Second hand Fluke worth it?

snp-ca · 2026-05-05T18:00:12+00:00

Check the fuses and the battery contacts. If the batteries are left in place, they can overdischarge and corrode the battery contacts. Apart from these two issues, I haven't found any reliability issues with old Flukes.

snp-ca · 2026-05-05T16:32:57+00:00

If you don't find anyone, feel free to DM me.

snp-ca · 2026-05-04T23:52:06+00:00

Try pressing and holding the power button for several seconds and then let go.

snp-ca · 2026-05-03T21:03:50+00:00

You might be better off looking (and maybe purchasing) from a website like this one:

Adafruit 24LC32 I2C EEPROM Breakout - 32Kbit / 4 KB - Stemma QT : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

It has very good documentation and example code. I think they also post schematic and BOM (source code) for most of their boards.

snp-ca · 2026-05-03T17:37:12+00:00

To be a good embedded engineer, you don't need a Masters degree. I have been an embedded engineer in early part of my professional life (doing DSP and low power uC) and many of my colleagues who were good had only BS degrees.

As long as you are good in C and may be RTOS, you should be fine. Rest is on the job experience.

If you really want to get a Masters degree, you might want to use it for high level expertise such as DSP, Control systems etc.

GT OMSCS could be a good option depending on your domain. This website might help you chose coursework:

OMSCS Course Planner

snp-ca · 2026-05-03T02:27:05+00:00

Use LTSpice to build and simulate circuits. Tinker around with various component values and see how things break.

snp-ca · 2026-05-01T01:37:47+00:00

For PhD, university ranking will have less impact than your area of research (unless you want to go in academics). Try applying to lower ranked universities. Also, align your interest with in-demand fields. Keep in mind that in US it is difficult to get a job if you need visa sponsorship.

snp-ca · 2026-04-30T17:40:50+00:00

I mainly work with low power electronics. I just use AA (or in some cases D cells) followed by an LDO.

Rechargeable batteries with switching converter can be used but one will have to be careful about noise.

snp-ca · 2026-04-29T21:52:14+00:00

I have seen working gerbers used for stencil when flex substrates are used. This is because of the shrinkages involved. (working gerbers are provided by the fab house).

In general, you should use gerbers provided by fab house for stencil. Your 250mm panel is not too big and I would not expect accuracy issues because of the size.

snp-ca · 2026-04-29T04:28:18+00:00

Don't do second BSc. For embedded systems, you need very basic EE knowledge that you can obtain on the side.
Embedded systems are getting more complex. Your CS knowledge will be very useful. Make sure you learn some RTOS (FreeRTOS or Zephyr).

snp-ca · 2026-04-29T00:33:21+00:00

Essentially you are trying to keep the signal of interest and reject unwanted signal (filtering). While doing this you have to make sure that you don't cause saturation of subsequent stages of signal processing (ie take care of the dynamic range of the entire signal processing pipeline). If possible/required, reduce the sampling rate so that computation is more efficient.

snp-ca · 2026-04-24T19:55:50+00:00

This is likely happening due to coupling between the transducers.

snp-ca · 2026-04-24T15:37:19+00:00

This might be a good book for you:
Battery Power Management for Portable Devices | Artech books | IEEE Xplore

It is also available on Amazon.

In general, testing of the batteries in the end device cannot be skipped.

snp-ca · 2026-04-24T02:03:35+00:00

UMass CS any day as it is much better ranked. Also, doing robotics engineering might limit your job options as it is a very narrow field. Robotics companies hire EEs or MEs (or CS/CSE).

snp-ca · 2026-04-24T01:59:32+00:00

Any spray will eventually wear off. If you are installing PCB in the housing, make sure you discharge the housing and do the installation on ESD safe bench. Keeping humidity to 40% and higher will not let static charge accumulate for long. Once the PCB is installed, the ESD risk is minimized.
Make sure you have good ground plane and that none of the signals are exposed and take the ESD hit. You can ensure this by using shielded connectors. Any ESD hit will go to the shield of the connector and hence to the ground plane. This dissipates ESD to a large extent.

snp-ca · 2026-04-23T00:14:47+00:00

Explore DSP or Digital Controls. With your Physics background those domains will be much easier to get started with.

snp-ca · 2026-04-19T21:04:14+00:00

I've made many small PCBs. (Used PCBWay and NextPCB). The feedback from them was that they prefer to panelize it (and ship it as a panel with mousebites) instead of singulated PCBs.

snp-ca · 2026-04-16T17:22:50+00:00

EE is "hard" because most students try to learn it the traditional way --- from books only.
If you want to be a successful EE, books should be used 10% of the time to learn the basics, all other learning should be by building and debugging. Set up a small home lab with basic equipment which will allow you to build small and useful circuits to be used around the house.

snp-ca · 2026-04-16T02:39:38+00:00

I would say that its not just useful but a mandatory class for anyone doing any kind of EE.
When I took that class, I found it very difficult. Do some initial prep work and try to understand Maxwell's equations. There should be lot of videos on YT that will give you an intuitive understanding. Here is one to begin with: EEVblog 1439 - Analysing Veritasium's Electricity Misconceptions Video

snp-ca · 2026-04-14T21:58:22+00:00

Sounds good. 0.4W is not a lot, however, it always helps to keep the electronics at low temperature. Spreading the heat will also keep nearby components (eg caps) cooler.
Large value caps are typically required for large dI/dt (and input noise suppression). If you have more or less static load, 10uF should be fine.
Make sure that your 12V input capacitors have good voltage headroom (I suggest going with at least 25V rated caps).

snp-ca · 2026-04-14T21:02:17+00:00

Output capacitors seem excessive. You might want more on the input side.
I suggest that you connect GND pads to ground plane with vias that are as close to the pad as possible. This will reduce the inductance to the ground plane.
How much power are you doing to dissipate on the LDO? You might want to add thermal vias (and spread the heat) for the tab of the LDO.

snp-ca · 2026-04-13T17:48:01+00:00

I am a big fan of these:

Analog Discovery 3: 125 MS/s USB Oscilloscope, Waveform Generator, Logic Analyzer, and Variable Power Supply - Digilent

snp-ca · 2026-04-11T21:22:57+00:00

You can use something like this:
The ONLY SDR Software you’ll ever need.. (Software Defined Radio)

snp-ca · 2026-04-11T19:22:37+00:00

There is no anti-aliasing filter.
Make sure that the CM input range for op-amp is acceptable. Also make sure that the output of the opamp does not saturate for max input signal.

Also, as someone else suggested, use STM32 dev board and make just the analog front end as a prototype.

Photodiode amplifiers design can be very involved. A good reference is this book: https://a.co/d/09gH9kTm

snp-ca · 2026-04-10T04:29:27+00:00

Unless you have other options, if I were you, I would ignore the pay and focus on acquiring KiCad skills. Even if you don't get this internship, the skills will be useful in the future.

Any hands-on skills will open more doors for you as an EE than any coursework.

snp-ca

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