’ll reply when I can thanks in advance.

Hi all, I'm about to start a Master's program in Electronics Engineering at the University of Genoa, Italy. I'm also fortunate enough to be able to fully focus on my studies since my parents are funding everything.

So, apart from grinding through all the coursework to the best of my ability, I obviously want to join a lab, either on-site or possibly remotely, to do research and hopefully get some publications, just like I did during undergrad.

I'm actually already acquainted with a professor there. His lab and research focus on analog IC design, but mostly on amplifiers for biomedical applications, while I'm more interested in power electronics, power conversion, and energy harvesting, so our research interests don't really overlap.

Now that I'm starting from scratch in a new environment, I'm honestly pretty clueless about how to get things going again: how to network, how to find research opportunities and new lab, how to find internships, and generally how to navigate all of this in an international environment.

I mean I can't just go on LinkedIn and start clicking "Apply" on every internship I see, right?

I'm sure many of you guys in this sub have probably experienced something similar, so I'd love to hear from you: what did you do, and how did you make the most of your time during your Master's?

I’m in my last year of EE, I couldn’t land an internship. My last year GPA is 2.4 and I failed one of my courses last term. I don’t have any employable skills whatsoever.

I really want to get into power/ utilities sector but I don’t have any industry connections. I don’t know how to get into it.

I wish I could know a proper path way to secure an Engineer In Training job as a Power Systems Engineer in Substation or Transmission Line planning.

I am in Canada as an international student. I’m afraid that I might not be able to land a job because of me having no experience and higher rates of unemployment, and I’ll have to leave the country which I don’t want to.

I chose EE because of better job prospects and high job security from what I’ve heard back in first year.

Feels like there is no hope for me. I wish I didn’t choose EE and studied something else.

I’m an electrical engineering graduate returning to the field after working in data and consulting. I’ve been learning Revit through several project-based electrical/MEP courses, but so far most of my experience has involved following an instructor and mirroring their workflow.

I’ve practiced things such as:

* Starting and organizing an electrical project
* Linking an architectural model
* Setting up views, levels, sections, view ranges and visibility settings
* Copying/monitoring levels and placing spaces
* Placing lighting fixtures, receptacles, switches and electrical equipment
* Connecting switches to lights
* Creating circuits and assigning them to panels
* Working with distribution systems, voltages and panel schedules
* Creating lighting and electrical schedules
* Adding tags, annotations and circuit paths
* Troubleshooting families or elements that aren’t visible in a view
* Making basic family and type-property adjustments

I’m beginning to understand the overall process, but I know that following a polished tutorial is very different from receiving an incomplete model, a set of markups or a real design assignment at work. For those working in electrical MEP design, what would an actual task given to a new Revit designer look like?

For example:

* Would I receive an architectural model and redlines showing where to place everything?
* Would I be expected to determine fixture, receptacle and equipment locations myself?
* Would someone give me panel and circuit information, or would I be expected to develop it?
* Would my first assignments mostly involve modeling, drafting, annotations and correcting markups?
* How complete or messy are the files you typically receive?
* What information would I need to gather before beginning the task?
* What would a senior designer check when reviewing my work?
* What common mistakes immediately show that someone has only followed tutorials?

If you were training a new electrical designer, could you give an example of a realistic task/assignment.

My goal is to become genuinely job-ready rather than learn where the Revit buttons are. I’d especially appreciate suggestions for practice assignments I could recreate independently without watching an instructor perform every step first.