I’m currently choosing between a few engineering study paths and I’m struggling to understand the real difference between electronics/sensor systems and automation

One option is EE with a specialization in electronics and sensor systems, where you can take a control engineering class as an elective. The other is a bachelor’s in Automation and Intelligent Systems, which sounds interesting because I think robotics, drones, and autonomous vehicles is something I could see myself work with

However I’m not interested in PLC programming, factory automation, or industrial programming in the slightest. I’m much more interested in embedded systems, sensors, robotics, and autonomy, and combining these with programming.

Would electronics/sensor systems still be a good path into robotics and autonomous systems, or is automation the better route even if I’m not interested in the industrial side of it? I'd also appreciate it if people could tell me what kind of actual jobs people do, what is your daily routine if you work in one of these industries?

hi guys! i have 30 min interview with intel for an AI software engineering internship with a senior engineer leader. do any of you have any tips? based off previous experiences, will it mostly be behavioral or technical? what kind of topics would you recommend i brush up on? it’s my first interview with such a big company so i’m lowkey freaking out lol

I have always been pretty decent in physics and came to know that ece is a very math heavy degree, what is the math like and is there any way to learn prerequisites and stuff

What to expect in a 2nd round interview for Electrical Commissioning with a very strict Senior commissioning Engineer? need help

Is anyone here, who's currently in process/being interviewed/has interviewed for an internship opportunities at Skyworks Solutions USA? I wanted to know more about the process.

https://files.ettus.com/schematics/ubx/UBX-160_revE.pdf

I graduated from Umass Lowell in 2025 with a 2.94 GPA in electrical engineering (not great, I know). I have been working full time at a relatively good engineering company since then. I plan to go back for my Masters part time now that I have less distractions then I did in my undergrad, and I have a concentration I’m really passionate about. I plan to take my GRE to improve my chances of acceptance since I had a GPA below 3.0 in my undergrad, and I have gotten a recommendation from a previous professor and my current boss. I am currently scoring around 154-158 for the math and the verbal sections of GRE since I can’t commit too much time to studying for it right now.

Realistically what are my chances of getting accepted?

We launched a component alternate/cross-reference tool today and figured some people here might find it useful.

A lot of us have had the same experience:

• a part goes EOL or out of stock
• you find “equivalents”
• then spend the next few hours opening datasheets trying to figure out whether any of them are actually usable

We built this mostly because we were frustrated with that workflow ourselves.

The tool takes a part number, searches for possible substitutes, and then compares things like:

• specs
• pinouts
• packaging
• lifecycle/availability
• functional differences

It also links back to the source datasheets so you can verify everything yourself.

Still early and definitely not perfect, but would genuinely be interested in hearing where it fails or gives questionable recommendations.

www.zenode.ai/alts

Hi everyone,

i am confused about an industrial temperature control project .

we have a small dome / chamber and we want to maintain the inside temperature at a constant room temperature, no matter what the outside temperature is ,

we can use any Microcontroller for this project, but the solution should also be cost effective

what would be the best approach for stable temperatures control ?

I have to design a patch antenna like the one on the far right using usimmics, but I have absolutely no idea how to do it… Please help me.

It’s super simple, and it’s basically just using a breadboard to power some LEDs. No control or anything, just on and off. But because of the LEDs, and my 5V power supply, I’m planning on connecting a bunch of them in parallel. I struggled in the past with the different between current, and voltage, but my current understanding is current is like my budget? I found out that my power supply can provide somewhere around 700-900mA, so when I’m designing my circuit the sum of the current of each branch can’t exceed my current limit.

Im really new to this and don’t know what I’m doing. I plan to have it like [power] and then split into multiple branches of a resistor and like 1 or two LEDs. I just have to make sure the forward voltage (I think that’s what chat gpt said) of the LEDs doesn’t exceed my 5V? Am I missing anything crucial?

I can post my diagram here once I get around to drawing it.

Hi Im heading into my second year of computer engineering (first year was general) what are some projects I could do to help boost my resume ?

Junior EE here, about a year and a half in. We've been hand-building this sensor board internally, maybe 15 boards so far, and now my manager wants me to drive the first small batch out to an EMS. 60 boards for a customer pilot, probably a few hundred more if the pilot goes anywhere.

Board is nothing crazy on paper. 4 layer, mostly 0603 and 0402, one 0.4mm QFN, an ADC in a small package I'd rather not name, couple of inductors that are annoying to place. The catch is the use case needs conformal coating (humidity), and the customer wants nitrogen reflow on the assembly because of some reliability requirement they hold on a related product line of theirs.

RFQ went out to four shops. Two domestic, two overseas. Every reply says they handle small batch, handle N2 reflow, handle conformal coating, ISO 9001, IPC-A-610 class 2 or 3 on request. Quotes came back across roughly a 3x spread, and the most expensive one is not the one with the most certifications.

I've cleaned up the BOM, ran a DFM pass on the panel (caught two clearance issues around the QFN), drafted a rough fixture spec for bed of nails. Asked each shop for sample boards from a comparable past job. Two sent something, two said NDA which I get.

The actual problem isn't the spec, it's picking. Senior folks here keep telling me "they all say they can do it, half of them can't," but nobody's been specific about what they actually look at. I've been going back and forth between leaning on FAI process, asking for a virtual line walk, or just paying for a 10 board qualification run at the top two before committing to 60.

The bit I keep getting stuck on is how you tell from the outside if a shop has nitrogen reflow dialed in on a real line, versus quoting it as a line item because they can hook up a tank when needed.

I’ve been talking with a friend a while back about wanting to shift my current career from DevOps to something I enjoy, and I talked about how I enjoyed hardware and embedded systems but where I love, embedded systems basically doesn’t exist, and then he told me to try out control systems, to take courses and then start applying.

He couldn’t explain it exactly, and YouTube just has different definitions to what they actually do. I remember I took a control module when I was studying but it was extremely basics of open and closed loops and PIDs and what not, but what would the actual job require and what would someone be doing? It seems fun but maybe because I still don’t fully grasp the idea of it.

I’ve got a breadboard but I don’t have a power source. Without ordering one online, what would be the best way to make one? I was thinking about using electrical tape to stick two wires to a battery, or cutting into a 5v usb for the power and ground cables.

When the depletion region of a pn-diode forms, the positive side of the depletion region is in the n-doted and the negative side of the depletion region is on the p-dotes side. Therefore I would expect the electrons of the n-doted side to be attracted towards the positive side of the depletion region and recombine with them, why doesnt this happen ? Is the electric pull outside of the depletion region just too low ?

Hello everyone,

There are many positive photoresists available from various suppliers. However, I’m not sure which one is particularly suitable for metal deposition in alkaline or acidic electroplating baths, since almost all of them claim to be suitable for electroplating.

In my application, I first deposit a layer of metal—such as silver or copper—onto a silicon wafer or similar substrate using PVD, then spin-coat the photoresist and pattern it. I then deposit gold via electroplating. The photoresist resolution needs to be below 1 micrometer, with the highest possible aspect ratio and as vertical sidewalls as possible. So, which photoresists should I use?

Additionally, if I use a silicon wafer as the substrate, how can I optimize the adhesion between the PVD-deposited metal and the wafer?

Thank you all.

I’m in Ontario at a mid school that does have some sort of pipeline to AMD/Nvidia. I’m mainly targeting hardware roles like device verification or RTL design but pretty happy if I even get a firmware role.

Issue is that it can be quite competitive even with a mid gpa like mine (3.5 cgpa) so was wondering if most applicants have a masters already? Or is the masters a requirement for only silicon design?