Do You Need to Be a Genius in Electronics?

Done it all my life... still enjoy it, still don't understand most of it ( unlike some of the Gurus on here) and I make a nice living from it and have done for 30 yrs self employed. No Degree, no A levels, just an HNC. I hated all the maths and had to learn most of it 'parrot fashion' to pass my exams. I can barely do even the simplest of analogue stuff, but I'm ok with digital.

Sure. Open the yellow pages and find the section for Attorneys. :)

-mpm

Designing electronics does not require much brains. Just some collection of simple formulas. And where to find some more of the same. When I graduated, I had a fuzzy understanding of formulas like "gain of non inverting opamp" and how to build it. Then really building it for money taught that it really worked. Not before I started teaching and explaining electronics to others, I had to find out what I was talking about. That was hard.

Well, students. Teaching is like a hobby by proxy. Students built a new "blinken led", we all had fun and they learnt something.

Neato. :)

I'm a newbie at smps design. I sometimes stare at the monitor for hours trying juggle about 7 parameters in my head like a KungFu guy fighting 7 opponents at the same time. Progress is slow. Need more brain power! :P

Ahh.. good ol LED blinker. Simpler days :)

I like watching the magically blue smoke escape!

Not only is it educational, its amusing!

IR thermometer ...check Fire extinguisher...check Goggles...check Ventilation fan on..check Blast shield..check Respirator on..check

I'd say no. There are many other properties that are also important. Creativity probably is one of the more important ones.

On some level, maybe. But when you demonstrate your electronics skills to someone who knows nothing about it, they will see you as a genius anyway.

I work with computers, sometimes involving direct support for end users. Many of them certainly expect me to know the answer to every conceivable question, but I don't feel they get shocked when I don't even know what they're on about. I don't think electronics is any different.

To an electronics engineer, that's "about 15", you know. Normally, in electronics, number values are not super critical, and when they are, you have to implement some sort of calibration system anyway.

Doing simple arithmetic in your head is becoming a lost art. Most people aren't even capable of verifying they got the right amount of change at the grocery store.

Yes, that is actually a bit exceptional. People tend to like the stuff they feel they do well at. It's a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation: If you don't like it, you'll never get good at it, and if you're no good at it, you won't like it.

Mostly, that would be people too stupid to understand how bad they are. Look at any talent show or this guy:

--
RoRo

You can still enter the profession at the appropriate level, such as a technician that just builds circuits

I wonder how many EE electronics designers use techs to build circuits and prototypes and test stuff. My company doesn't. Manufacturing sometimes helps us build prototype circuits (provided we first lay out test boards) and install ECOs, but all our engineers do their own lab work. We do often get help with machining, although I like to do that myself.

John

Read a few spec sheets for things like a PIC and see how well you understand them.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onetribe - Occult Talk Show

That hints at what I'm wondering about. I sometimes wonder if electronics is the wrong thing for me to do. Maybe I could be doing other things with say 10x the progress for 10x the money in 10x less time ..

Ugh.. tech work.. I'm good at it but I don't like it.

I suspect I like electronics design because I'm able to jump to new projects with new problems that require me to learn new stuff to try out for the first time..

I'm always falling off my first bicycle.. :)

My projects are about 90% on the computer and 10% on the bench. Bench time is not a significant chunk of time for my projects. I wouldn't hire a tech.

Some with only 32 instructions. How complicated can it be :) I've done some hard programming with a PIC. It's easier than smps design..

Speaking of which, remember the old Camel billboard in Times Square, the one that blew smoke rings -- how did they do that? I know -- "Google it." But I thought I'd give someone here the opportunity to show off their knowledge.

Oh, and another thing:

In addition to electronics designers that might not qualify for Mensa membership, there's the other side of the coin: really smart people that aren't all that good at designing electronics. Take me for example. At the age of 38, without any preparation, I took the SAT and got 800 on the math section. But I'm no whiz at designing circuits, even though I'm sort of an obsessive electronics hobbyist.

Got any stories of people you know that are not good at what they do yet they enjoy doing it?

The "engineer" I work with.

His education is 35 years obsolete, he cookbooks designs out of 20 year old data books (will not use a computer) and cannot do simple math.

He is 67 and will not retire even though he can afford it.

JAM

I'm two months from 70... rarely look at old stuff... I'm always looking for new ways to do things ;-) ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | In wine there is wisdom, In beer there is freedom, In water there is bacteria - Benjamin Franklin

Oh what fun that must be.. :)

Computerless designing! Yikes! The reason I bench test now is to feed my simulator better data!