So I’m just getting into actual electrical work, I’ve been doing tech repair for a while which has made me interested in EE, at the moment I really only understand the very basics like basic components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc).

What are some good free sources online I can utilize to learn Electrical Engineering?

My short term goal is to just understand how to design a circuit.

I’m also curious about physical books that are good, not free of course, for learning electrical engineering.

I appreciate any suggestions and I’m very excited to get into EE!

No idea if this is the correct sub. My parents have always done it at I didn’t think twice. Doesn’t make it wrong!

I’ve just bought a condense dryer and my plan was to have it in the cupboard and run it with the door open so it’s well ventilated and run a lead to the socket but after googling and ChatGPT I’ve found out that it’s a hazard. It says I might need an electrician to install a new outlet?

Is the safety risk that it’ll overheat and explode? We live very rurally and have a 7 month old! I’ve been wanting one for ages because it makes life so much easier but now maybe I won’t even be able to use it….

I Love new Tax and Duty!!!!!!!!

https://www.openpetition.eu/petition/statistik/save-european-hardware-innovation#petition-main

and little https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/1ugpyoe/i_dug_around_a_bit_and_found_exactly_who_is/

I mostly work with multi-PWAs systems in which a bunch of complicated PWAs have to come and work seamlessly together. No one really documents anything at my work and if they do, it's mostly either a bunch of overlaying texts on these schematic PDFs that live in some random dude's computer or word documents that are kinda scattered around. I mean it's not the best but it's something. Do you guys mostly do the same lol?

For context in a junior EE and next semester I’m supposed to take classes for my concentration. Not really sure what I want to concentrate in since there are so many diverse options. I’m worried about choosing the wrong one and stuck in an industry I don’t like. Would appreciate any advice, thanks in advance.

Hey all,

I’m a current EE student who is trying to decide between two full-time offers. I’m looking for advice on the differences between the industries and the opportunities that each would provide.

Offer 1: ~101k + 8k bonus for a power transmission/distribution company in Texas. MCOL area.

Offer 2: 115k + 12k relo for an oil supermajor. It’s a role that I’m not familiar with (instrumentation engineering) but I’m willing to learn. LCOL area.

I was wondering on the differences between the power vs O&G industries and if the skills I’d develop at either of these jobs are very transferrable. I’ve heard that power engineers are in demand but how’s the job market for instrumentation roles?

I’d appreciate any input. Feel free to message me if you need more information. Thanks!

I'm a third-year Electrical Engineering student, and I just got offered a co-op position from an MEP consulting services company. I truly want to try out what different industries are like because I interned as a design engineer at an aerospace company last summer, and I learnt a lot about analog design and stuff. However, I kinda want to get the full experience of what it feels like when working in different industries before I graduate so I don't regret when just going all in for just one specific industry. That being said, my boss from the company I interned at last summer also offered me a spring part-time job (circuit design intern at an aerospace company). What would your advice be to me if I am just dumb for burning the bridge with the previous employer, or is it ok to try out different industries?

I've been spending more time looking at EV motor controllers, and one thing that gets overlooked in general EV discussions is how much the inverter contributes to overall drivetrain efficiency.

Even with a good motor, you've still got switching losses, conduction losses, dead-time effects and thermal limitations in the controller.

And the operating point matters. A controller that's efficient under one load condition isn't necessarily operating at its best during repeated low-speed acceleration or high-current operation.

What's interesting is the trade-off between higher switching frequencies, current ripple, audible noise and heat.

SiC devices can improve some of those trade-offs, but cost and system design still matter.

For anyone who's worked on motor drives or inverter design, which tends to be the bigger challenge in practice: reducing switching losses, managing thermal performance or getting the control strategy right?

I'm particularly interested in how those priorities change between low-cost two-wheelers and larger EV powertrains.

Hello,

For an engineering job I’m applying to, they want me to complete a timed, online assessment. However, I have several disabilities for which I would require accommodations on the test (when I was in school, I received extra time and other aids).

Should I inform the hiring manager of this?
On the one hand, I’m leery about disclosing disability status, since I know they’re not SUPPOSED to discriminate on that basis, but I absolutely don’t trust this in the current job market. Especially since this would be my first full-time engineering job.
On the other, accommodations would improve my chances of success.

Have any other disabled engineers been in this situation while job searching? What did you end up doing?

EDIT: for context, I’m in the US. Employers are generally prohibited from disability-based hiring discrimination, and must make “reasonable accommodations,” but those protections don’t seem very strong right now

So I've been working on this for my engineering thesis and wanted to throw the core idea out there before I sink more months into it, in case anyone's spotted something I'm missing.

WPA3 didn't actually replace the WPA2 four-way handshake, it bolted a new layer in front of it called SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals). The whole point of SAE is that you can't precompute anything offline from a captured handshake anymore, because the key material is blinded through a DiffieHellman-ish exchange instead of a static PBKDF2(password, SSID). In theory that kills offline dictionary attacks dead ie every guess needs a live, rate-limited roundtrip with the AP.

The thing I'm chasing is one specific step buried inside SAE: turning your password into a point on the P-256 curve. The "classic" way to do this (hunting-and-pecking) is a loop, hash the password + MAC addresses, check if you land on a valid curve point, if not increment a counter and try again. That counter, k, is small (geometric distribution, mean of like 2), but it's password-dependent, and it leaks through timing. This isn't new, Vanhoef and Ronen showed this back in 2020 (Dragonblood), and it's why H2E (Hash-to-Element) exists as a constant-time replacement.

What I'm doing differently is trying to actually operationalize the leak with cheap hardware and see how far it goes

Built a timing rig out of ESP32s, timestamping the outgoing SAE Commit frame and the AP's response off the same hardware TSF clock (not a software clock, so no OS scheduling jitter messing things up).

Had to patch the ESP-IDF WiFi driver to even send raw Authentication/Commit frames, turns out the stock driver whitelists frame types and silently drops anything else. Fixed it by weakening one ELF symbol's binding so my own override gets linked in instead of the driver's internal check. One-line, fully reversible.

Instead of just doing classic timing analysis, I'm training a profiled/deep-learning model to recover k from the timing traces, the same way you'd do differential power analysis on an AES key byte treating k as the "leaking intermediate" and SAE's two derivation modes (legacy hunting-and-pecking vs H2E) as my "right key / wrong key" arms.

End goal isn't just "yes it leaks" I want to actually drive a real offline dictionary attack off the recovered k and report how close that gets you back to WPA2-level crackability, under each derivation mode.

First real-hardware run already surfaced something useful (and slightly humbling): at 120 samples/arm on a single receiver, I couldn't separate the two arms statistically yet. Turns out normal 802.11 retransmission noise is in the low-millisecond range, while the actual signal I'm chasing is tens of microseconds. So the noise floor is real and bigger than I'd like — which is exactly why the full version of this is a distributed array of sensors instead of one node, plus way more samples.

Curious if anyone here has played with SAE/Dragonfly timing attacks post-Dragonblood, or has opinions on whether H2E actually closes this cleanly in practice vs just raising the bar. Also happy to go into the ESP32/driver-patching side if that's more people's thing.

On a more practical note I'm a final-year student and this is shaping up to be the basis of a master's/PhD, and I don't currently have a supervisor whose background actually overlaps with side-channel analysis or ECC. If anyone here is an academic/researcher in crypto or hardware security (or knows one who might be interested in this kind of work), I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

Hi!

I have an interview coming up for an RF / Microwave EE I position at a defense prime (onsite, airborne radar focus), and I'm looking for some advice on how to prep.

My Background:

• B.S. in EE recently graduated.
• Standard undergrad RF/Electromagnetics coursework, plus basic hands-on lab experience with VNAs, Spectrum Analyzers, and MATLAB/ADS.

For those working in defense RF or who have interviewed for Entry-Level RF roles recently:

1. Fundamental Math vs. High-Level Concepts: How much on-the-spot math should I prepare for? Is it mostly conceptual (explaining S-parameters, $P_{1\text{dB}}$, noise figure, Friis formula), or will they ask me to do live Smith Chart matching and transmission line calculations on a whiteboard?
2. Lab & Automation Focus: The job description mentions test automation heavily (Python, LabVIEW, VISA/GPIB). Are they expecting deep scripting questions, or mostly understanding how to set up automated S-parameter / power sweeps?
3. Common Pitfalls: What are the most common fundamental traps entry-level candidates fail on during technical screens?

Appreciate any advice or resources to brush up on. Thanks!

so im still in high school but i love to do electrical engineering,ive made my first pcb motor driver using a l9110 IC and i work with esp32 and all that stuff ive made some pretty cool things i guess you can say im moderate/newish to it ive worked with basic parts too like dc motor resistors sensor compasitors mosfets transistors all that stuff.i know how to code microcontrolers but not with c++ ive been using scratch code,BUT THE REAL QUESTION is for college is there a specific catagory of electrical engineering major that doesnt focus on just theoretical stuff but actually does hands on stuff with parts

I bought this non-working Naomoto HYS-5 gravity-feed steam iron online and wanted to get it working again. I’ve tested the wire paths and it looks like it just needs a new thermal fuse. Before plugging it in though, I want to make sure it’s wired correctly.

The current wiring has neutral going to the on/off switch and hot going directly to the heating element and steam button, meaning even with the thermostat set to zero, the steam button and heating element are still getting power?

I’d taken it apart which is why terminals are disconnected but each one is touching its corresponding terminal. The schematic is ai generated, so a little wonky, but represents the wiring as it is now.

Hey guys, I’m a freshman finance student thinking about switching to EE next semester. I think I do find finance and economics interesting but I would just like to learn about how phones and electronics work. I’ve wanted to go into engineering for a while but I’ve always been worried about the difficulty of it. One reason I chose Finance when applying to college rather than engineering is because I thought I wanted to have time going out partying and clubbing. I did do some parting and clubbing thus far, yes it was fun but at the same time it wasn’t all that to be honest. Like, I enjoy it but not as much as I expected, I’d like to do it maybe once every week or two but not more often than that. Also, I am somewhat introverted and have social anxiety and I fear that would cause issues in a finance career.

Another reason I was scared of doing engineering was because I did really poorly in high school calculus. I’ve been taking business calc this year and I’m doing pretty decent so I’m less scared of calculus. I do have issues with time management and managing stress though. Also, I do value free time, I’d ideally like at least an hour or two of free time for myself each day.

I want to do electrical engineering but I’m just scared that it’ll be too difficult even though I find it to be a “cooler” thing to study. I wonder if I’m overly anxious and should just study engineering since I feel more compelled to.

I am 36 years old and considering pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, specialising in Mechatronics, Mechanical, or Electrical Engineering, in Germany as an international student. If I receive an offer from a university of applied sciences, I may take out a student loan to finance my education.

My biggest concern is whether I will face age discrimination when looking for an engineering job after graduating at around 40, and how significantly it could affect my chances of finding employment.

I have been considering this career change for some time because I have struggled to progress in my current career and have been working in the same position for the past 11 years. I see engineering as an opportunity to start a new career, develop practical technical skills, and improve my long-term prospects. However, I am also aware of the financial risks involved in taking out a student loan and the uncertainty of securing a job after graduation.

If transitioning into engineering does not work out, my backup plan is to pursue an online Bachelor’s degree in Data Science and AI from IIT Guwahati (IITG) through Coursera while continuing to work full-time. Since IITG is a reputed institution and the programme is relatively affordable, I hope that earning this degree could strengthen my qualifications and improve my chances of career advancement in my current field.

Given my age, professional background, financial situation, and career goals, which path would be the more sensible choice: pursuing an engineering degree in Germany or studying Data Science and AI online while continuing to work in the UAE? (I am more inclined towards doing an engineering degree)

THANK YOU for taking the time to read!

Hello guys! I'd like to know the resources for the C language. As a freshman at EE, I am having trouble in C language.

Im a journeyman Tool and die maker with 12 years experience, and im looking to use my Gi bill to get a degree and advance my career.

Is my experience as a tool maker in the automotive industry irrelevant to electrical engineering?

I have been thinking about starting some sort of educational channel for a while now.

Quick context, I design industrial control panels. I am thinking of creating in-depth videos designed to make people confident about topics such as:

• panel load calcs
• motor controls and sizing
• inside panel layouts
• PLC racks
• wiring methods and insulation
• picking what parts to use
• conduit sizing
• wire duct fill
• transmitters
• reading customer specs
• etc.

Topics around things I have seen instead of the usual "this is how a relay works". Most of my Googling and YouTubing brought up videos for cool Arduino projects, AutoCAD playlists, and third-party panel building services. Not a ton that a designer might find useful day-to-day.

Is an educational channel with that idea something folks would potentially like to see, or would I be wasting my time?

P.S.: I read all the rules before posting as best I could. If this post still needs to be taken down, just give me a slap on the wrist instead of the the Ban-Hammer and tell me what I did wrong and should avoid next time. Just trying to create something instead of constantly consuming.

Hypothetically speaking, if all materials were indestructible and could not melt or get damaged. What would happen if there was a short circuit?

SMD Design

Hi everyone,

I am a recent graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering, and I just received a job offer for a Utility Engineer position at an EV battery cell manufacturing plant.

I’m trying to figure out if this role is a good fit for my background and interests. During school, I didn't focus too heavily on one specific area, but the field I felt most comfortable and familiar with was power systems. On the flip side, I had a pretty difficult time navigating the electronics and software/programming sides of the curriculum.

My concern is whether a Utility Engineer role in a manufacturing setting is actually relevant to an electrical engineering path. From what I understand, utility engineering in standard manufacturing tends to lean heavily toward the mechanical side (handling HVAC systems, chilled water loops, dry room environmental controls, etc.). However, since this is a battery cell plant, I know there will be a massive electrical infrastructure, including huge in-house substations, switchgears, and complex power distribution networks.

Additionally, I have zero co-op or internship experience, so I am not very familiar with how day-to-day operations work in industry. My current understanding is that a factory that is already running smoothly doesn't tend to have major engineering "problems" to solve and mostly just needs routine maintenance. Is this true, and is this role still a good way to actually learn, build a engineering career, and get valuable experience? Is facilities/utility engineering in this sector a good career choice for the future?

For those with experience in the manufacturing or EV sectors:

Does an electrical utility engineer in this type of plant actually get to work hands-on with the high-voltage power systems and substations?

Or does the day-to-day work still end up being mostly mechanical and HVAC-focused?

Would this be a solid starting point for someone looking to build a career in power engineering, while trying to avoid heavy coding and electronics?

Given my lack of co-op experience, will a running plant provide enough deep learning opportunities, or will it just be basic maintenance monitoring?

I would love to hear your insights or any experiences you've had with facilities/utility engineering in the EV or battery space. Thanks!

K-factor: this is a derating factor for a standard transformer used to supply non-linear loads, so that the total loss on harmonic load does not exceed the fundamental design loss of the transformer.

What does it exactly mean by "fundamental design loss"? Is it the full load loss of the transformer under fundamental frequency; If yes, then how come the total loss on harmonic loads could be less than the "full load loss of the transformer under fundamental frequency + harmonic load loss"?