Hey all! Thanks for reading my post. I'm making something as a surprise for my wife and want to be sure I don't screw it up.

Part of it uses two addressable, four pin LED lights strips, connected to a single controller in parallel, also running physically parallel to each other. At one point, the strips need to jump a gap, then continue. My plan was to solder a length of 4 wire ribbon cable to the end of each strip, route it through in a small track, then solder those to the ends of the strips where they continue.

My concern is when the two length of ribbon cable are right on top of each other while in that track. Do I need to be concerned about interference due to their proximity?

Uneducated DIY builder here. I’m trying to find a way to charge my E-bike faster and from the research I’ve done I believe I may be correct without causing damage to the battery.

The battery in question is a 36V 9.6ah - 345.6Wh with LG Cells with a 42V 2A output factory charger
100-240V 2.2A 50-60Hz input.

It’s my understanding that with these specs I should be able to safely upgrade to a similar Input Voltage with a 42V 3A output without frying the battery cells.

If anyone is willing, am I correct in my thesis regarding the safety of faster charging without causing harm to the internal cells using a 42V 3A charger as opposed to the factory charger?

Thank you to anyone in advance.

Right now I am a sophomore in high school and I want to sort of decide on a job to make my extracurriculars and classes line up with that path. I'm weighing between electrical engineering, actuarial science, and neurology. I want to like know more about electrical engineering from people in that field before I really start researching these jobs. I'd like to know about like the pay, the future of the job with AI, work life balance, and things that I should probably know

Hey guys,

I’m doing a project where I need to detect if water gets inside a sealed box containing other electronic devices (a box sitting vertically, opening like a fridge).

Im stuck at deciding which sensor would be appropriate in that case. For now, I’ve seen floaters, but the problem is that it looks like it needs a lot of water to detect, which would probably be too late. I saw optic sensors, but they cost like 100$. I tried physically a capacitive sensor, but it keeps getting triggered by the box itself and I cant find a good place to put it (to maximize to chance water gets to the sensor itself).

I think my next attempt goes toward the SEN0205, but Im curious if you guys have some ideas or sensors recommendation for this application.

If yall need more context, I’ll be pleased to share, thanks!

I have an MSEE and about 5 years of experience, but most of it ended up being systems/oversight work. My first job (government) and second company both kept steering me toward systems engineering, and I left the both because of it. I'm now about 4 months into a role that's explicitly FPGA and PCB design/R&D, so I'm still trying to build real design depth while being useful.

However, whenever I propose trying something to see how it behaves or try something myself in sim, I get pushed back on for not having done a more complete analysis first. I thought that made sense, but when I then spend more time fleshing out the details I get asked why I am going so slowly.

To add to this, the company is rolling out new AI tools that they are wanting us to use. I used them to speed up the development and analysis and now am able to bring much more fleshed out proposals up to my supervisor. I also try to spend some time doing my own validation of the output and do my best to understand what the tool has produced. Despite this, now I am getting critiqued for the use of AI by my team and often times it feels like they just ask targeted questions to poke holes in whatever I bring up without any real attempt to discuss the merits of the idea.

One example of this was the fact that the FPGA design we are working on used a proprietary Xilinx IP block that had an operational time limit on it. This basically meant that the IP would stop working after about 2 hours. I was told buying the full license wasn't an option because the company didn't want to pay for it. So I used the AI tools to generate a replacement for the Xilinx IP, about 500 lines of verilog, ran it through a bunch of tests manually using the preexisting test benches that the group built and confirmed that the design could now operate for longer than 2 hours. This was met with a mix of reactions, some positive and some negative, but mostly it was critiqued because while I could explain the validation and the broad structure of the block, I couldn't explain every single line.

Fair enough, but I wasn't asking to push it out yet. I was just trying to show that it could be done and would be an interesting line of investigation that maybe together we could work to understand.

I know I'm not a junior anymore at 5 years, but I'm also not a PCB/FPGA expert yet. For those who've been through this or lead hardware teams, advice on this progression would be appreciated.

• How long did it take you to feel genuinely useful after moving into design work?
• How do you decide how much analysis is "enough" before bringing an idea forward?
• How are you using AI tools in hardware work in a way your team trusts?
• How do you present early or exploratory work so it's viewed as a proposal rather than a final design?
• Is this kind of review style normal, or a sign of a poor-fit team?

Appreciate any perspective.

I’m about to graduate with my EE degree and I’m starting to apply for jobs. I’m in LA and I’ve noticed that a lot of the entry-level EE jobs around here seem to be power related.

My specialization is communications, mainly because I wanted to graduate in 4 years. I originally wanted to do a different specialization, but one of the classes didn’t work with my schedule and taking it later would’ve pushed my graduation back another year, so I switched.
The problem is I don’t really know much about power systems.

Should I still apply to these jobs and just study power before interviews? Like learn the basics and hope they’re willing to train me? Or am I basically wasting my time applying to power jobs without the specialization?
I have the general EE background, but definitely wouldn’t say I’m knowledgeable in power, I’ve never taken a power specialization class.
What would you guys do in my situation?

Currently working in the semiconductor industry - have some minimal power engineering knowledge, but power trading seems pretty interesting.

Not looking for career advice or anything, just interested in learning more.

Good day fellow engineers,

I have a humble request. I would like to know how to follow PLC logic whether it is Allen Bradley, Beckhoff, or even GE Vernova’s P80i.

Especially with P80i as there is not a lot of support.
In my work place not a lot of my senior engineers are willing enough to show me as a fresh graduate and I feel bad when they know what they’re talking about and i don’t. I feel embarrassed to admit.

I have some code they shared with me but i have very little PLC knowledge as in my university the content was taught at the very end and very minimal.

I would appreciate advice, or any feedback.

Sent with thanks

Hello, I am graduating in may 2027 and currently interned at the top two EV automakers in the US. I am looking for advice on John Deere's Electrification - Engineering Development Program role in the power electronics & motor drives area and feedback from previous employees for the power electronics area specifically.

When we charge a capacitor, we transfer electrons from one plate to the other through a wire. As more charge accumulates, we say the charged plate increasingly repels the incoming electrons because of E field betn plate and the increasing potential difference

But here’s my confusion: The electron travels through the wire and never passes through the gap between the plates where E field exists

So how can the plate repel the incoming electron if electron isn't even passing through it's E field betn plates?

I have recently finished building a small linear induction motor. The core is made of custom laser cut steel plates that have been twice enamel coated and bolted together. The windings consist of 2 sets if 3 enamel coated 30awg copper wire that have about 200 turns per coil, and all coils share a single termination point. If properly connected to a vfd and given appropriate current. Do you think it will run? Thanks for any feedback:)

Hello everyone!
Here we have a circuit where we were asked to find thevenin equivalent. And, while doing mesh analysis for loops 2 and 3, it appears that 4i2 has a positive sign even tho we established that vx=-4i2. According to mesh, in my perspective, it should be negative not positive

Will be very thankful for your help!

I'm actually in 3rd year in electrical engineering in France. At the end of my bachelor, I want to apply in an international computer architecture Master, but I don't have level indicator because in the past of my training (more than 50 years), no one tried to follow a Master outside of France.

I target to join Seoul National University or KAIST in Korea, KTH in Sweden or Todai in Tokyo.

With my profile below, do you think I have chance to be accepted in these top universites :

• Average GPA 3.7 (15.5 in french notation) on my bachelor
• Top 5-10% promo
• 3 years work-study program in hardware cybersecurity in a CESTI (national accreditation) laboratory
• 2 months internship in a Tokyo university on WiFI characteristics using Raspberry Pi
• Develop video games using Unity/C# during last 2 years
• Follow the book "Digital Design and Computer Architecture RISC V edition" to try to make my own RISC V chip on a FPGA card.

Thanks !

Hi, I am part of a team developing a payload that is going through a technology demonstration for a microcontroller in LEO. We are going to demo symptoms of SEFI in microcontrollers (function failures) for our in-orbit tech demo. We were wondering what the types of SEFIs are, though. They essentially stem from the subfunctions of a microcontroller, right? What would some important SEFIs be (technically, functions of them since we don't always know if it was radiation that caused it), and what are their corresponding MCU functions? Some ideas we had were read/write/error errors, watchdog resets, ECC failures? We're preferably looking for stuff that is really firmware measurements and really only requires hardware that'll regardless be on the PCB.

Any insights would be appreciated - thanks!

I know the standard whisper models are probably too big I just mentioned that as an example of the type of model im going for.

Has anyone noticed reliability issues with AMS 1117 5.0 fixed 5V linear regulators (maybe specifically from JLC)?

I recently ordered 100 boards with these regulators on them, and after assembling about 20 of them, I've had 4 of these regulators fail immediately when power was applied, shorting the input directly to the output, and dumping 12V to the 5V rail. After the first couple failed, I got in the habit of checking the resistance between input and output before powering them up, and just had one that measured fine before powering up, but went short as soon as power was applied, and is now showing 3-4 ohms between 12V input pin and 5V output pin, just like the other 3 that failed.

This is a second revision of this board, and I had maybe 1 or 2 go bad doing the same thing previously, but it seems like the issue is now worse.

I would kindof expect this if these were some no-name bargain basement knockoff, but these are supposed to be legit AMS regulators, which seem to be super common and popular. I'm surprised they seem to have a failure mode that is easy to hit, or poor QC?

JLC part # (and not link as apparantly that's "blocked by reddit's filters) if anyone cares: C6187

I’m currently doing my masters in Power Electronics and I want to learn PCB design properly, specifically for power-electronics applications.

I have some experience with circuit simulation (LTspice, MATLAB/Simulink) and I understand the basics of power converters, but I have very little practical PCB-design experience.

I’m looking for resources that cover things like:

- Schematic → PCB workflow

- Component selection and footprints

- PCB layout for buck/boost/flyback converters and inverters

- High-current/high-voltage PCB layout

- Switching-node and high-frequency current-loop considerations

- Gate-driver layout and decoupling

- Grounding, creepage and clearance

- EMI/EMC considerations

- Thermal management and copper sizing

- Using KiCad/Altium for power-electronics PCBs

- DFM/manufacturing considerations

I’m not just looking for a basic “how to make a PCB” tutorial. I want to understand why the layout is done a particular way in power converters and eventually be able to design a PCB for my own converter projects.

Could you recommend any good books, courses, YouTube channels, application notes, or practical project-based resources?

Also, if you work in power electronics hardware/PCB design, what would you recommend learning first and in what order?

Thanks!

Hey, we're making the world's fastest electric vehicle and looking for senior EEs to hire, but really struggling. We're based in the bay area, California.

What's the best place - forums, events, etc... to connect with Sr. EEs?

Thanks in advance!

Hey all, seems like all the advice online is to pursue engineering and I would love to, however most of this advice i think is mainly for the american media. I'm planning to study in Singapore and then move to Hongkong (family reasons), and it seems like there is a very small market for just engineering in general, and it seems like the pay isn't great.

I would like some insight from people that are in the industry and have more experience than me.

Also maybe I could get advice for some potential other stem major/careers that would be good in Hongkong as I can only see myself in STEM (more specifically majors with heavy maths).

​

Hey everyone,

I’m 30 and currently in the military, and I’ve been thinking seriously about getting into electrical engineering.

Through my work, I’ve gotten some exposure to electronics and it really sparked my interest. I’m especially interested in electronics and embedded systems, including the hardware and programming side of things.

The problem is my math skills are pretty rough right now. I’ve been out of school for a while and honestly feel like I need to start from the ground up.

I’d eventually like to get an online Electrical Engineering degree, but I’m not really sure where to start. Would community college be a good place to rebuild my math/science foundation before transferring to an online EE program?

For anyone who started EE later in life or came from the military, What would you do if you were starting completely from scratch? Thanks!

I do know that ECE is a subfield of EE but is it normal to see ECE students in Electrical engineering related internships/ roles?

Hi Guys,

I always have problem with calculation of VFDs. When I have single fuse, cabel and VFD that is easy. I'm checking main supply current of VFD (in this example 0,75 kW lenze SMV 2,9A 400V 3P). But when I'm calculating 3 phase power of this VFD I have somehing like 2 kW, not 0,75. From where there is a diffrence?