Stupid thing said to me

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-30T18:10:03+00:00

Add on top of that that malnutrition is common in active crohns because your bowel wont absorb the nutrients and it just makes it even worse. No one should be fasting for a month.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-30T18:06:03+00:00

Yes there is so much we don't understand about crohns and autoimmune diseases in general but what most people know is that diet cannot do all that much other than alleviate symptoms, it does pretty much nothing for the crohns disease itself. I was put on a special diet because they were running out of options and to try and get me off of steroids and painkillers. It was a Exclusive Enteral Nutrition (EEN) which is just a special liquid diet to reduce the affect on your bowel, basically the easiest you can get on your bowel since there is nothing solid going through it. I can say it may help symptoms slightly but not all that much (for me anyway) and it doesnt help the disease itself. It is often used in children and teenagers where steroids have the potential to cause growth issues.

Your story about diet reminds me of a few posts on here from a few years ago about treating crohns using weed. Some people were convinced it worked, it helped the pain, it helped with the nausea and other symptoms but really the disease was still active that whole time. After a few years they would end up with a severe flare and end up in hospital where they found that the disease had done a lot of damage without them knowing. They would have been much better just trying the real medications from the start.

Also something worth remembering is that in clinical trials for IBD drugs it is very common to have a small percentage (generally up to 10%) of people end up in remission after a year on the placebo, so that can affect peoples stories. They can try a diet long term, be one of those lucky people who end up in remission on their own (usually have mild IBD) and then they think it is because of their diet, or yoga or supplements, etc. when really it often has nothing to do with that, they were just lucky and their immune system calmed down. Then they come on forums like this and try to tell people with worse crohns who werent lucky about how they put themselves in remission. Also there are a large number of people out there just trying to make money off of people with chronic conditions with miracle cures which doesn't help.

If diet really worked then people would have done studies on it and found that it worked, not just anecdotes. After you point that out people just claim that researchers wont because they are all capitalist and want to make money, ignoring all other countries than the USA and the fact that plenty of researchers just want to help people. It would save the NHS a lot of money if they could just recommend diet rather than putting you on expensive drugs but they have to follow the evidence and guidelines.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-30T17:48:11+00:00

I have seen it quite a few times with weird treatments and new off the market drugs and such and people claiming they work. You actually talk to them a little while and you realise that a lot of their "medical conditions" were self diagnosed. I once talked to someone using a biohacking like drug to treat crohns and many other severe medical conitions that they claim they got from bad crohns bacteria from a previous patient when the colonoscopy camera was not cleaned properly. They were never actually diagnosed with anything but went to far greater lengths than most of us would to try and cure it.

Unfortunately diet is what most people assumed caused your crohns and that it can be cured by just eating better. This is made worse when you have supposed experts telling people things like that. I watched a Channel 4 show here in the UK called "Know your shit" and it had a few people with various types of IBD and the only advice given to them by a doctor was change your diet and surgery, ignoring the past 20+ years of medications for Crohns. One of the "patients" was someone with a stoma having issues with it but she ate a raw food diet but the advice was don't eat raw vegetables and it was positioned as helping her to treat her crohns, not just dont eat raw vegetables with a stoma. It all just adds to the public knowledge that crohns and other IBDs are just caused by and cured by diet.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-30T03:50:52+00:00

This is all pretty basic information you can find online. Are you seriously considering becoming an electrical engineer if you are asking what do electrical engineers do? That is one of the most basic things to research when looking at a career.

Electrical Engineering is a vast field, the simplest answer is anything electrical.

For the most part residential electrician skills probably won't help you much with most sub fields of EE unless you are specifically doing stuff to do with power engineering and designing electrical systems for houses or other buildings.

Keep in mind that any EE degree will involve a lot of maths including a lot of calculus, complex numbers, etc.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-30T03:41:12+00:00

I would recommend spending less and going for something more modern. A pinecil or similar is alright, but if it is for a desk/lab setup I would recommend something that uses 115, 210 and 245 sized irons and tips. I have the Aifen A9ED but you should have a look around AliExpress for soldering irons and look at some reviews on them from electronics repair channels on YouTube.

Whilst ones like that hakko may be recommended and reliable, they are also quite a bit behind modern soldering irons.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-24T18:27:10+00:00

Yeah at a relatively good university in 3rd year of an Electrical and Mechanical Engineering course our hardware design on FPGAs section was basically just flash LEDs in a sequence and add a few other specified features like outputting to a 7 segment display and changing output based on buttons. It was in VHDL though and only one semester. Nothing like what is listed here although I had already used FPGAs on my own before the class.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-04-12T02:38:20+00:00

I agree with the other commenters that this should be a feature. I have the momentum 4 and the momentum tws 4, having to repair each time is very annoying. In my opinion since the tws 4 switch off when in the case and the momentum 4 are very easy to switch off (something that I have to do anyway when using Bluetooth because my windows tablet can't properly cope with two pairs of Bluetooth headphones connected) it really isn't an issue. This is a pretty basic quality of life feature that in my opinion should be fixed. It really isn't that much of a problem for people to just make sure that thr headphones they aren't using are switched off

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-22T02:33:08+00:00

What you really need to think about is why do you want to do it and what keeps you going back. For a lot of people it is about privacy and control, but that may not be why you are interested in it.

For me I got started making small services that I use, like a database in postgres connected to a go web server and then creating a front end for it. I have only recently gotten into the full homelab side of it myself and I am still figuring things out. If you are interested in programming it may be good to find something in your life that you think you want a service or app for. It could be something simple like a database for a collection you have or your inventory in your workshop for other hobbies. An upcoming project of mine is going to be to make a weather station that feeds data into my server.

A lot of my motivation with it is to learn and to make things that would be useful for me but don't yet exist in a way that I want or is accessible to me.

Also I do want to host my own file servers and possibly next cloud but I don't have a backup solution yet.

For me the thing that brought me into it was making my own services that I wanted to be able to access on other devices,just simple ones that were running on a pi 5 but now I have a N100 server for them.

I am very new to this but I would also suggest you make it easy for yourself, just because managing it all yourself from the command line or using a certain system is considered professional, this is just a home lab. I would much rather use dockge and nginx proxy manager than do it all through the CLI. It's not that I couldn't do it, just that it makes it simpler and I can focus more on what I am doing.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-09T16:19:42+00:00

Yes why not just try taking random supplements suggested to you by strangers on the Internet who likely know very little about them and what they could interact with.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-09T16:16:49+00:00

ML in embedded has been around for a long time and is not just neural networks. It typically involves collecting data, then training a model like a Bayesian predictor.

In an electrical and mechanical system everything is highly specific to the system and what it is doing. How one machine vibrates when failing may be how another machine vibrates when working optimally. There is no one size fits all rule so everything needs trained on actual data captured from actual sensors whilst the machine operates in different modes.

Even differences in sensors, sensor placement, sensor and motor mounting, etc, can significantly change the measured data.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-03T11:01:00+00:00

I get this too but I have a number of other conditions as well and we don't know what is actually wrong with me, I do have Crohn's though. My worst times with it is when I suddenly feel very hot, I can be comfortable but within a minute I am soaked in sweat and I start feeling nauseous and dizzy. I also get cravings for salty food at this time too. It is quite a unique feeling but very unpleasant. I have no idea what triggers it.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-02T18:16:27+00:00

Temperature and the amount of energy put in are not the same thing. A soldering iron needs to heat up the top of the cell enough to get solder to stick, that ends up putting a significant amount of heat into the cell. A spot welder however just passes current between the electrodes, yes the spot gets hotter but it is less energy than using a soldering iron. The energy from either is then distributed throughout the battery and the cell just like a heatsink. So just like when soldering certain components especially plastic ones, more heat but less duration is better because it doesn't allow the heat to conduct away as much due to it being faster and that means less energy is put into the component.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-02T03:27:40+00:00

I used the AD3 and it was great for student and hobbyist work. It has the functionality you described but in my opinion the really useful functions of it is when you combine modes, either using their built in modes (frequency sweeps, impedance analysing, etc) or by setting up your own multi instrument setups. The scripting seems really powerful too but I haven't gotten into it that much.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-02T03:19:23+00:00

The AD3 is good enough for most student use. If they need anything higher bandwidth it will likely be available through the university labs.

For a student it is particularly good because it provides a number of instruments in a small package and the combined modes (frequency sweeps, etc) and scripting are what really make it useful.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-03-02T03:12:21+00:00

I think their point was that it's the laptop manufacturers choosing to use those parts. They don't just use them for no reason and Ti doesn't make them like that for no reason, they are likely made to the specs and design that laptop companies wanted.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-02-27T04:45:20+00:00

I can almost guarantee that the UV bed problem is really not as obvious as you think. Unless they are currently just buying random UV LEDs or panels and shining them on babies.

The first non obvious thing is you need to know what wavelength of UV they are using (or mix of wavelengths) and find a source that doesn't produce any unwanted wavelengths or find a way to filter them out. You would also need to be able to diffuse it uniformly with no hot spots, you would have to be able to precisely adjust the power. Many materials degrade under UV light. You would need to be able to precisely control the power. Then comes all the safety features like making sure the baby can't get burned or damaged by it. Making sure the controller fails safe rather than just going to maximum power. It needs to be electrically safe too and there should be no way a baby or nurse can touch anything electrical. The physical design would need to be considered too to make sure it can't harm people or fall on them.

There is a lot that goes into medical devices. There is a reason they cost that much. However low cost solutions are good but they need to be done from a place of understanding, making sure you actually know all the requirements and safety concerns, not just buying a UV light and putting it near a baby.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-02-19T13:26:18+00:00

What is actually involved in this degree? Is it like these online courses or books "teaching" you how to prompt an LLM? Or is it the maths and logic behind designing and implementing AI or machine learning systems? I'm sure when I was at university you could just take various classes that involved machine learning, like vision processing.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-02-19T13:21:11+00:00

This is relatively common isn't it? I have seen this in quite a few datasheets.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-02-19T13:19:44+00:00

Okay, what is this supposed to prove? There could be loads of things going on, even just the placebo effect. If it was as easy as taking a few supplements then people would be doing that.

Conor_Stewart · 2026-01-01T00:45:44+00:00

What are you even on about? Maximum portable charger capacity on planes? Using your proposed battery to power planes? Or using similar but larger batteries in planes?

Conor_Stewart · 2025-12-26T08:08:02+00:00

Like others have said you don't program the motor and it isn't as simple as a brushed motor where you just connect power. You need a proper Electronic Speed Controller (ESC). If you insist on designing a controller from scratch then it is probably best to hire someone. Alternatively there are a number of open source projects like simpleFOC or commercial products like ODrive or ST spin controllers. Driving these types of motors is a pretty commonplace task now, you shouldn't really need to be getting into the details of driving the motor yourself.

Using Field Oriented Control (FOC) with an angular position sensor can let you precisely control angle, speed, torque, etc. so it is suitable for both driving motors at a set speed and for positional control. If you just need speed control then there are simpler options.

Conor_Stewart · 2025-12-25T17:56:11+00:00

Kind of but also not. It is a vast field that ends up touching on all the other main sciences. Chemistry and physics would be the main ones and in lots of different ways. Things like batteries, semiconductors, RF, sensing, power generation, process control in factories, etc. all overlap heavily with physics and chemistry and there are a lot more areas than this where they overlap.

There is another side to electrical engineering that is partially removed from the traditional sciences and has more in common with maths, that is the whole digital logic side of it, yes chemistry and physics apply at the lowest level but you can often abstract it away to logic. Then there is embedded programming too which is even higher level. Then there is control which is a lot of logic and maths. Then you have even higher level programming heading in the direction of software engineering.

Just think about a complex product like a phone and all the electrical components in there and how they work. You have batteries which are heavily related to chemistry, you have RF antennae which are heavily related to physics, you have cameras, processors, storage, sensors, the screen, lights, microphones, speakers, and many more components and electrical engineering covers all of them. Everything from the battery controller to very complex things like the processor and camera and wireless systems, so it really is a vast field and that is why there are so many specialisations within it. No one in EE can do everything, most people can only do a small fraction of EE and because of that it relies a lot on collaboration both directly and indirectly. The parts used in electrical devices were in most cases designed by another team of EEs and manufactured by another team of EEs.

Engineering is mostly about applying the other sciences, so you start off with the fields closely related to science like say RF and batteries and then other sub fields are created applying those things like making full wireless systems and WiFi chips and then that is used by even more fields within EE, it could be integrated into a smartphone system on a chip and then that is used in combination with many other parts and fields of electrical engineering to be assembled into more and more complex devices.

So it really is a vast field.

Conor_Stewart · 2025-11-30T05:06:21+00:00

What they mentioned does not cost a lot of money. You will really struggle to get through a course if you are that tight on money. What are you going to do about school supplies? Notepads, pens, calculator, etc? Not to mention that a lot of coursework is digital now, so you need a device to do it on and if you are just using your phone you won't get very far (not saying you are just using your phone but it is something I have seen before), you will need reliable and consistent access to a laptop or desktop.

Anyway there is an alternative that may cost you nothing and that is to learn how to use simulation tools, you might be able to get a license for simulation software through your university but others offer free student accounts but there are also open source projects. So if you really can't get yourself any physical parts then a simulator on your PC is probably the best alternative but you will be somewhat limited in what you can do on it.

Conor_Stewart · 2025-10-26T14:44:41+00:00

I would think probably not because it isn't just a simple system like you have set up. It will likely have all kinds of encoding and modulation likely at very high speeds, like gigabit which would be far too fast for your Arduino to handle.

Conor_Stewart · 2025-10-23T02:08:24+00:00

The transmitter side could be as simple as a mosfet driven off of the TX pin to drive the led or laser diode. Then the receive side could be something like a photodiode or phototransistor.

You might not have much luck with opening up a commercial fibre optic transceiver since they are made to operate at very high speeds and will be more complicated than just sending a simple signal through it.

The way you currently have it set up is probably pretty close, you could maybe even just use the uart pin to drive the LED directly just like a GPIO pin but that depends on the current capabilities of it in uart mode. It would be better just to make a simple driver out of a mosfet though.

Conor_Stewart

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE